Naboo Pilot - SW [TPM 3D] - Discover The Force (10 of 12)

Naboo N-1 starfighter pilots battle droid starfighters. The pilots of Bravo Squadron blast into space from the Theed Hangar and attack the Droid Control Ship to deactivate the huge droid army pouring onto the planet below.

Hasbro is good about killing two birds with one stone. After dumping a lot of time and money into the amazing Ric Olié sculpt for Walmart’s Discover The Force exclusive figure assortment, Hasbro figured out a very simple way to make the most out of the sculpt…. almost instantly! They designed an all-new head sculpt and placed it on Ric Olié’s body and created the generic Naboo Pilot. The two bodies are exactly the same. And you know what? We are totally fine with that. Hasbro mastered the outfit of the pilots who flew the Naboo starfighters and this will undoubtedly be the sculpt they’ll be using for all future Naboo pilots (except for maybe the female pilots should they ever get to making them). It’s always great when there is an anniversary or special multimedia event for a Star Wars film because that means that characters from it will be updated by Hasbro. Obviously, that’s exactly what happened for The Phantom Menace 3D release for 2012.

Naboo Pilot is Ric Olié and Ric Olié is the Naboo Pilot. There’s no other way of putting it. Aside from their head sculpts, not much differs between them. Yet the simple update of a new head sculpt makes the figure look all-new. Naboo Pilot is another fanstastic figure in the basic figure line and it’s our first generic Naboo Pilot in any basic figure line. Even the original 1999 Episode I line didn’t have a generic Naboo Pilot. He comes with 14 points of articulation and can fit into the cockpit of the Naboo starfighter. Just like Ric Olie, the Naboo Pilot comes with a removable helmet, blaster pistol and soft-goods fight coat. The coat for the Naboo Pilot is also woven from soft-goods and looks a bit bulky on him as well. We love the look of it nonetheless, but we can accept that it is a bit bigger than we would have like to have seen on this figure. His helmet differs from Ric Olie’s as well. The Naboo Pilot’s helmet has the goggles resting on the brim of the helmet, whereas Ric Olie’s are down in the “wearing” position.

The Naboo Pilot would be a fantastic action figure to army build. If Hasbro is clever, they can beat out a Naboo Pilot Battle Packs set rather quickly. It would satisfy a need in the collecting community while at the same time providing collectors with unique pilots. 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. Hopefully Hasbro’s The Phantom Menace 3D lines will be successful enough for them to add some additional exclusive or general release products like these into the marketplace at some point. Some have said that The Phantom Menace is like a fine win and that it gets better with age. We tend to agree. But we think a lot of that appreciation stems from the fact that Hasbro is showing the film respect by revisiting and making never before released characters from it with alarmingly fantastic results. We applaud your efforts here especially, Hasbro.