General Thoughts: The fastest of the Rebel ships, the A-wing is the interceptor style fighter used by Rebel Pilots to match the speed of the Tie Interceptor. These fighters don’t have very strong shields, but they rely on their quick engines and swift maneuverability to avoid laser fire. This ship came and went in my area before I had the chance to snatch one up, so after two years of waiting I finally caved and bought one off of eBay for a slightly higher price. I couldn’t be happier with my choice, as I absolutely love this ship.
Detail: 10/10
This ship, from what I’ve heard around the Web, is the last of it’s kind to get any form of weathering detail painted on it. This being said, they went all out to make this fighter look not only quite spectacular in terms of a paintjob, but also making it look like it’s been through some close calls and narrow escapes. There’s excellent detailing on every aspect of the ship, even including paint in the engine area to mimic the effect of flight. It’s quite an improvement over its predecessor from the Potf2 line. This is my first A-wing, so that may give me a little bias, but this really is a great ship. The pilot figure has nice detailing as well, pretty much the same as the figure of Tycho Celchu, which came before him, though he comes with a new, more accurate helmet.
Accuracy: 10/10
I can find no reason to fault this vehicle in terms of accuracy, because it looks like a movie prop. It has all the necessary details, the pilot figure comes with the correct helmet, and it’s about as good as it could get with the current mold for this ship.
Playability: 9/10
While this ship does have more in store for kids than a ship such as the X-wing I reviewed earlier, it still is lacking a small element that would make it perfect. As I said before, a lot of these smaller scale ships are starting to suffer from lack of electronics, which could make the toys that much cooler. The original A-wing had electronics I believe, but that was way back in the late 70’s, early 80’s. Anymore, electronics are just too expensive to make sense in a ship of this size, but nevertheless it would make it that much cooler. It has a lever on the bottom of the craft that lowers the landing gear, which the current X-wing and Snowspeeder do not have, but is a feature that was continued in ships like the B-wing and the Y-wing, which are still using the same molds that were used in the original Vintage line when the films were released. There is another lever on the top of the ship which opens the cockpit, which while I like it, it makes the cockpit somewhat loose, and results in it falling open if it is turned upside down. The laser cannons swivel 360 degrees after you pull them out, which is a cool feature, but that’s basically it. Still, a great ship for your collection.
Overall Design: 10/10
This particular mold for this ship has been around for 30 some years I believe, and it’s quite remarkable that it can still stand up to modern standards for the most part if you ask me. With all the advances in technology and the updates to classic vehicles, making them larger and increasing the scale of this line, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years they have a brand new A-wing released, which has a similar update to how the X-wing was done back in Potf2. Until that day, this A-wing will be absolutely perfect for my purposes and will go nicely with my growing collection of Rebel ships.
Final Thoughts:
This toy is a great addition to any collection, and if you’re like me and you missed it on the first run in stores, I would highly recommend you scour eBay and any other sites that you can, because you will be glad that you did. After acquiring this ship, I am only missing one more to make my collection of the main Rebel fleet complete, and that is the Y-wing. I’ve contemplated caving on the 30th Anniversary Collection version that came with an outdated cockpit and pilot sculpt and a unique astromech, but I just can’t justify it when it seems like the engine tines (not sure if that’s the correct wording) are too short. Maybe it’s just my point-of-view in all of the videos that I’ve seen, but it just seems too short, so I’m waiting until next year when Hasbro has said they will most likely release another one. Hopefully they lengthen the engines just a little bit and update the cockpit to fit in with the rest of the modern ships. Then, I’ll buy it.
Grade: 39/40 A+
Verdict: Definitely Get This
SW Collector
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