Star Wars Collectible News, Photos, and Reviews

JTA reader and Facebook friend James M. alerts us that the Toys R Us exclusive Y-wing FIghter is on sale for $29.99. Hopefully all of you who collect the figures have visited your local TRU by now since the basic figures are Buy 2 Get One FREE, which brings them down to $6.66 each, a great price to army build the new Battle Droid and Naboo Royal Guard!

JTA reader and Facebook friend Denise Vazquez has won FIRST PLACE in the Darth Vader Helmet Art contest. Click through to read all about it and congratulations Denise!

Hasbro graciously retooled the Trade Federation AAT (Armored Assault Tank) and finally got rid of that terrible "exploding battle droid" action feature. You'll learn in Research Droids Reviews today that we nearly have a definitive version of this popular Episode I vehicle now. Feel free to leave your own thoughts in our Disqus comments section, vote in the poll or even leave comments about it on our Facebook page. Click the banner below for the direct link to the review! As always, you can also send your own personal review requests via e-mail if you'd like to see something that we didn't cover yet.

Listen up fans of The Clone Wars! Sideshow Collectibles has just announced that Captain Rex will be their next Premium Format figure! Click the image below to see the sneak peek video.

Brian's Toys has a fantastic newsletter this week!  Not only are there new 2012 Vintage-Style Pre-orders, but plenty more rare Vintage AFA has been added to the site.  Feast your eyes on a AFA-graded POTF Yak Face and 3-Pack Imperial Set.

New Sideshow 12" figures also see their way into our inventory, including the 442nd Siege Battalion and Republic Captain clone troopers.  For a complete list of what's new this week, visit ttp://www.brianstoys.com/nl!

The highly popular Utapau Shadow Trooper made its way into fans' Sideshow Collectibles collections last year and now its in our Enhanced Visual Guides! Click below to check it out, and stop by our Research Droids Review for a full breakdown of this figure!

Here's a not-so-great 2012 exclusive. Do we really need figures from 1999 and 2000, Hasbro? Read Research Droids Reviews because you'll likely agree. Feel free to leave your own thoughts in our Disqus comments section, vote in the poll or even leave comments about it on our Facebook page. Click the banner below for the direct link to the review! As always, you can also send your own personal review requests via e-mail if you'd like to see something that we didn't cover yet.

The Sideshow Collectibles Aayla Secura Premium Format Figure is now available! Click below to order!

The Phantom Menace is returning to theaters and the Star Wars marketing machine is partying like it's 1999! Puzzles, 3-D glasses, notebooks, coloring books, and more is hitting shelves to tie into the theatrical release hype. And with Valentine's Day coming a few short days after The Phantom Menace's release, the Valentine's Day Star Wars items have exploded all over the Target holiday aisle. Classroom Valentine sets, boxes of chocolates, candies in steins, plushies, teddy bears, and so much more, we run it all down on this week's Star Wars Action News!

Our friends at Rebelscum come through again with two new basic figure lists. Click either banner below to learn more about upcoming The Clone Wars and Movie Heroes figures! Wow - there will not be any new announcements at Toy Fair this year for sure! (But who cares!?)

      

We continue our Sideshow Collectibles Visual Guide updates with another recently shipped Clone Trooper: Republic Clone Captain (Phase I Armor). With this release we get the last Clone Trooper from Attack of the Clones, completing the set that started 2 years ago (January 2010) with the release of the standard white Clone Trooper. Click on the image below to view the guide. We'll add this to our review database soon, but you can find the other four troopers in our Research Droids Review database until then!

Our friends at Rebelscum have a great new list of figures for The Vintage Collection including the long-rumored Bespin Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin! Click through for the full report!

UPDATE: Rebelscum has updated the list with EVEN MORE figure reveals including NIEN NUNB, EMPEROR'S ROYAL GUARD, vintage WEEQUAY and LUMAT!

The best 2012 exclusive. This set should hold that title for a while. Read Research Droids Reviews to see if you agree. Feel free to leave your own thoughts in our Disqus comments section, vote in the poll or even leave comments about it on our Facebook page. Click the banner below for the direct link to the review! As always, you can also send your own personal review requests via e-mail if you'd like to see something that we didn't cover yet.

We received a promo for the upcoming episode of The Clone Wars that was too cool not to share! This promo from The Box is a bounty hunter lover's dream come true, and I'm sure Hasbro will take notice of this line-up for some cool figures and Battle Packs! And, for those that want this image for themselves we've also linked to a super high resolution image, because there are some cool facts sheets and details for each and every bounty hunter featured here! Click through for the full resolution image!

Here is a quick update from http://www.bigbadtoystore.com about a big batch of exciting new preorders as well as more cool new arrivals!

Click through to see what Research Droids Reviews you may have missed with our weekly recap complete with direct links and brief review synopses.

Jedi Temple Archives gets a lot of visitors in our Research Droids Reviews, but we become especially giddy when "big names" check them out, (like Hasbro who stole our Aayla Secura image - we digress). But how cool is it when actor Derek Lyons from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope pops in for a look to check out the review of 2007's TAC Rebel Honor Guard, the character he played in the film? Derek, thank you for stopping in. We're honored. And thank you for posting a comment with some background of your involvement with Episode IV! Click through to read the review and see Derek's comment!!

    

JTA reader "anonymous" alerts us that TARGET is FINALLY starting to markdown their "Shadow Of The Dark Side" products. You may want to start stalking your local bullseye. Click through for his report!

German website http://www.lichtgeschwindigkeit.de/ has the case pack ratio of wave 3! Click through to check out their report. (The page is in German so you'll have to translate it at Google or something.) Special thanks to JTA reader Scott for the head's up!

As an update to our original report in December, Scott from Tulsa send us incredible news about that lost wave 4 of The Vintage Collection - the wave that never was and what's become of it at TJMaxx. Check it out!

One of the latest releases from Sideshow Collectibles includes the 442nd Siege Battalion Clone Trooper, the second Clone Trooper made by Sideshow that was not featured in Revenge of the Sith. Click below to browse through our Enhanced Visual Guide to see if this off-screen clone is worth your while, and keep checking back because we will be adding this one to our Research Droids Review database very soon!

JTA reader Morgan sends us a report of The Vintage Collection vehicle assortment now hitting TARGET! Click through for his report!

The 2012 line is a complete mess for archivists. The Clone Wars logo is nowhere to be found on The Clone Wars sourced Battle Packs or vehicles, only the basic figures. But you probably don't care about this detail and rather have us worry about it instead. What you should care about however is the awesome Republic Trooper Battle Packs set. Learn about it in our Research Droids Reviews and see why Hasbro could reissue this at least three more times with little tweaks. Feel free to leave your own thoughts in our Disqus comments section, vote in the poll or even leave comments about it on our Facebook page. Click the banner below for the direct link to the review! As always, you can also send your own personal review requests via e-mail if you'd like to see something that we didn't cover yet.

Due to unforseen delays, we need to postpone our 2012 Vintage Versus Modern Analysis until March 1st. We have always posted this on the first of January but we've been inordinately busy with other things on the site. Please be sure to check back then as we look at the final few figures that need a modern update - and we'll have the information from Toy Fair to make the report even more thorough. If you want to get a head start or refresh your memory on where we left off, you can find our previous analyses under our SPECIAL REPORTS icon on the right hand side under the site navigation menu.

Check out our Bomb Squad Trooper group photo on our Facebook page! Hasbro should have released a Battle Packs set of three of these figures and included their bombs! Bad misstep Hasbro! If you'd like to army build a group for your collection, get them from THIS AUCTION on eBay. They're very reasonable!

Q&A With JTA continues! Click through to access the Q&A database with our latest batch of questions!

Hot Topics: The Vintage Collection Battle Droid, Prototype Boba Fett follow-up and Pong Krell

Today we are rolling out another Sideshow Collectibles Sixth Scale Enhanced Visual Guide: Commander Bly (327th Star Corps). The line has definitely blurred on which figure is the best Sideshow has produced, because it seems they hit it out of the park with each and every new figure they release! Commander Bly is no exception, and we rated it five stars without a doubt! You can click below for our detailed visual analysis, and then read our Research Droids Review for a full in depth review of this figure!

How did you make out yesterday? Today we look at a nother all-new figure in The Clone Wars line. The Phase II Clone Trooper is the subject of Research Droids Reviews and we think it's a great figure Feel free to leave your own thoughts in our Disqus comments section, vote in the poll or even leave comments about it on our Facebook page. Click the banner below for the direct link to the review! As always, you can also send your own personal review requests via e-mail if you'd like to see something that we didn't cover yet.

As Rod Stewart has sung, some guy have all the luck. JTA reader and comment writer extraordinaire Sjefke writes in with an incredible find. Whatever you do, don't start up the hate - he's really a very nice guy. Click through to see his sinful find.

OK - no more emails! Here it is! We surrender! You've asked and we've answered. It seems that ALL of you want to know how much alike the new R2-N6 (from the Royal Starship Droids Battle Packs) is to 2006's TSC Astromech Droid Pack Series II R2-A6 figure. They are quite different. Click through for the visual analysis.