After my Millennium Falcon my most favorite ship in the Star Wars universe was the vintage Y-Wing fighter. Awesome in it's detail, flip up canopy, rotating ion cannons, retractable landing fear,dropping bomb and a socket for your trusty Astromech droid. Of course the late Seventies and early Eighties had their limits (i.e. the whirring sound effect, sort of like a cat swallowing a joy-buzzer.) The thing was a geeks dream come true.
Fast forward nearly thirty years and a new generation is about to be floored witht he Clone Wars version of this sturdy fighter/bomber.
Packaging:
Boxed in the red and white color scheme of 2009 Star Wars product the box boasts a diorama can be made from the box to display your Y-Wing. One thing about the size of the box is that it hides the true size of this large ship.
Assembly:
Assembly is straight forward, just slip the engine nacelles on, mount the missle blocks into the flip up panels on the topside of the ship and snap in the missles and bombs. There is a decal sheet but aside from the instrument panel label the rest of the stickers are basically white blocks of color to postition around the hull. Nothing to it.
Paint:
The ship is an overall off white plastic with yellow stripes. There is a gray panel in the rear and gray tips to the forward blasters, the interior weapons bay is a silver gray. The paint scheme has some missing paint but there is no weathering to speak of. There are Republic seals on either engine nacelle.
Features:
Two proton torpedoes mounted under the chin, two bombs nestled in the belly of the ship and 4 missles mounted on the hidden flip up weapon pods mounted on the upper hull. (Missiles can be stored in the missle bay when not in use.)
The missle release buttons are all on the top hull of the ship. The rear button flips up the "wings" holding the weapon pods, each missle is fired independently from the buttons on the pods. Flanking the droid socket to the rear are two more buttons to release the Proton bombs from the belly. Finally, to either side of the rear cockpit/turret are two more buttons to relaase the chin Proton torpedoes. The only button placement which is a little bit troublesome as it is very easy to inadvertently fire the chin missiles when opening the turret. Not a big concern, but it does exist.
Another point of slight dissatisfaction is the turret, it doesn't rotate and the guns are fixed in place, not a huge blunder, but I was expecting at least a rotating turret.
Ahsoka will have to sit on her helmet or backpack to have her head reach up into the turret, but regular Clones will fit just fine.
Finally, a socket for an Astromech droid!
I never understood why Hasbro went away from the vintage design. Imagine, selling a vehicle that you WANTED to buy another figure to make it complete.
Instead they put in the little rotating head, which sucked! What if you wanted R5 instead of an R2? Now with the plethora of Build A Droid figures you can have your choice, and change your mind if you wish.
The tri-cycle landing gear is very solid, the vintage model suffered from sag sometimes, so this is a welcome change.
Tinted windows are another pet peeve of mine. I like to see the figure in my ships, it's not awful, but "I likes what I likes."
Overall impressions:
I very great reboot to the Y-Wing. This one dwarfs its predecessor with size as well as tons more features. It's big and it's durable.
Cockpits fit pretty much any Star Wars figure with some nice detailing like the yoke in front of the pilot. It's the little things that make a big difference. While it's not perfect it's PDC (pretty darn close.)
This would be a great addition to any Clone Wars or Star Wars collection!
Feed Shark
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