SWTF Clone Pilot/Republic Gunship

Just got this guy and Saesee Tiin from HTS. ($8.99 + shipping with the current markdown and CATWEB10 code.) Here's my attempt at a review and pics.

Vehicle Mode
It's a very faithful representation of the Republic Gunship, which debuted in Episode II. It holds together very solidly, and is painted very cleanly (at least on mine). There are several nice details, mainly consisting of missile racks.

Two removable (and quite powerful) missile launchers adorn the top. Two nose cannons (made of softer plastic) are mounted by ball joints and can be aimed. Freely spinning gun pods are mounted within the wings. And two nifty arm-mounted gun pods are attached at the front of the troop compartment via ball joints (which pop out fairly easily) and a hinge, meaning they can be stowed as seen in the underside pic below.

There's really no visible mech kibble, unless you look inside at the back of the troop compartment, where you can see the feet.

As with all other SWTFs, a mini-figure is included -- this time an Episode II-era clone pilot, appropriately. He has the usual articulation points: single-block hips and shoulders which are slightly independently posable. He fits very snugly (must be double dipping on the clone rations) in the cockpit seat. In a pretty cool touch, the troop compartment has four little clips with can hold the foot bases of the mini-figures, so they can be posed ready to ride into battle.









Transformation
- Remove the missile launchers.
- Swing wings and rear troop compartment walls up as far as they'll go.
- Open the bottom fuselage panels.
- Unfold legs and waist from the troop compartment.
- Unfold arms from underneath the nose of the ship, and swing shoulders out to the side.
- Extend forearms.
- Fold nose of ship down, revealing head.
- Slide neck panel back, allowing ship nose to click into place on waist.
- Fold top of fuselage and bottom panels up along mech's back.

Mech Mode
Overall, pretty nice looking, if you ask me. Yes, the wings are stuck out to the sides, but it's a good look.

The head is nicely detailed like the clone pilot helmets, with black visor and tubing, silver detailing, yellow stripe along the top, and red Republic emblems.

Articulation is lacking in the arms, but good in the legs:
- Swivel neck (360 degrees).
- Shoulders can swing up to about 100 degrees and rotate out to about 30, but there's no forward/backward rotation.
- Bicep swivels.
- Hinge elbows.
- Wrists swivel up to 90 degrees only -- no rotation.
- No waist articulation.
- Universal hips.
- Mid-thigh swivels.
- Double-hinged knees and ankles.
- Mid-foot hinge for heel spur.

He's well-armed. The armature gun pods end up on his shoulders, nose cannons end up on his forearms, and he can hold the missile launchers.





Overall
Solid in both modes, great and faithful sculpt and deco, well-armed, and decently articulated. Not the very best SWTF, but up there. I'd definitely recommend it at the current HTS markdown price, and still would've been very happy with it at the usual $15 price.

Now this one I like
To bad it didn'y go that well fro the SWTF line here in Sweden (well they radically overpriced them) and the line got cancelled here.

I love the alt mode and as a fan of Storm/clone troopers this is a win/win situation

Looks surprisingly good, I may have to pick these up.

It looks awesome. I'm loving this line more and more.

Very cool!

He can't move his arms forward and back? I am confused man. If so...thats dissapointing.

The mech mode looks a little wonky, but a big improvement over the previous molds in this line, and the alt-mode is very impressive.

Originally Posted by llamatron Seriously, Bryan. is pretty much the coolest person in all of existence and definitely all of GD.

Unfortunately, it's true. He can swing them up/out to the sides and rotate them out (turning along the axis of the arm). But due to the way the shoulders are jointed, he can't swing them forward or back. It's the biggest negative point of the figure for me.

Hey all! I just picked my the new molds (plus Windu) at Wal-mart and since nobody else on here has posted a review I figured I should put at least a few words up. So I don't write reviews and I don't have a lot of time here so I'll be short and to the point. Sorry for the lack of pictures but its late. If its demanded that I post some then I'll see what I can do about it tomorrow night.


Saisee Tiin

Paint:

My first impression of this toy, before walking out of the store, was "damn he's bright." The paint scheme on this guy is orange.... almost offensively orange, but I like it a lot. The choice of color matches what I've seen of the prequel trilogy and as with most of the SWTF's the detailing is minimal-ish but enough to give you the right impression... looks very worn and weathered like a cheap-o old republic fighter should.

Fighter:

I really can't say enough about the fighter mode. Holding it in your hands it looks AMAZING even without the big booster ring (which is a very nice bonus piece to this set). The fighter is small and angular and has absolutely zero extra "padding" or kibble. Amazingly enough the designers managed to make use of damn near every square centimeter of volume to squeeze a robot inside that delta shape without having anything hang out in the open. Looking at the fighter from the side it has a nearly perfect profile... again, no underbelly junk. He's even got a really nifty and creatively implemented set of landing skids that completely retract to maintain the flat bottom. The booster ring snaps on and off without any disassembly. It holds on just firmly enough to be flown around a bit without coming loose. All in all, this mode is a real winner and is in my book one of the most faithful representations. Note though, for all my gushing about this mode you can see exposed robot stuff looking at the bottom but at least it all sits in flush and is colored to match the rest of the ships hull.

Transformation:

The transformation was not difficult at all and it was pretty intuitive. It reminded me a bit of a cross between the ARC-170 and the Ep3 Jedi Star fighter molds. Its not overly simple though so it still felt satisfying to me. The booster ring can be partially disassembled and mounted on the robots back as a sort of space maneuvering pack like those you commonly see in Anime. Here again, the booster is a nice bonus feature to this figure.

Robot:

The robot mode on Saesee Tiin is pretty lanky looking but not nearly as bad as previously released photo's have made it look. He's a bit back heavy as a lot of his fighter mode folds up into a big blocky backpack much like the Obi-Wan/Anakin mold, however he balances much better. He has a flip down mask that covers his face and gives him a resemblance to his appearance in the Clone Wars cartoon. As mentioned above, the booster ring can be assembled as a pack for the robot and while it does contribute to the back heaviness it supports itself by having the lower half of the ring form a support strut. I give the Hasbro designers bonus points for thinking to do this, its a very nice feature on an already very nice figure. I'm tempted to call this figure the best of the SWTF line, however not all is good with it..... If you're like me, you care about articulation. For the most part the robot mode is well articulated. He's got ankles, knees, waist, wrist, double elbow, shoulder, bicep, and side to side neck. My one kinda major gripe here is that even though he has shoulders, they're restricted very badly. Poor Saesee can't lift his arms more than about 30 degrees from straight down! How's that for a bummer? He's honestly perfect in almost every other way. All in all, I wish he could move his arms better but I still like this guy a lot and I think he may be my favorite SWTF so far. On another note, his right hand is molded into the shape of him doing the famous Jedi wave with his pointer and middle fingers sticking out, but my first thought was that he was going to fingerbang some fembot.



Saisee Tiin

Paint:
The paint scheme here is nothing to write home about as it consists of the same colored plastic that the first ARC-170 mold sports along with some maroon highlights. It looks very faithful to the prequel movies and is effective even if it is simple.

Gunship:

The gunship mode is squat but somehow sturdy looking. I'll be damned if the central troop carrying compartment on this guy isn't almost completely open and empty just like in the movies. As with Saesee Tiin, I'm utterly amazed that the design team pulled this off at all let alone without really cheating at all. For those wondering no the side doors don't move to enclose the compartment... as cool as that would have been I'm just impressed that it has a compartment at all. The two wing ball turrets do spin around the two side ball turrets are very positionable do to their ball-jointed armiture but unfortunately none of these have any visible gun barrels so they seem kinda pointless. The two little nose guns are also ball jointed, an easy feature to overlook, and though they don't have a huge range of motion its a very nice touch never the less. All in all, I studied this mode of the figure for a good 5 minutes trying to account for where all the robot must be hidden as virtually NONE of it was visible and I gotta tell you, it's almost like Hasbro hired a magician.


Transformation:

The transformation on this guy was unique and fun but all things considered, fairly short. It did leave me wishing that there was more too it even though the finished product was pleasing. Best of all, no part removal besides the two top mounted rocket launchers (which become hand held rifles) was necessary. Simple but very effective is the real defining quote here. I don't want to spoil it much but I will say that after the few few steps when I pulled out the robot modes legs it reminded me of a clown car.


Robot:

Wow so my reviews get shorter as I get more tired... Anyways, the bot mode on this guy is very lanky looking. Even though his legs are on the skinny side he over all looks pretty well proportioned. At the very least, he doesn't look any worse than a guy that does a lot of weight lifting but forgets to exercise his legs. He's got a few bits of backpack kibble that mostly consist of the top of the gunship + wings and the underside/rear of the gunship mode. The underside/rear parts don't really fold up all that well due to the rubberized plastic rear gun turret being caught in the middle of the mess. It can all be pushed down nicely enough if you aren't worried about bending the gun turret barrel. Thought he whole pack thing is a little on the bulky side the fact that it includes his big ass wings makes it feel functionally like a rocket pack as opposed to a bunch of random junk that he sat in. The forearms now each feature one of the gunship nose guns so he's got some nifty wrist blasters. Articulation is ok but nothing to write home about... he's got ankles, knees, hips, biceps, elbows as well as a side to side neck. You notice that I didn't mention shoulders? Well, technically they are there but this time he has 0 ability to move them up and down, only side to side. It blows in a big way because I was otherwise pretty darn happy with this guy. He's got a real nifty look with some neat weapons that'd be fun to pose with except that he's permanently shooting from the hips. Boo I say. I dunno though, based on the transformation and the Houdini act of hiding parts I feel that they still COULD have given him some kind of up and down movement, but they didn't. Did I mention he balances well? He balances well. All in all, a good figure that I really marveled at right up until the shoulder thing. Be warned, the side ball turret guns are VERY easy to pop off as the ball socket isn't very recessed. They mostly stay out of the way though so you should be ok unless you try to fool around with them.



As for Mace Windu, the mold is old news so I'm going to leave it alone. The paint scheme is nice enough if not anything special. Very sadly to me at least, the bot mode head doesn't resemble Samuel L Jackson very much at all and that was really the only reason I bought this guy to begin with. His face mold has a wierd gold painted thing on its right cheek... not sure what thats about but it reminds me of either Dune or the persians from the movie 300. Anyway... I bet he's still a bad mother...

Very pleasing review! I'm damn-near convinced to buy Tinn and the Gunship souly from your review.

Originally Posted by Valkysas NO ONE CAN EVER, EVER say that hasbro doesnt care again. This fucking seals it. that's a LOT of product to release for a "dead" line.