[Original Review by Chris 1/21/14]

If the Kaminoans were cloners, then who was secretly building all the Gunships, AT-TE’s, and Star Destroyers? 

The Gunship is undoubtedly one of the more popular vehicle designs from the PT with collectors.  It seems to have always fared well at retail and consistently fetches a pretty penny on the secondary market.  It’s the Star Wars equivalent of an attack helicopter and who on Earth wouldn’t want that?  And unlike the Droid Gunship, we actually got to see why this vehicle earned the “gunship” title in the movie.  It is armed to the teeth with missiles and ball turret lasers that can lay waste to entire swaths of the battle field with one sweep.  Attack of the Clones is terrible, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who will look away from the screen once the Gunship makes its formidable entrance. It’s so impressive that the battle droids even obeyed Padmé‘s suggestion to look at it instead of simply pulling the trigger and ending the conflict.  Curiosity killed the CIS. 

Fans bristled at the initial MSRP of $119.99, but I think one thing that often gets forgotten with this vehicle is that it’s a sizable chunk of plastic.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it come close to the plastic volume of the AT-TE.  Unlike previous releases, this release includes the ball turrets which can accommodate an actual gunner.  It also includes three pack-in figures which most collectors will likely deposit in the circular file upon opening. The Vintage Collection and its successor, the Black Series, often feel trapped between two worlds equally vying for the attention of the adult collector and kids.  The inclusion of these three particular figures is definitely geared toward the latter.  Most collectors would have preferred no pack-in figures and a lower price.  With a combination of holiday sales and a coupon, I paid $79.99 for the Gunship.  At the time of this review, it appears the standing price at Toys R Us stores is now $99.99.  If you are even a bit tempted, I feel that is a perfectly reasonable price. 

One thing that has always bothered me with this Gunship mold is the drop platform on the floor of the interior.  It’s a play value not intended for me or you, but the floor will dislodge too easily in my opinion.  The other young audience targeted play features, such as the firing missiles and the spring loaded bay door which give the illusion of a powered toy, are dandy though.  Adult collectors don’t hate play features.  We only hate them when they interfere with aesthetics or utility.

I don’t know if this is unique to my sample or not, but there are more than a few sloppy paint applications.  One truly bizarre item involves the paint in the dark gray area of the fuselage directly below the co-pilot.  On my sample, there is an area that looks like it was hand painted in a slightly different shade of gray.  It’s as if there was a holiday in the paint after the manufacturing process and someone decided to remedy it with a paint brush.  It appears on both sides too.  Wheird. I wonder what Whill Wheaton thinks about it.

One thing I don’t like about the full sized ball turrets is that they actually hang lower than the body of the Gunship.  In flight, this is great.  But when you place the Gunship on a surface, it forces the turret arms to bend where there is no point of articulation.  So unless you can afford to pay Robert Loggia to hold your gunship off the ground in perpetual flight, the arms may suffer some stress lines or deformity over time.  It’s also difficult for these man hands to place a figure in that turret.  While I could crack Jerry Seinfeld’s lobster without much effort, it’s hard for me to maneuver a Clone Trooper into position in the tight space.  I tried to get the VC41 Clone Trooper into the turret.  Like the 4 Non Blondes, oh my God did I try (I know the lyric is “do”, so you can save any comment section snark, you bloody lot of jerks).  But it was almost a case of too much articulation.  Once I would get one limb positioned, I would inevitably move it out of position trying to position the next appendage.  I found the pack-in Phase I Clone actually easier to get into an acceptable pose inside the turret. 

I’m not going to hold Hasbro accountable for the weak pack-in figures.  They were not meant for us and I doubt they actually moved the needle on the MSPR too much.  As I mentioned in the review, this vehicle is not without its warts, but it looks impressive and does its job for the most part.  I’m giving it an 8 out of 10.  And if you’re counting, that was four pop culture references.  I watch too much TV.

Updated Review by Bret 5/2/22

I am in the midst of assembling my Star Wars rooms for the first time since, like, ever.  As such, I have full access to my collection, which is no longer in any king of storage.  I even found this bad boy unopened in it’s 2012 TVC glory.  I only hesitated for a moment before opening it. I should have put it on YouTube, which would have caused cardiac arrest for a sizable portion of the TVC collecting community. 

Laying my collection out as I decide how to display everything is proving how ridiculous my life has been for the past 23 years.  One symbol of that ridiculousness is seeing all 7 Republic Gunships together in one place for the first time ever.  I figured this is a good time to actually document my collection, so I’ll be finding ways to sneak in pictures of it whenever I can.  So here’s all of them:

The Magnificent Seven

Chris covered most of this in the review above, but we took the time to update the galleries from our weird old style, which consisted of toys photographed on a wrinkly gray bedsheet in 4:3 aspect ratio.  Anyway, here’s the quick and dirty.

Collectors went ballistic over the price tag of $120.  Today, that would buy you half of a gunship, if Hasbro even made vehicles anymore.  The bad news is that this TVC release seemed to go back a notch, using the original gunship sculpt dating to 2002, rather then the upgraded one used for the 2009 “Crumb Bomber” release.  Well, that’s not exactly accurate.  This is more of a hybrid.  The body is the 2009 gunship, but the 3 biggest upgrades are omitted.  The door hatches that were first included in 2009 are missing, but you can clearly see the pin holes for the absent doors as a tease.  The coolest thing in 2009 was the upgraded top cannons, which included missile launchers on both sides that rolled open to reveal quad spring-loaded projectiles.  Hasbro just included the original non articulated cannons.  And the side doors are of the “half” variety; Hasbro eschewing the full doors that were unique to the Crumb Bomber.  To be fair, though, the half doors are movie accurate. 

Perhaps to make up for these backward steps, Hasbro included a pair of ball turrets.  The TLC battle pack (available in both Blue and Red packaging) which included a single turret (requiring you to buy a pair of sets to outfit a single gunship) was super popular, and both releases were nearly impossible to find.  Today, buying a pair of turrets will set you back something close to $4.6 million, and that’s only a slight exaggeration.

But the real kick in the ball turrets was the decision to include three 10 year old (at the time) figures for the pilot, trooper, and Yoda.  The pilot and Yoda are travesties, and will receive no further discussion here.  At least the 2003 Clone Trooper was, at one time, the greatest action figure ever made, and remains the single most important pre-cursor to contemporary figures and is why we have TVC today.  So while it’s a bit long in the tooth, you should read our review if you need to understand why this is the case. Nevertheless, in 2012 at the time of release, Hasbro already had “upgraded” the Clone Trooper, and really should have just included 3 of those guys in the package here.

The turrets are what make this release a great version of an already great ship.  It’s just too bad Hasbro didn’t include the bells and whistles from the Crumb Bomber, but did include decade old pack-in figures.