wave II found in south florida

[good_shot_jansen]

this morning i was able to track down the wave II action fleet at a super targets in deerfield beach florida.

i was thrilled that i had found them, as this wave includes the 1st truely new action fleet toys in three years. not mearly rehashed, re-paints of previously released toys.

the three ships in the new wave are the at-te, solar sailor, and a re-paint of the naboo fighter.

the at-te is a fine looking addition to the action fleet line. unfortunately, the way they packed it into the package with all the different twist ties and such, it's nearly impossible to extract, and keep the box pristine. (word to the wise, try and get two if you wanna open it up, and keep the box for future display purposes)

the biggest drag, is that it was not scaled to action fleet figures (sheesh, it ain't even in scale to the mm figures). the cockpit does open up, (tilting to the front to do so). and inside there is a tiny (i'm tawkin small here)molded plastic drivers seat which will never fit anything, let alone a seated figure . there is also another ridiculously small gunners seat for the main gun on top.

this is a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation. if they had made the gun the appropriate size to accommodate an action fleet figure to sit in the gunners seat, we'd be trashing this thing along the lines of either the skyhoppers gun, the gian speeders double whammy's, and the flash speeders ridiculous appendage. but now that they've made the gun and the seat to scale with the vehicle, i'm upset that i can’t put a figure there in which to man the darn thang. sheeeesh (maybe i'm just like my mother, she's never satisfied......... )

the body of the at-te does not open up anywhere, so as to place troops withinside the beast. oh well.

all the guns rotate within their turrets, (and boy are there a lot of em, 6 in all) and the main gun swivels a full 360 degrees. it however does not move vertically up and down. (take off a few brownie points for that gaffe)

each of the legs do move about at the top joint, so that they can be positioned up and down. what is the most stand out feature is that the foot pads are all connected to the legs by means of a ball joint, so that they can also move freely allowing full positioning of the feet.

the front and back sections are fully articulated which allows the vehicle to slither, another way cool design feature.

on a scale of 5 i give it a four, i'm forced to take off a full point due to it not being sized to accommodate af figures. (i don't mind so much about the gunners seat, but the cockpit drives me crazy)

the solar sailor is bizarre. it's really the size of a die-cast. the whole sail attachment assembly is silly. it really is a strange choice for the re-introduction of new action fleet. it doesn't even display properly so that it's nice to look at. the hole for connecting it to the stand is located within the sails plastic mast assembly. when it sits on the stand, the vehicle portion is behind the vertical post, with it's open wings straddling it. if they had made the hole in the body of the vehicle, it would have allowed the whole ship and sail assembly to be displayed in a forward thrust away from the stand, it would have looked much better that way imho.

the vehicle section is really way to small. the detail is horrible, nothing stands out as being attractive or interesting at all. i get more of a thrill from my cloud car than i do this thing.

most annoying is the joint which wraps around the side of the vehicle separating the top portion from the bottom. it's freakin huge when compared to the overall scale of the vehicle as a whole. it really gives this thing a shoddy, terribly built appearance. not at all well thought out and executed. (back to the drawing board boyz..........please!)

when the sails attached it can swivel from side to side (which is probably the best thing that i can find to say about this toy). when the sail assembly is disconnected, the flaps on the vehicle can then close. (when in the closed position, the thing looks like some kind of cheap lighter)

on a scale of 5, this thing gets a one, only cause the sail can swivel, other than that, blech.

another annoying issue, are the vehicle flaps (wings), they don't snap into the open position, they just kinda stay there loosely. i can already tell, that after only a few days of playing with this thing, the top flaps will prolly not stay in the open position convincingly. really a cheap toy all around. this thing truly feels like it was meant as a design prototype for the development of a really cool toy down the road. oy

the naboo fighter is a rehash in every way of the original version. this one has been spruced up with tons of scorching and battle marks.

the droid pops up and down, just like on the 1st release. the landing gear feels chintzier than the original release.

the only reason why i'm happy to have this guy, as it will make a nice variation with which to place into the naboo hanger/final conflict playset. just for that alone, it's well worth getting.

if you collect and enjoy action fleet toys, then you will wnat to get all three of them, simply cause they are action fleet.

if you don't collect, or particularly like the action fleet line, you will still want to pick up the at-te, as this is a cool toy in it's own right, and is well worth owning in any star wars collection.

 

[toyguy]

Good review Jansen. I posted a similar thread because I just received my set on mail order. I really think they dropped the ball on the Dooku Sailor. Frankly, the sail is just an accessory, they should have paid much more attention to making the ship portion a better toy. My biggest gripe is that it is way too small. If you put all the Sith ships together,

- DV Tie is in perfect scale (Galoob design)
- Sith Infiltrator barely fits Darth Maul, the ball shape cockpit/solar panels portion should have been at least about the same size as the Tie. It is much smaller(Galoob under Hasbro's control)
- Dooku Sailor obviously didn't come with any fig's cause there's no stink'in way to fit anything inside that tiny ship. (Fully Hasbro)

I know I said this before, but Hasbro's take over of Galoob was the single worst thing ever to happen to AF. They're an Action Figure manufacturer and cater to that scale best. Galoob on the other hand was mainly a vehicle manufacturer so they knew what they were doing with AF which is mainly a vehicles line. But alas those days are gone (all Galoob staff laid off).

And I'm pretty sick of Hasbro's repaints and rehashes. I think this is true for most folks on this forum cause we've been collecting for a long time. It's good to attract some new AF fans with the old stuff, but that's not where the focus should be. Of the first four waves, only 4 of 11 ships were actually brand new plastic from AOTC. And we haven't even seen wave four yet which has 2 of the new ships. At this rate, we probably won't get more than 6 ships in the life cycle of Eps II AF.

Well at least the AT-TE was good and it completes the walker series of vehicles nicely. To be fair about scale in this case, Galoob's scale for the AT-AT was also way too small when compared to the other AF's. But at least Galoob included fig's for play value. They could have done the same for AT-TE by including a couple of clones and an opening hatch to fit them inside. I mean how hard could that have been.

Anyway, I guess we should be happy that we're getting new plastic at all from Hasbro. So far, I'm not to impressed with how they handled the Action Fleet line.

Toyguy

 

[Jedi_Idej]

I opened up the AT-TE as soon as I got in my car. Nice detail, lots of articulation, but no room for a mini-fig. It's a very nice micro ship... but it just ain't action-fleet.

As skeptical as I was when Hasbro announced the return of the action-fleet, I totally missed the clue on how they were re-directing the line. For all of their cost-cutting moves, Hasbro decided to package the ships in the fancier trapezoidal shape, in hindsight, a sign they were going for more presentation and less play.

Open the boxes from the bottom if you want to keep the packaging in great shape.

[ 10-18-2002, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: Jedi Idej ]