General Thoughts: The B-wing is probably the most disappointing ship in the entire Original Trilogy. It showed the most promise as far as being a really cool design, but it never really did anything in the final movie, Return of the Jedi. Years later, we find out that the reason for this is because, due to the current level of blue and green screen technology at the time Episode VI was made, they had to use models of the fighters during the battle scenes, and when they tried to create the final scenes in the computer, it ended up making the B-wing models look almost transparent. This resulted in all of the B-wing action shots being taken out of the final film, leaving us die-hard fans wondering and hoping that the scenes made it far enough along to be added into the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray Saga set that comes out next year. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ship and its cool design, but I wish I could see it do something besides opening its S-Foils.
Detail: 10/10
The detailing on this ship is quite excellent, and is on par with most of the other ships of its size. It has a brand new, updated cockpit, which makes it more modern, and it includes an extra set of blaster cannons that fire missiles. Compared to the Power of the Jedi version of this ship, the only thing it doesn’t beat is the paint job. Don’t get me wrong, the paint job on this release is dead on, and makes for a wonderful custom look, but I would have much rather had this version in the original color scheme from Return of the Jedi. No doubt it will be re-released in those colors within a few years anyhow, so no harm, no foul. The figure it comes with, Lieutenant Pollard, is a nice re-paint of the Evolutions Keyan Farlander, and it looks really decent as well.
Accuracy: 10/10
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this 100% accurate without actually being 100% sure of myself. This may sound crazy, but I’ve never really been into the comic series that make up a good chunk of the Star Wars universe, so as such, I’ve never seen Dagger Squadron’s B-wing paint jobs. This being said, even if this isn’t 100% accurate to the coloring in the books, it still looks absolutely great, so I have no complaints about this.
Playability: 8/10
While this is a cool toy, it suffers from the X-wing’s problems as well. There are only four real features of this toy, and they aren’t the most exciting. You can lower the landing gear with a lever on the bottom/left side of the ship, you can twist an engine and it opens the wings of the craft, you can fire the missiles if you use the second set of cannons, and you can rotate the cockpit 360 degrees, and it will stay upright the entire time. There are no electronics, much like its brethren in the modern line, which is both a curse and a blessing, as there’s no acid leak to worry about over time or a jacked up price, but there’s also not much to do if you aren’t into imaginative play.
Overall Design: 10/10
This ship is one of the cooler vehicles to come out of the Legacy Collection, as it does incorporate all of its movie features into its toy version. Plus, the new color scheme makes it look flashy and different, which is cool in modern day collecting. Even though I would have preferred the blue/grey/orange color scheme from ROTJ, I can definitely live with this one until that one is re-released. There are great features on this toy, which can make for hours of fun imaginative play, and will certainly please anyone who buys or receives it.
Final Thoughts:
If there was ever a ship that needed to have more screen time it would be this one, as its cool design and unique style are severely under-used in the movies. I really hope that the deleted scenes from Return of the Jedi include the omitted B-wing action scenes from the Battle of Endor, as that would make the possibilities of a new released even more likely. Plus it would just be really cool to see a squadron of B-wings blowing up a Star Destroyer.
Grade: 38/40 A+
Verdict: Get This Ship
SW Collector
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