Revisiting The Vintage Collection Carbon Freezing Chamber Playset

When I initially reviewed the Carbon Freezing Chamber playset, it was a tale of two reactions best summed up by this quote:

I feel like the execution of the set is a 5 out 10, but the ambition is an 11 out of 10.

I liked it, but also I didn't. The photography process exacerbates usability issues. These complaints are valid, but they get amplified by the frustration they cause when shots that should take ten minutes to set up, end up taking twice as long (or more). It's hard to keep that frustration from leaking into the review.

The flip side of this is that if/when that items is set up in your collection, those same issues may melt away. That is where I find myself. Now that I have finally gotten proper display space, and have it populated with the new figures Hasbro has produced since the Carbon Freezing Chamber has been released, it's one of my favorite display pieces in my collection. It's a prodigious set that collects many figures:


The aforementioned new figures are VC187 - Princess Leia (Bespin Escape), VC205 - Lando Calrissian, and VC223 - Lobot. More on those later.

Why I'm writing about this now is that the Carbon Freezing Chamber set is now sold out on Entertainment Earth, but is still available from Hasbro Pulse, and Amazon. All too often it seems like the community doesn't want an item until it's too late. Case in point:


In case you don't remember, Best Buy significantly clearanced that AT-ST Raider during it's initial retail run, and now it routinely fetches nearly two times MSRP on the secondary market. This phenomenon has been repeating itself for as long as I can remember in the hobby. If you're interested, but haven't yet gotten the Carbon Freezing Chamber (or a second one), don't slow play it into an expensive regret down the road.

Finally, and stating the obvious, our collective appreciation for this set would have been much greater at launch if the aforementioned three figures had been released simultaneously. Completely themed waves don't need to come back, but I would very much appreciate mini-themes. In six figure waves, three of the figures can easily be themed to a common source.

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