Naboo Pilot - TVC - Basic (VC72)

Perhaps one of the most eagerly anticipated figures in 2012 was the Naboo Pilot.The figure made its debut in the Discover The Force Walmart exclusive basic figure line, but it was planned for The Vintage Collection long before it was added to the former. Another one of the “delayed” The Vintage Collection, his entrance into the line was stayed because Hasbro needed to quickly produce a line of 12 basic figures that were to be exclusive to Walmart in their Discover The Force promotion. To be fair, this line ended up including some of the most exciting action figures of the year because Hasbro ensured it was full of collector focused figures while the other lines to celebrate the 3D release of Episode I was geared for kids. But the Naboo Pilot had actually long ago been planned to be part of a late Fall 2011 release in The Vintage Collection. Obviously, Hasbro truly developed a most impressive sculpt for the Naboo Pilot. So impressive in fact that they cleverly reused the body to make a Ric Olié figure in the same assortment. (Both figures are identical except for head sculpts and helmets.) What’s extra fantastic (and unique to The Vintage Collection release of the Naboo Pilot) is that collectors get both helmets with the 2012 TVC release for alternate display. It’s not all too often that we receive interchangeability like this in the basic action figure line so we count ourselves fortunate in this instance. Packaged collectors have more to worry about since the secondary helmet makes this version unique.

Hasbro has always been good at reusing the same parts to create different characters and the Naboo Pilot is no exception either. The figure is super-articulated and has a most incredible sculpt. 14 points of articulation grace the figure and he is able to sit in the cockpit of the recently updated 2012 SW [TPM 3D] Naboo Starfighter as well as man a blaster rifle in battle and quite a bit more. The soft-goods coat is incredible. Many have complained that it’s too bulky, but those types of collectors always find fault with soft-goods in general and they typically prefer when everything is molded in plastic. We are fans of both, but appreciate the increased mobility of any figure that utilizes soft-goods. We also prefer soft-goods even in skirts when it works, but that clearly hasn’t been that successful in recent memory. For example, action figures like 2012's TVC Grand Moff Tarkin (VC98) are actually hurt by soft-goods and this figure in particular is a perfect example of when it doesn’t work. However, the soft-goods included with the Naboo Pilot are rather impressive. It has been fitted and includes all of the necessary darts to force the fabric to keep its shape. You’ll definitely be happy seeing this figure again (at online retail). We don’t think that Hasbro could do better than this! And we’re really up about how the TVC Naboo Pilot comes with both helmets! That is awesome flexibility to have an option for with the Naboo Pilot.

This Naboo Pilot figure would be a prime candidate for Hasbro to develop of few more interchangeable head sculpts for and release a really awesome multipack. Imagine a plethora of Naboo Pilot action figures with their corresponding astromech droids. It would be an excellent exclusive and one we’d love to see come to fruition at some point. By Hasbro offering the collecting community some great army builder, they’d satisfy a need for us to grow our ranks quickly. Now that they have the tooling costs paid for this figure, let’s crank it out and release a whole bunch of variations of it! They can recycle a ton of already designed head sculpts and make this very economical in their tooling budgets. But army-building seems to be on the forefront of collectors’ minds instead of the minds of the folks at Hasbro. Anyway, whatever happens, seeing multiples of this sculpt get made and release would be ideal. The Naboo Pilot looks phenomenal in The Vintage Collection; much better than the Discover The Force version. A new head sculpt to make this release would have been appreciated (and quite simple to execute), but Hasbro felt the right thing to do would be to release the figure in its original intended way. That’s fine. The figure is incredible and it’s great to see him again so soon!