Jedi Turbo Speeder - TCW [SOTDS] - Vehicles

If there is one area where Hasbro lacks consistency, it’s in their mid size vehicle program. They tend to flip-flop with their answers on which vehicle they feel will garner an audience (particularly kids) and be worthwhile to create in the mid size vehicle assortment. Hasbro has used words like “not engaging enough,� “not prominent enough,� and “not iconic enough� to describe vehicles that collectors want to see but yet Hasbro thinks would not be ideal choices. And then it seems that they cave in at a later time and indeed release the vehicle. All of us can recall the Bespin Cloud Car which we heard Hasbro utter a hundred times that it would never becoming. And then it came to fruition. We’re not sure if we understand their coyness with this product line, but at least in the end, the vehicles do seem to eventually come. The mid size vehicle assortment did not see that many releases in the “Shadow Of The Dark Side� line when compared to previous collections, but the ones they made for the most part have been pretty good.

Obviously the focus for Hasbro is to get vehicles based on The Clone Wars television show out to the kiddies and one of their most recent is the Jedi Turbo Speeder. Jedi are hugely popular amongst kids and collectors. And the Jedi Turbo Speeder is driven by Jedi obviously, so it should be a popular vehicle for everyone. It’s definitely a neat mid size vehicle, but we honestly don’t see how it’s any more engaging than a Bespin Cloud Car. (And to be quite honest, the Bespin Cloud Car just feels a little more exciting in or hands than the Jedi Turbo Speeder.) But the Jedi Turbo Speeder has some nice features that should pretty much make everyone very happy. It’s clean, just like how it appeared in the episode entitled “Lethal Trackdown� and besides being a little to small in scale, is very faithful to the vehicle seen on the small screen. This vehicle was driven by Plo Koon with Ahsoka Tano serving as copilot. You may find it interesting that the Hasbro vehicle has an astromech droid slot which wasn’t immediately visible in the television show, especially since no presence of an astromech droid was in the television show (at least in the scenes we saw).

The Jedi Turbo Speeder offers some basic but fun play value. The front rounded “hood� of the vehicle splits into three sections: left, right and middle. The left and right sides split to reveal projectiles. It’s a believable feature and Hasbro did a fine job with making it authentic. The double back fins also house one projectile each and the fins themselves have multiple positions that stay locked in place thanks to great engineering. (They aren’t loose.) In the rear of the vehicle (in between the two positioning fins are two “hidden� doors which house two sentry guns. There is enough space to place two clone troopers (or anything other figures you wish) and you can stand them at the guns for extra back-up artillery. The paint job of the vehicle is very simple and very clean. The vehicle is mostly off-white, but enhanced with a deep red (or maroon) and the vehicle is loaded with Jedi symbols. The vehicle is very basic but a lot of fun. And it has more features than the average vehicle. We think it’s a worthy investment for your collection. We like it right out of the box and we suppose it will grow on us more once we have time to really play with it.