Original Review by Bret: 8/14/2013

This Amazon exclusive just arrived yesterday. Despite the widespread catastrophic reports of human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria predicting the end of western civilization and the return of disco, mine came in a white mailer box with no damage to speak of. The Vintage box was in great shape, and all the parts were present. I would gladly have traded mine for someone’s that was trashed since I don’t really care about the box, but who has time for such nonsense? Just like nobody really cares that I suffer from acute completism, I really don’t have much sympathy for someone who is more concerned with the condition of the cardboard wrapping than they are with the contents. In the immortal words of Ted, “we are very far apart on this.” Also, I have a certain fondness for the folks who work in shipping departments across the world, so if a few boxes out of a couple thousand end up banged up, deal with it.

Anyway, that was the best part of this review.

I opened the thing (with reckless abandon; ripping the cardboard to shreds, using the largest pieces as toilet paper and lining the inside of my hamster cage with the remnants*) and very quickly came to this conclusion: This is a terrific looking display piece, but a horrible toy. I even went back to my review of the Rise of Boba Fett from the Cloudy Clone line to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and I am happy to report that I have some consistency here.

Everything I didn’t like about the Rise version is back, and in some ways, it’s worse. This canopy does not lock into the open position, which apparently the previous version did. Maybe recently turning 40 has made me unable to fully grasp the intricacies of 21st century toys, but I can’t get this to stay in the open position. This makes it a royal pain in your buttockular region to maneuver your figures into the seats. Um…upon further review, who gives a crap? Like the predecessor, you can’t fit any figures into the bizarrely designed cockpit seats, so maybe we should just take the non-locking canopy as a sign and forget about trying to get Boba in there.

I slid the carbonite block into the front compartment (again, weird), and actually had a hard time getting it back out. I suggest not shoving too far, because you may never get it out again. I kind of had to grab it by Han’s face in order to get any leverage. Another silly thing is the oddly shaped “ramp”, which makes it really difficult to get figures to pose as if walking up. But why would you want to do that? Also, I had a hard time getting the ramp out of the lock position. Apparently the “finger hole” (yeah, what’re you gonna do about it?) was built for a very tiny person, and I just struggled with it. You know what? Fine. You can’t have figures standing on it anyway.

So you can’t get the figures properly positioned in the cockpit, and you can’t use the ramp, so the only other place is the body of the ship, and thankfully there are a couple of foot pegs so you can have Boba and a friend share the tight space awkwardly.

There’s also the prisoner cell thing. Apparently Boba must have shattered the clear top to the box after inheriting it from his dad, so he got it replaced with gray plastic. And again, it’s big enough to hold a TVC C-3PO, but that’s about it. It comes with the same ammo, which as I mentioned in the Rise review, is kinda lame. Really, the Class II version (or is it Class I? Or mid-sized? or….I just can’t keep up with all of this.) was just so much more awesome with the rotating missile launcher and extra bombs.

I also mentioned in the Rise review that the “expected” ESB version would soon be upon us, and might cost $65 (not a bad guess, eh?) but that it was really stretching it at $50. Well, it surprised nobody that the ESB version is finally here. And the consensus would probably be that it was a smart move to come out with the Jango version first, which nobody wanted but bought anyway out of fear this version would never see the light of day. So Hasbro got the most out of the mold. And I hope they broke that mold into small pieces with reckless abandon, and lined the cage of…yadda yadda yadda…

This is a great display piece. It would look terrific on a shelf in a diorama scene of the Bespin landing pad, or hanging from the ceiling in flight mode. (Which reminds me, is it just me, or do the wings not lock into flight mode? Should they? This is just very confusing.) Anyway, I’m not sure why so many vehicles have to flat out suck as toys. If I were I kid, I might hate this thing. As a collector, I really like the look, so I guess it works for me, even though I’m now $70 in the hole. Come to think of it, I wish I kept that lovely Vintage box, because it’s better than the toy. I really envy those mint in box collectors.

Just like the Rise version, I’ll give this a 5/10.

*None of this is true, unless you want it to be.

Updated Review by Chris: 3/22/2020

I swear picking this Slave I for an updated review today was a pure coincidence, but dang, if Bret’s open doesn’t seem eerily applicable for the events of today.  If you’re reading this is the future, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis at the time of this review with global mass quarantines, deaths, and panic.  I hope your future Mad Max hellscape world isn’t too bad.  Also, if my future self is reading this:  The chair is against the wall and John has a long mustache.  He’ll know what that means.

The COVID-19 crisis is the reason I decided to do an updated review of the 2013 TVC Slave I.  I typically hit the comic book stores looking for older figures to review for these Sunday fun day reviews.  Since the crisis has forced me into self isolation, I wasn’t able to make those rounds this week, and I needed to photograph something I had on-hand.  Enter the 2013 Vintage Collection Slave I.  As you all know, an update to the Vintage Collection Slave I is currently slated to arrive in May 2020.  That update consists of upgraded paint applications and a stand which allows the vehicle to be displayed in “flight mode”.  At the time of this review, you can pre-order the updated Slave I on Entertainment Earth HERE (SPONSORED).  When we eventually review the 2020 edition, we would need to reference this review, but photography needed to be brought up to our current standards.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I don’t really have much to say with respect to an updated evaluation of this Slave I, however, except to say that I think the score of 5 out of 10 is a little harsh.  Bret duly notes the problems with this mold above, but I feel that while they keep this ship far from a perfect 10, something along the lines of a 7 feels more appropriate.  Nevertheless, I’m not going to override that original score. [Editor’s Note:  Let’s compromise, and give it a 6.]

The thing I would like to talk about is the angst over the price of the upcoming 2020 release, which is $150.  In particular, collectors are comparing this to the price of the simultaneously announced Black Series 1:12th scale Snow Speeder, which is $120 and includes a figure, and are seeing a disparity.  I don’t personally get the comparison because, frankly, there is no comparison.  You would need to compare a hypothetical Black Series Slave I to this Vintage Collection Slave 1 to see if there is some sort of great price inequity.  Since a TBS Slave I does not, and likely never will, exist, we can’t do that.

But we can do a comparison of 3.75” scale to 3.75” scale.  An all new Snowspeeder was released in the 3.75” scale in 2010.  It retailed for $25.  That means the ratio of Slave I to Snowspeeder was 2.8:1 as of 2013 ($70 divided by $25).  If we take the 2020 TBS Snowspeeder and deduct the MSRP of a single figure, we get $100 ($120 - $20).  This is being generous because a pack-in figure would not carry nearly the same price as an individually packaged figure.  If you take that $100 and apply that 2.8 factor, we could hypothesize that a TBS Slave I would cost around $280, and that is erring on the low side.  In that light, the $150 for the 2020 Save I does seem in line with the relative pricing of the two scales.