HAN SOLO & TAUNTAUN

STAR WARS: POWER OF THE FORCE II (KENNER)

Okay, so the coin reviews are officially done, which means I have to look at something else for these weekly Star Wars reviews.  Oh no, whatever shall I do?  Perhaps I’ll do a bit of wrap-up on some of the other sub-lines of Power of the Force I haven’t yet finished?  Back in November, I looked at the last of the creature sets I had in my possession, but, aha, I still had one I *didn’t* own yet.  Guess what I own now.  Did you guess the last creature set?  Because that’s what I was hinting at. Anyway, here’s Han Solo and the Tauntaun!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Han Solo and Tauntaun are one of the 1998 Creature sets from Kenner’s Star Wars: Power of the Force II.  They served as a rather logical follow-up to the prior year’s Luke and Tauntaun, as well as a companion piece to the Luke and Wampa from the same year, wrapping up the three Empire-based Creature sets.

HAN SOLO

Hey, it’s Han Solo in his Hoth gear.  What a classically well-selling figure.  What’s that?  Oh, it’s not?  Wow.  Yes, the single carded Han in Hoth gear is rather infamously one of the worst selling figures from the red card days of PotF (which is why he’s one of only two red card figures that was never re-released on a green card), so there wasn’t exactly a rush to get another one out there.  But, it’s not like you can really pair the Tauntaun with a Han that’s not in the Hoth gear, so their hands were sort of tied.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation.  Like the Luke with the Tauntaun, this figure aims for “actually able to sit on the Tauntaun” by adding a pair of knee joints to the articulation set-up, which is quite nice.  Beyond that, he’s actually quite a bit different from the single-card release.  The single decided to have his hood pulled down, revealing the cold-weather cap that he’s wearing but that is never actually seen in the movie, which was an odd choice.  This one reverses that, pulling the hood back up, allowing for a more screen accurate appearance.  His detailing is also far sharper on this one, a very nice shift from the very soft sculpt of the single.  Even the paint is improved, with a bit more accenting to the fur lining of the hood, as well as changing the color of his goggles to the more proper yellow.  Han is packed with a single blaster pistol, same as all the other Hans.

TAUNTAUN

Hey, it’s Han’s Tauntaun.  “Hantaun” if you will.  Will you?  I will for sure.  I feel like I can’t be the first one to come up with that, right?  Unless everyone’s just been distracted by the “Luke warm” joke and never moved any further.  This figure represents the main reason for the set’s existence, since the aim was to address that the vintage line treated the two Tauntauns as pretty much the same, while this line wanted to handle the two designs distinctly.  Also, easy way to re-use a lot of tooling.  From the neck down, it’s the same as the prior Tauntaun.  It’s perfectly fine, and that’s an okay sculpt.  About the only downside, really, is that you don’t get the morbid “slice open the guts to stick Luke inside” feature of the original, but I guess that’s okay.  The new head is rather similar to the original, but now it’s got two unbroken tusks, as opposed to Luke’s.  Yay, it’s different!  Also, the paint is a little different, too.  Not a lot, but enough that you can notice.  Noticeably different paint!  Yay!  Also included with this figure is the rein, which is the same piece from the Luke set.  It’s a good, standard piece, and it’s kind of hard to mess that up.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve kind of known for a while that this set would be one of the last pieces I’d get from this line.  Because the single Hoth Han and the Luke and Tauntaun set were both rather rough sellers, this one wasn’t exactly ordered in high numbers, and didn’t really get much coverage at retail, making it one of the few genuinely scarce PotF items.  As such, you don’t really just buy it, because it’s rare enough that asking prices tend to be high.  I’ve been keeping my eye out for a not stupidly expensive one consistently since November of last year, and I finally managed to line it up a couple of weeks ago, which quite excited me, I’ll tell you, since it’s become a minor grail for this collection.  In hand, it’s maybe not that different than what came before, but the minor tweaks add up to quite a fun little set, and one that also retroactively makes me appreciate the Luke and Tauntaun set just a little bit more as well.  The creature sets are an interesting mix of genuinely impressive and just sort of phoned in, which is pretty accurate to Power of the Force on a larger scale, I suppose.