First, let's have a look at the box.
Isn't that lovely? The painting, I do believe, is a piece of Ralph McQuarrie concept art, and of course there's a wee photo of a kid playing with it. It is quite a large box; I'd estimate it at about 75x45x30 cm. I bought it at a little independent shop, which didn't have any bags big enough for it, and consequently had to cart it around for the rest of my shopping trip, which did include some time in the local Christmas market.
Anyway, let's have a look inside.
Safely held down with cardboard and tape, we can see the playset already opened to reveal the planet Tatooine, and what looks like a hanger in the Death Star. It's a little plain at the moment, and not quite complete. So, let's pull it out and see what's what.
And there we have it. There are two pieces to attach - the top of the Death Star and a small flap - a Millenium Falcon, some figures, and the main body of the playset.
Here are the figures, and the Millenium Falcon. This Falcon is the normal size for a Micro Machines vehicle, which follow a set size rather that a set scale. The big animal in the middle is a Ronto, being ridden by a Jawa. It's a background creature, but looks very nice. The two small beasties on the same plate are called "scurriers" on the box, but are probably womp rats. Those are the things Luke mentions shooting later in the film when talking about the plan to shoot the Death Star exhaust. Unfortunately, we don't have a Luke here to shoot them. We have Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi, Aunt Beru, and Uncle Owen. Ben has his lightsaber out, perfect for lobbing the arms off volatile cantina-goers, Beru is hollering for one of the menfolk to attend her, and Owen is in the middle of bargaining for some droids - or he would be if the Jawa on the Ronto had any droids.
While the lack of main characters is a little annoying, the minor and background ones here will really flesh out a collection, and main characters aren't too difficulet to get anyway. If I had to change the line-up, I'd have included a droid. The "Droids" collector's pack (which I will review some other time) has most of the droids the Jawas offer, but there's probably at least one more they could have given. It would also have been fun if there was a Cantina alien - I think the only one offered in any set is Greedo. Then again, the Action Fleet line had a battlepack of just cantina denizens, which are only a little larger-scale.
One thing I have to give Galoob, is that the figures are lovely. They don't have a wealth of detail, but they're tiny enough for that to be fine. Especially in comparison to the figures Hasbro produced in their attempt to resurrect the line a few years ago, these figures are well-made, well-painted, and feel like they're made to last.
Let's see what else is in the box:
Yes, it's instructions and a sticker sheet. If you consult the above pictures, you can see that some stickers were pre-applied, because some of the molded pieces were fitted over them. This is the case for the sandtroopers behind the molded dewback in the middle. In case you're getting confused, the cantina band on the top Tatooine level aren't stickers, they're molded. It's kind of annoying, because the stickers are quite fiddly to stick on, and clearly Galoob could apply them themselves. But, I don't enough about toy manufacture to know how difficult adding this quantity of stickers would be.
The stickers are beautiful. The circular piece showing a space scene and the troopers standing around inside the Death Star are particularly gorgeous, and the round ones for the tables in the cantina and the homestead a brilliant idea. But the black strips with the red bars are hard to figure out, and everything's a bit of a pain, honestly. Several times I had to peel off and reapply a sticker beacuse it ended up wonky - or in the wrong place, in the case of the red-barred strips.
The final result is worth it:
It's got so much depth and detail! Let's look closer at some of it:
We've got the lower portion, for Beru to call Luke back from, and the homestead opens up to reveal a set table and three stools around it. The brown crate next to the entrance can be pressed to make the dome of a landmine pop up, and to the right, the burned remains of Owen and Beru can be revealed by flipping over a small sandy block. Now that's a feature that wouldn't be added nowadays!
Let's follow the molded tracks to another area.
The womp rats are scurrying, but watch out! If they jump on the little orange rock, a Tusken Raider will pop up and shoot them! Obviously, this would work better with the Tusken ambushing Luke. The tracks then lead up to a doorway in a cliff face, before heading back to the centre of the playset.
If you look to the left of the lower staircase, there's a bit of orange-brown molding with a wee sticker that makes the shape of a sandcrawler. Now we know what was leaving the tracks. It's come back to Mos Eisely to pick up it's crewman and his Ronto. Up the next set of stairs, Ben is menacing a nearly-empty cantina with his lightsaber. The stickers show the patrons enjoying their drinks, but staying well away from the scary wizard. And up the last set of stairs is the band - molded, as I mentioned earlier.
The last section is the interior of the Death Star:
The Falcon gets stuck on a rod representing the tractor beam, and pulled in through the hatch. The hanger is lit with red lights in the floor, and many stormtroopers are painted on the wall stickers. Should the Falcon take off, she can fly around on the clear rod in the middle before exiting:
And when she does exit, there's a new rod to sit on with a sticker-backdrop of a bunch of TIE fighters coming at her. The centre circle rotates when a piece of the exterior molding is turned. If you have a TIE of some variety, you could even stick it on the other rod so they can chase each other in circles. But finally, the Falcon must leave.
And it all folds up into one Death Star. The clear rod pokes out through a hole in the side, and that's what the Falcon is sitting on. But there are also a number of pegs that can be stuck into the trench around the middle for the Falcon or other vehicles to fly around the outside. The spherical superweapon is stuck on a stand with the Star Wars logo, and on the lower half, at the right of the picture above, there's a small handle, or lever, to help open up the Death Star again. It's not the easiest to open and close, but it's a really clever design.
As I mentioned at the start, I've had this for just over two months now. Since taking all these photos, I managed to knock it off my desk a time or two. This had the unfortunate effect of snapping two of the pegs on the trench in two. Luckily, there are spares. Also, the stickers haven't all stayed in place very well - I suspect it might be the ones I had to reapply once or twice. They're peeling, not sticking. This is sad, but it may well be my fault for peeling them off first, and anyway, they are over twenty years old.
These setbacks have not detered my enjoyment of this set. I love it. It's not perfect, but then again, what is? When more Galoob Micro Machines are added to it, it should be even better. It's certainly worthy of it's place on my desk.
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