S is for Star Wars

Here are a few not so much rarities, as just unusual items from the Galoob stable, now fully taken over by Hasbro.

The first is a group of three Micro-machine sets issued to tie-in with the paperbacks of the same title, dealing with what the dedicated Star Wars fans call the 'Expanded Universe' that is the universe containing all the characters, and events from, mentioned in or referenced by ALL films, comics, books, animations, toys etc...ever.

They (the dedicated ones - Love Star Wars, hate what the geeks have done to it) have tied themselves in knots on more than one occasion, not least when the money-grabbing one (aka; George Lucas - Love Star Wars, hate what the originator has done with it) brings out a new film or cartoon ignoring something already 'established' the the 'EU'.

Each set contained three EU characters and the ship/vessel most closely associated with them, if I could brake-off learning Klingon long enough to give a stuff about this nonsense I'd further explain, but suffice to say that for a small scale collector, the only thing of interest is that you can get Iberian packaging variants with Gig or Ideal logos!

Here we have the original Galoob 'Action Fleet' Naboo fighter on the left and the Hasbro re-issue of a couple of years ago on the right, note how the re-issue has an enhanced paint finish, with 'weathering' flowing back from leading edges, gun ports and blind-spots and has a chunk of battle-damage. Similar changes were evident in the decoration of the other re-issues, such as the X-Wing, the only one where it caused a problem (in my jaundiced eyes) was the AT-AT walker, which was given a snow-splatter that made it stand out like a sore thumb next to the old ones.

It's one thing to have a couple of aged tatty fighters in a squadron of cleanies, but it's quite another to have a battalion of AT-AT's with the reasonable weathering of the originals, joined at the front by some that seem to have lost a fight in a paint factory with the marsh-mallow man!

These are late production Galoob/Kenner 'Action Fleet' figures as issued in Japan, where they are collectable premiums like Kinder, but often without the chocolate, although with some sort of edible addition. The sets are sold in card boxes and usually one is a secret issue not included on the card/publicity material. In the case of this set from the small capsules Tomy are increasingly selling over here, it would seem that only the seven figures (two; paired and three; large/with large equipment piece) were involved and all are on the card.