014-R
Hasbro- Star Wars Transformers: Clone Pilot / Arc 130-130 Starfighter
Date released: 2006
Current price and availability: $13.99
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Star-Wars-20...cAAOSw0n5c2axO
Ok, buckle up cause it’s about to get weird. You know how they took two great tastes like chocolate and peanut butter mixed them and made the best candy treat in the world? Yeah Star Wars Transformers was decidedly not a Reese's Peanut butter cup and boy was I disappointed. For those not aware (or perhaps you blocked it from your memory) there was a time that Hasbro, perhaps banking on the success of the Transformers brand, wanted everything to transform. Now when the concept first rolled out for Star Wars I recall being intrigued and likely a bit excited; I mean this was literally taking my 2 favourite things and combining them to give us fans the best of Star Wars (iconic vehicle designs) and Transformers (poseable robot warriors), but somewhere in the design process the wheels fell off. I will say that they are not all bad as the Star Wars aspect of these toys were actually pretty good, bordering on great in fact. What Star Wars fan wouldn’t a mini X Wing fighter, AT-AT or Jedi Starfighter? However, when you start the process to transform to robot (or rather Mech) that’s where the issues become apparent.
For starters, as mentioned before, the concept is odd. Yes I get the Star Wars vehicle, but the robot was designed to be a giant mech suit, piloted by a mini figure, which could be cool except for the fact that the Mech suit was created in the same visage as the character driving it. For example, the Luke Skywalker X Wing, transformers into a mechanized version of Luke in his X-Wing flight suit!?! Forget the fact that this completely egotistic move to create a massive robot of yourself, but also all around impractical for a single person; like let’s say that Wedge needs to commandeer Luke’s X-Wing for a mission? Does he need to control Luke the Robot then? Will the Empire get confused? At least with the Clone troopers they are likely more transferable.
Now in the real world, I think the design choice to make the robots Into specific characters grossly limited the potential for transformation as it was clear that they started with the Star Wars ship and engineered the robot from that. Admittedly no simple task given that the Robot needed to also look somewhat like pilot not to mention the fact that each vehicle needed a cockpit.
Finally, it’s not clear that Hasbro has its best Transformer designers on the job as most of these robot modes are a hot mess. Think the difference between Pre and post movie G1, yes they are similar, but also inferior.
Overall I’ll give Hasbro props for trying, but after it was all said and done the line fell short of many people’s expectations, year I decided to keep buying them… go figure. I still feel like there could have been a good product if they either dropped the requirement to look like the pilots and thereby giving more leeway on the robot design, or go the other way and develop some crazy storyline in which these robots were actually changed into these giant transforming robots; would be completely ridiculous, but could be fun to explore.
Pros: The Arc pilot was one of my favorite SWTF released and it's pretty easy to see why: the ARC 170 vehicle has a extremely nice design that just oozes prequel goodness (I’m not even kidding, the prequels do not get enough credit for the technology design elements) and this figure manages to capture the look really well. And while the robot mode is not exactly perfect, it’s serviceable what with decent articulation and possibility.
Cons: The lower section of the leg assembly has a tendency to pop off as it’s held on with small little tab. Also his guns are laughably long.
