Aayla Secura’s Jedi Starfighter - TAC - Vehicles (Exclusive)

Aayla Secura’s starfighter sees plenty of action during the Clone Wars. The Jedi Knight commands troops during the conflict as a Republic General and flies her fighter on many intelligence-gathering missions and covert operations. One such mission takes her to Trigalis, where she assists Obi-Wan Kenobi in his hunt for Asajj Ventress.

We have said it once and we will say it again. Once a base sculpt is created, it’s a likelihood that multiple repaints of it will be released so that Hasbro can not only give collectors what they want, but also amortize tooling costs which are ever increasing and a big part of the rising costs of the toy line. In 2006 during The Saga Collection line, Hasbro got really creative and released Mace Windu’s Jedi Starfighter which was based on the 2005 ROTS Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter vehicle. This excellent sculpt is just a marvel to see get used again and again because it is a gorgeous design, has awesome play features and has a cockpit that can fit most action figures, a necessary basic when it come to Star Wars toys. All Hasbro needed to do was give this Revenge Of The Sith vehicle a purple color palette and collectors instantly had a vehicle based on Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars micro-series which made fans of this property very, very happy. It doesn’t take much to make us happy. And sometimes all it takes is a simple repaint to make us very happy. Surprisingly, Mace Windu's Jedi Starfighter was a general release instead of an exclusive, a moved that perplexed many.

But now Hasbro has released another Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor, and this time it’s based on an even rarer source: the Star Wars: Obsession comics. Also known as Aayla Secura's Jedi Starfighter, this blue-flavored vehicle ironically isn’t even piloted by Aayla Secura in the comics. Obi-Wan Kenobi is the one who actually “borrows” it to fly to Naboo after their stint on Trigalis while searching for Asajj Ventress. This vehicle partakes in the Expanded Universe section of the Clone Wars multimedia event, so for all intents and purposes you can easily consider this vehicle as sourced to the Clone Wars, even though it’s not Tartakovsky’s inspired like Mace Windu’s Jedi Starfighter is. The features of this sculpt are getting old at this point, but that doesn’t mean they’re not noteworthy. The new paint job here is the point of interest with this release and we have to say that the paint operations are fantastic. Sadly, we don’t know who the included astromech is and to date Hasbro has never made a corresponding action figure like they did for other Jedi Starfighters, so we will have to sit in the dark about that a little longer until we learn more.

The box claimed that a decal sheet was included, but we believe that was just an error. However, once collectors started calling Hasbro Customer Service, Hasbro confirmed that there was a decal sheet created for this vehicle. Collectors could call and get the missing decal sheets mailed at no additional cost. What’s so interesting about this vehicle however is that there are extra paint operations added, even including the astromech droid. For example, the astromech droid has the front arms painted on the front. If you utilized the decal sheet, these paint operations would get covered. So we’re a little bit confused about this surfacing decal sheet. It’s quite the enigma. Aayla Secura's Jedi Starfighter is a nice addition to the Star Wars toy line. It’s color stands out from among the rest and it has a very attractive color scheme. It’s aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. And while it technically was piloted by Obi-Wan Kenobi, the good news is that the 2005 ROTS Aayla Secura (III 32) sculpt fits inside the cockpit as well. Released as a TARGET exclusive for a very acceptable $19.99, it arrived at the tail end of the 30 (77-07) line look just before the line went into hibernation for a few month until the start of The Legacy Collection and The Clone Wars lines were officially released later that summer.