Out of the Blu

Put your Stormtrooper helmets on folks... it's gettin' ugly out there.

As the North American release date for the Star Wars Complete Saga Blu-ray Edition looms near the internet is sizzling with more cross-fire than the orbit around Coruscant at the opening of Revenge of the Sith. Uber FanBoys are screaming about the changes to their sacred films (most specifically the Original Trilogy) and September 19th is beginning to sound like it will be The Day of Reckoning.

The pot is being stirred for certain. YouTube clips are popping up everywhere touting supposed changes to the films with everything from altered soundtracks to digitally enhanced Ewok eyes. George Lucas has apparently gone mad and the backlash could surpass that of the 1999 Jar Jar Binks fiasco. Meesa worried big time! Not.

Me? I'm a wait and see kind of guy. I live by the X-Files code: "Trust no one", and, "The truth is out there."

I will not tell a lie and say I wasn't in the long line of pitch-fork wielding fans demanding the head of Binks after having waited 15 years for a new Star Wars movie only to be given the giant turd called The Phantom Menace. There is no way around it. That movie sucked and sucked hard. If feel bad for the generation that grew up thinking that was Star Wars. But that's all behind me now. I've mellowed with my attitude about the franchise. Heck, I can even go so far as to say I like Jar Jar as a character in the Clone Wars series. See? I'm as cool as Lando in a Bespin breeze about it all.

So what is the big deal? Why do so many people have their intergalactic panties in a bunch? Are any of these changes worse than all the burping and farting creatures in the original edit of Return of the Jedi? Seriously, the ice had cracked a long, long time ago with the implementation of such juvenile gags and killer teddy bears. And aren't we already numb to Lucas's editing antics after the Special Editions? Forgotten have we the smattering of extra burps and Three Stooges humor which tie the Original Trilogy in so seamlessly with the masterpieces that are the Prequels. No, I am very confident that none of these 2011 edits will even graze the tender nerve Lucas struck when he made Han Solo a pussy by having him shoot in self-defense. There is no more down when you've already hit rock bottom and I plan on grabbing my Blu-ray edition come September 19th for an elevator ride up.

Of course, we will all get the chance to see what rock bottom looks like in 3D when February 10, 2012 rolls around... if you can stay awake.

Surviving the FanExpo

I must be getting old. Two solid days of the FanExpo and I'm beat. My feet are tired and my back is killing me but you can bet your moisture farm I'll be doing it again next year. Maybe it's the flea-market atmosphere, the exclusives, the talented artists in Artists Alley, the big name celebrities or the crazy fans all dressed up in their fantasy costumes but whatever it is it is just plain fun.

Yes, there was a little something for everyone. Hasbro, Sony, Marvel, DC Comics and a slew of other big names from the toy and entertainment industry were there to show of their wares and lend support to their fans. Free T-Shirts. Free comics. Free iTunes downloads. Free Kre-os (Hasbro's version of Lego). Game demos. Panel discussions. It was all there for the taking.

For me the highlights of the weekend were meeting Gary Kurtz (Star Wars producer), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) and William Shatner (a man who needs no introduction). I had only planned on getting autographs from Kurz and Daniels but by Sunday afternoon I caved and got in line for Shatner. I still think $80 is more than double what any celebrity should be charging for their autograph but I just couldn't let another opportunity go by and so up to the Shatner booth I marched. I also attended his Q&A session later Sunday afternoon which was very entertaining. He's a great speaker. I may big a bigger Star Wars fan but Captain Kirk is The Man on an intergalactic scale. Don't let anybody tell you different.


People watching is also one of the entertainment factors of the FanExpo. Some costumes are unbelievable, some are laughable and some (well actually quite a few) are barely there.

There were Star Wars fans,


Super Heroes,


Girls with big guns,


and a whole whack-a-doodle of Anime fans. (They are the crazy ones if you need any sort of heads-up when going to one of these expos.)


I keep telling myself that one of these years I'm going to actually go in costume. This was my fifth year of attendance and I still haven't mustered up that kind of courage nor made a valiant effort to actually get my Clonetrooper armour. Who knows? Maybe having gotten so close to William Shatner has changed me. Maybe I'll finally have the courage to boldly go where I've never gone before.

The FanExpo Begins!

I managed to make it down to the FanExpo tonight after work with just under two hours left in the day. First and foremost I wanted to pick up my Deluxe Pass so that I wasn't stuck in the long entry lines on Saturday morning. Last year I waited in line behind some guy in an ill-fitting Spider-Man cosutme. Loose spandex I can handle; Extra tight spandex on a doughy fanboy isn't worth the price of admission.

The next big thing on my agenda was to pick up the K-Mart Exclusive B-Wing fighter that Hasbro was offering to FanExpo patrons. Word on the street was that there was only a limited quantity available and I was slightly concerned about not getting one.

Well, I got one.


The B-Wing was one of my favorite ships and until now I never had one in my collection. This Exclusive is essentially the same vehicle released a couple of years ago with an Expanded Universe paint application. I'm not big on the EU for a bunch of reasons and I passed on that B-Wing in hopes of a movie version down the road. The biggest difference with this Return of the Jedi ship is the upgraded and highly detailed cockpit and the blue-grey paint application. Good things come to those who wait.


The cockpit has more molded detailing with added flight-control grips that actually swivel in and out.

The biggest concern, raised most recently by the vintage Toys R Us Exclusive Y-Wing, was how the pilot would actually fit into this new cockpit. The Y-Wing requires some specific leg positioning for the current pilots and considerable force is needed to squeeze them into the seat. Fortunately there is enough room with in new B-Wing cockpit to seat him properly without much fuss. I have wookie hands so my fingers were a tad fumbley on the first attempt as I tried to work around the canopy and the rotating cockpit made me curse a few times but all was good in the end. Palso Thern, the B-Wing pilot from the Battle Over Endor battle pack, has a sweet new ride.

The Return of Carrie Fisher

Everybody gets older and we all have our bad habits that seem to speed up the process. Potato chips are my weakness. Lately they've found a nice comfy home right around my belt line and I'll be the first to admit it's time to go back to the gym. Unfortunately, for some, lavish lifestyles, alcohol and drugs put aging into hyperdrive and Carrie Fisher is a prime example. I watched her "Wishful drinking" one woman show and listened to the pitfalls of her life and understood that she was up against more than just the curse of the "Gold Bikini" legend. Still, any time I saw her, I couldn't help but feel like the little kid staring at an empty ice-cream cone while a double scoop of mint-chip melts slowly on the pavement. My brain couldn't put two and two together (or simply refused to). What had happened?

Fifty pounds, apparently.

Well, today, Carrie Fisher unveiled her new look after several months on the Jenny Craig program as their official spokesperson. To quote Darth Vader: "Most impressive". People are yammering about Botox, collagen injections, skin tucks and what not but, honestly, when you wreck your car you're bound to need a little more TLC than just a trip through the car wash. Anything to get her up and running again. I'm okay with it. Think of this as the Carrie Fisher "Special Edition" with restored quality and a bit of bonus material.



The best part is that now when I look at her I see an older version of the Carrie Fisher I remember from my youth instead of a woman that invokes the question, "That's Carrie Fisher?"

Congratulations, Carrie. You've done well.

Vader-style

I love that Walmart carries cheap Star Wars shirts!

New Battle Packs have arrived

I'm not a huge fan of Battle Packs as they tend to be a rehash of figures you already have and the price point is set relatively high by comparison to single carded figures which are generally available on sale. A year ago, and even further back, Battle Packs used to come with 4 figures and maybe an accessory for an average price of $29.99. Most of the time you could get 1 unique figure and 3 repaints within the set. Now the Battle Packs have been trimmed back to 3 figures for the same price tag which is incredibly expensive by my standards. You still get 1 unique figure per pack but the other two in the box are still just repaints. I'm not even going to count the Battle Game cards and accessories as value simply because I think anyone in their right mind would rather have a fourth figure over those pack-in pieces.

The newest waves of Battle Packs include Defend Kamino, Assault on Geonosis, Cad Bane's Escape and The Hunt for Grievous. If the price on these drop under $20 they are certainly worth picking up as the character selections are pretty decent and the modifications to the repacked figures are noticeably different to the originals.

I did pick up Defend Kamino (there's a sale on right now) because it featured ARC Commander Blitz, who is new, and repaints of Clone Troopers Fives and Echo who are fan favourites in the series. The blue on Echo and Fives is a lot lighter than the Rishi Moon armour blue but I don't recall if the Kamino blue was as such or if it is just a paint app screw up. I would need to re-watch the Kamino episode or find my original figures... both of which I am too lazy to do at the moment. I'll revisit this post at a later date.

**Update: So the good news is that, aside from Clone Trooper Echo, the other Rishi Moon rookies (Fives, Hevy, Droidbait and Cutup) have not had a carded release in Clone Trooper armour. Hevy was released in Training Gear and the lone clone released in the 2010 Rishi Outpost Attack Battle Pack is not officially identified. This means Clone Trooper Fives is all new (well the paint app and head sculpt are) and Clone Trooper Echo has a new paint application. The Defend Kamino Battle Pack is based on Season 3: Episode 2 where in the end Fives and Echo are promoted to ARC Troopers. I would expect we will get ARC Trooper versions of both of these characters down the road as they returned in Season 3: Episode 19 in their new ARC Trooper gear.

Full of Beanz

Allow me to introduce you to one of two reasons why I developed the "Vader only (and sometimes Boba Fett)" rule of collecting Star Wars: the infamous Spin Master Star Wars Mighty Beanz. What, in the outer rim, made me decide these were something I had to have? A jedi mind trick no doubt.

Originally I only intended on getting a few. It was actually the giant, tin Darth Vader case that got the bean rolling with its exclusive Mighty Beanz Darth Vader Bean (Beanz?) contained inside. The tin holds 40+ Beanz and I thought, well, that won't be hard to fill. I'll probably stop before that even happens. Yeah, right.


The Beanz themselves are little 1 inch plastic capsules with a metal bearing inside. Each capsule (and there are over 60 to collect) is sealed with a decorative tape that has one of many Star Wars characters printed on the surface. The characters range from the Original Trilogy to the Prequels and into The Clone Wars series. Some are considered more rare than others but there is no literature to support how rare they are.

So, tin in hand, I made my first few purchases of the 4-Beanz Packs and was lucky enough to get all but one of who I consider the core OT characters: Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia, Obi-Wan and R2. The collector tin gave me Vader but damned if I could score a 3P0. I ended up buying enough packs to fill my giant Vader and the duplicate Beanz were piling up. Still no 3P0. My kids reaped the benefits of my Beanz addiction and after several months of frustration I finally gave up on trying to find the golden protocol droid. F#@k You, Spin Master.

Time passed and the Beanz withdrawal symptoms were but a fuzzy memory replaced by visions of the Hasbro booth at SDCC courtesy of the world wide web. Some movie somewhere said something like, "You can only find what you are looking for when you are no longer looking for it". I'm relatively certain it was not a Jedi quote but low and behold I stumbled across a pack of Mighty Beanz that had C3P0 proudly displayed in its main window. The long road to recovery was over. I had my gold star and it was in that moment I created my Vader Only (and sometimes Boba Fett) Rule. Never again would I be seduced by the dark side of collecting.

Who's Scruffy Lookin'?

Issue #127 of Star Wars Insider has hit the Canadian news stands and features a look at everybody's favorite rogue smuggler Han Solo. Anthony Daniels gives readers a 6-page interview while Timothy Zahn (SW EU writer) and a look at Disney's Star Tours fill out the bulk of this issue that isn't advertising or tidbit info.

It is worth noting that there is also a 6-page look at the combat styles of the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic massive multiplayer online game and a snippet from the forthcoming novel Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan if you are looking forward to that latest piece of fiction.

Quality Time

Yes, I love Lego®. Yes, I love Darth Vader. These two things have already been established if reading my recent ramblings has taken but a moment of your time. Ah, yes, time is the key word here and Lego®, Vader and Time are all rolled into one nifty little alarm clock that helps keep me on track with my late night blogging. (Or at least it reminds me I should have gone to bed an hour ago.)

This handsome time piece is licensed by Lego® (or so the stamp from China on the back says) and is almost exactly like a large Lego® Darth Vader Minifigure as far as points of articulation go with the exception of a turnable head. He can sit or stand depending on how much prowess he commands on your nightstand and his arms and wrists allow for a variety of poses right down to the famous "I find your lack of faith disturbing" force choke. It does feature an alarm setting and if you press down on his head the LCD clock face lights up in a Sithly red glow.

Sadly, the alarm is just your typically annoying digital beeping that most dollar store travel alarm clocks offer. I was hoping for a little heavy Vader breathing to coax me out of my slumber. The other disappointing thing about my new clock is that he lacks his cape and lightsabre. What's with that I ask? Now I have to go and make those accessories myself.

I bought this particular item in the spring when it was on sale (yeah, baby) and they cleared out pretty quick. There was also a Stormtrooper version which I thought was equally as excellent a collectible but I stuck to my Vader only (and sometimes Boba Fett) rule and left it on the shelf. As of last week I noticed that these clocks have been restocked at Toy R Us with a new addition to the line; Lego® Anakin. Technically Anakin is Darth Vader so I could just... no, no... gotta draw the line somewhere.

Get Your Funk On

Let it be known that if I were to collect everything some company slapped a Star Wars sticker on I'd be both broke and an irrefutable hoarder. Fortunately I am neither, yet, though I do collect certain product lines avidly and almost to completion. My one rule of thumb that keeps me in check is that, while I cannot have everything, I can at least allow myself something worthy if it happens to look like Darth Vader (and sometimes Boba Fett).

Let's use Funko for example. Funko is a company that manufactures, for the most part, Bobble-Heads and other items that take up valuable real estate on your office desk. I almost picked up the Funko Force Darth Vader that hit shelves last year but the price never dropped low enough for me to consider it seriously. This year, however, they brought out a sickeningly cute series of vinyl bobble-heads that look very much like 3D sculptures of Katie Cook's artwork. Series 1 features Vader (01), Yoda (02), Han Solo (03), Princess Leia (04), Stormtrooper (05), Chewbacca (06) and Greedo (07). Normally the ruggedly tough and manly collector in me would scoff (and gag) at such doe-eyed, cutsie collectibles but the Vader, as always, suckered me in. The biggest draw was that this little trinket looked a lot like Stewie Griffin in Vader garb from the Family Guy Star Wars specials. I couldn't resist it any more than Anakin could resist the Dark Side especially since I found it on sale at Toys R Us. He stands almost 4 1/2" inches tall (base included) and is, as described, made of soft vinyl. He has no articulation but his head does bobble quite well and when it does I can almost hear Stewie's voice echoing out from under the helmet, "I made a Darth Doodie. I Sithed my pants. My diaper's gone over to the Dark Side". Awesome.

Concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer!

If somebody had asked me to name my two favorite toys as a kid I would have spat out, "Star Wars" and "Lego®" without skipping a beat. I loved building things and I loved building Star Wars vehicles even more. Of course this was long before Lego® had the intricate sets that they do today but it was hours of fun either way. I still recall fondly the Tie Fighter I created which held together for months until it met its demise at the hands of Darth Mother.

Of course one can only imagine how delighted I was when Lego® actually obtained the Star Wars license and created the wonderful line of brick-based vehicles and mini-fig characters that we see today. It's bloody expensive though and generally takes a back seat to my collecting. (Lego® makes wonderful Father's Day presents in case you were wondering.)

Back in May I splurged and bought the one iconic Star Wars vehicle I had always been after; The Tantive IV. (It's awesome by the way.) Even though it was on sale it still cost a pretty penny and I honestly thought it would be the last expensive Lego® set I would ever want to buy and perpetuated that thinking as a selling point to my wife. I was wrong.

Hello Lego® Super Star Destroyer! Is that an IG-88 in your command module or are you just happy to see me?

Over 3, 000 pieces, almost 50 inches long and just under 8 pounds of brick with an intergalactic price tag of $399.99. Did I mention it comes with 5 minifigures? Darth Vader, Admiral Piett, Dengar, Bossk and IG-88. Oh, and there's a cool little mini Star Destroyer too. That makes $399.99 seem like peanuts, no? Yeah, well, one can dream. I'm sure I'd have plenty of money to spend after the divorce.

A Fett full of dollars

Obviously the success of last year's "Rocket Firing Boba Fett" figure redemption was enough to make Hasbro think it was worth repeating. I'm not going to say I'm exactly thrilled about the idea of another rendition of Fett but I'm not going to snub my nose at it either. The prototype armour is pretty slick even if it is very, very similar to the Ralph McQuarrie version we were handed during the 30th Anniversary of A New Hope. Still I would have been much happier if they had made this year's redemption program a Vintage Kenner-style Darth Vader. I have the original from when I was a wee lad but getting my hands on a brand new one would be like stepping back in time for just a moment. Sideshow Collectibles is doing the giant 12" version of the vintage Vader but it's just not the same.

Ah, well, Boba in shining white armour will have to do for now. Maybe next year, Hasbro. Maybe next year.

Better late than never!

Well look who finally decided to show up at my door. After months of delay Sergeant Bric, the Hasbro mail-in redemption figure, and his Galactic Battle Mat has arrived safe and sound.

Sergeant Bric made his debut in the Season 3 opener of The Clone Wars titled Clone Cadets where he and fellow drill instructor El-Les, along with Jedi Master Shaak Ti (both of whom had single carded releases this year) tried to whip a merry band of clones into combat soldiers.

Overall he's a pretty decent figure with 12 points of articulation, blaster and working holster. Hasbro skipped on the ankle articulation, which is a pet peeve of mine, but other than that I'm happy that I went to the effort to send away for him. The included Galactic Battle Mat is something kids are supposed to be using to play this year's pack-in incentive game (die, battle stand and accompanying battle card with stats) but it's a big waste of plastic as far as I'm concerned. Any of you kids actually using this thing?

Well now that that's all over with it's time to start saving those UPCs for the Prototype Boba Fett mail-in figure this fall.