We all know the original Kenner Tie Fighter toy. It served it's purpose as a plaything, but ultimately one really had to squint and use their imagination to believe it actually looked like anything seen in the movies. For one thing, the wing panels were puny. Which really could be forgiven since at the time scale wasn't something to expect from merchandising. It just wasn't the aim. Even so, turn that thing around and try to work out what's going on behind it. What's going on there? What movie were the designers watching that had anything that looked remotely like that? Even if you figured they wanted it to double as the Darth Vader Tie Fighter pod, still no not actually. Not at all even.
Recently however, toy making has become bigger and more sophisticated. Star Wars vehicles are beginning to see redesigns to more closely match their movie iterations, such as the new X-Wing. So it wasn't long before the large wing Tie Fighter was released. Finally the perennial bad guy ship had wings to scale. However, the central pod remained the same sculpt as ever, complete with the engine design what makes no sense. So while the proportions were basically right, there was still something not right with this boy.
Well there's no more messing around these days, because now we have the Legacy Series Tie Fighter. Not only does it retain the redesigned wings, but now its cockpit pod has been completely remade. Yes, the old engine design from another movie universe has been done away with. Now this is a Tie Fighter. Every detail of this thing has been thought out. From details inside the cockpit, the flight sticks, the canopy, and the hull are all strikingly accurate to their movie incarnations. What blew me away was noticing the ejection seat and how closely it resembles the one depicted in the Star Wars comics [...] (shown here). Also, I was initially puzzled over this strange peg present on the top of the opening canopy and was wondering why they went off on that. Then I checked and saw that this was in fact present on the actual movie prop and I was the one who got it wrong. All in all, this is the definitive Tie Fighter toy. Outside of a movie accurate model kit or prop, you won't find something more closely resembling the actual thing.
And then there's the price. $[...] is a bargain for this for what it is. There's really no reason not to pick this up.
A few things I would like to mention that I found quirky but didn't really affect my opinion too much. Just some weird choices they made. For example the laser canons can move in and out. I never really understood the point of that, unless you figure that out means they're turned on and in means it's off. I don't get it really. Just something to monkey around with I guess. Then there's the package statement, which says something along the lines of "The Tie Fighters swarm against the enemies of the Empire, but they are no match for the Rebel fighters!" That just blew my mind. Like, yeah, I understand that this is the bad guy ship and kids typically don't favor the endlessly disposable grunt type of villain, which the Tie Fighter practically symbolizes. But why write that as part of your marketing of a toy? They might as well have written, "Yeah this toy, actually this is the lame one, you don't want this one. You want the cool powerful heroic one."
One other minor thing I have to bring up is that the plastic on the cockpit portion of the toy feels like if it were dropped on a hard floor that it might crack or get chipped. Which, if you're buying this for a kid, that's pretty much unavoidable since one of it's main play features carried over from the kenner toy is that the wings can pop off to simulate getting itself blown away. Again, this is the enemy ship, so playtime with this for most kids is going to mean throwing it down and pretending it's getting smacked by comets. So if my instincts are right about the plastic (I haven't tested this) then it might not be long before it gets scratched up and busted. In contrast, the canopy seems to be made out of a spongier type of plastic that seems like it could weather more abuse, which leads me to question why the main thing wasn't made out of the same material (also the soft plastic gives a more matte finish on the paint job, which is closer to how the movie one would look). Perhaps it was a stability issue. In either case, it doesn't feel like something that would be able to hold up under heavy play for very long.
At the end of the day this is one impressive vehicle. While it doesn't necessarily have a lot of little sound effects and moving parts some kids would want, for collectors, this is absolutely the Tie Fighter to get. Get more detail about
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Imperial TIE Fighter.
