#95: Star Wars The Vintage Collection - Slave I

Ever since Hasbro revisited the Millennium Falcon with the BMF, I've been waiting for an update to Boba Fett's ship, the Slave I. I've always like the ship, in part because it's just so weird looking. Unique is a word that I think can be fairly used to describe its design. Hasbro finally did do a completely new Slave I, but it was in a huge battle pack, and in a prequel era paint job. I passed on that, assuming that Hasbro would release it as a repaint in its original trilogy color scheme. They did just that, and as an Amazon exclusive. Its normal asking price of 70 dollars was a bit too much for my tastes, but around Christmas time the price started going up and down. Finally I decided to bite when it was half off.

The new Slave I is definitely an improvement over the Power of the Force version I had years ago, and its most immediate improvement is size. Increased size means it's better in scale and proportion than the older version. There are also more gimmicks and play features.

The loading ramp unfolds and extends to make a walkway. The side panel lifts up, revealing room for figures to stand inside the ship. There is a bounty holding cell that fits into a compartment in the ship's tail. The tail guns have launching missiles. There are a couple of bombs (sonic charges as seen in Attack of the Clones?) that fit in the bottom of the ship, and can be dropped with a button along the side.

The front end of Slave I flips up to reveal the cockpit, which oddly has seating for three figures. One of the cool features here is that when the ship is rotated, the cockpit seating automatically rotates to match the ship's orientation. The wings are supposed to do so as well, but the spring holding them in place is too strong, so they stay in the landing position. From what I've heard, it's a fairly easy fix to replace the spring with one from a ballpoint pen. Showing that Hasbro was planning ahead when they made the new Slave I, there is a slot near the cockpit which fits its most famous piece of cargo.

Included with Slave I is Han Solo encased in a slab of carbonite. It is too thin and short compared to a figure to be properly sized, but the same could be said of the PoTF version as well. In either case, it is a cool bonus, and nice accessory for the ship.

Also of note is that Slave I comes packaged in some nice vintage styled packaging. I'm not one of the people that keeps packaging, but it is something I an appreciate for looking cool.