Carbon-Freezing Chamber - POTJ - Playsets (Exclusive)

The evil Sith Lord, Darth Vader, has captured and imprisoned Han Solo, using him as a test for flash-freezing humans in molten carbonite. It is up to Luke Skywalker to rescue his friend before Vader turns Solo over to the crime lord, Jabba the Hutt. Re-create this dramatic scene from The Empire Strikes Back, or capture your own prisoners and "freeze" them in the carbon-freezing chamber.

Fans demanded it and Hasbro delivered it, but it may not be the result you were hoping for…. or maybe it is. The Power Of The Jedi Carbon-Freezing Chamber will remain one of the most bittersweet and perhaps controversial playsets of all time by Hasbro. Looking more like a POTF2 leftover than a fresh new and more modern design, the Carbon-Freezing Chamber for the first time offers the collecting community the awesome backdrop to when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back while adding some play features to make it more attractive to younger audiences. This is in and of itself futile as the playset was relegated only to members of the Star Wars Fan Club at an elevated price. Clearly kids didn’t have the money to plop down $25 on this, so we’re not sure who Hasbro is kidding here. We don’t know if the Carbon-Freezing Chamber playset succeeds in that we finally have it and it does a fair job at recreating that environment from Episode V, or that it fails because the proportions are off and the features are screen inaccurate that Hasbro needs to redo this from the ground up again. Our own opinion lies somewhere within those two extremes frankly and we’re not sure if this was attempted during the right time or place in general. With a pack-in figure that disappoints more than the playset itself, we believe that the Carbon-Freezing Chamber may have been best left untried because it lacks in more ways that it benefits.

You’ll probably notice right away that the Carbon-Freezing Chamber is much too small. When you start to set up a diorama with action figures you run out of room very quickly. Much of this it to be expected as Hasbro cannot produce a true to size environmental display like this for $25, but maybe if they could tool a larger playset and sell it in pieces one by one would be a great way for hardcore Star Wars collectors to slowly build a larger environment over time, and in an affordable way. The Carbon-Freezing Chamber boasts many features on the box, most of which are honestly quite boring. Some of them include an opening carbonite block (with silky covering to simulate the impression of an action figure in carbonite, detention cell holding area with swing-open door, swing-out control panel, carbonite-freezing activator, break-away control panel, spring-loaded launcher with projectile and lift tube which lowers figure into Carbon-Freezing Chamber. It may seem like Hasbro has added a lot of features into this set, but it’s really nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it seems like that they should have added quite a bit more to this playset because it feels hollow and empty instead of loaded with options. Visually, the Carbon-Freezing Chamber looks pretty good. You at least know that the fully displayed playset is supposed to be and there are enough areas to recreate multiple scenes from The Empire Strikes Back, including Luke Skywalker’s and R2-D2’s trek through Bespin, the duel between Darth Vader and Luke, and of course the carbonite freezing of Han Solo.

Last but not least, Hasbro has included the first modern Bespin Security Guard action figure into the mix, although it nearly arrived the same exact time as the infinitely better 2001 POTJ Bespin Guard (Cloud City Security) basic figure. Utilizing complete POTF2 technology, the Bespin Security Guard pack-in figure is a true disappointment by every consideration possible. It comes with only six points of articulation and possesses a pretty bad sculpt. The deco isn’t half bad, but he doesn’t resemble any onscreen Cloud City Wing Guard from Episode V, nor does he play well with the all-new figures in the Power Of The Jedi line. He comes without any accessories and really just provides some background fodder for the Carbon-Freezing Chamber playset. A new and unique Ugnaught action figure may have been a wiser choice to release with this playset instead. Between the accelerated price ($24.99) and the shipping costs all collectors had to pay to get this delivered to their homes, the Carbon-Freezing Chamber was honestly a little more than most collectors wanted to pay, especially for something that at best seemed half-baked. It’s not without merit, but it’s far from where it should be. Only time will tell if Hasbro will revisit another Carbon-Freezing Chamber playset in the future, but between the tepid response to this one and the overall lack of excitement for it, it’s unlikely that we will see this refreshed at a later date. Anything is possible, but it may be wiser to err on the side of caution here.