CHEWBACCA
STAR WARS (KENNER)
On this May the Fourth, it’s with a heavy heart that we bid adieu to Peter Mayhew, the man behind Chewbacca for four decades. The people behind these masks can sometimes easily be forgotten, but Peter was beloved by his fellow cast members. And, fortunately, his legacy will live on through his replacement Joonas Suotamo, who took over the role from Peter in The Last Jedi. In honor of Peter, today I’m going to look at the very first Chewbacca, which feels kinda right.
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Chewbacca was one of the first four figures offered in the original Star Wars line, initially shipping in early 1978 as part of the fulfillment for the Early Bird set, before finding his way to a standard carded release shortly thereafter. Chewbacca was one of the few characters not to get a new version during the three-film run, and as such this figure was in production until the end of the line in the ’80s. This one came from the ’78 release, a fact I know based on how I acquired him. That said, there were no notable changes to the main figure during the vintage line. The figure stands 4 inches tall (the largest of the initial figures) and has 4 points of articulation. He loses out on the neck articulation due to the nature of his furry design. Chewbacca’s sculpt was totally unique to him, and it’s certainly a product of its time. Action figure sculpting wasn’t quite yet up to the level of being able to convincingly translate a walking furball into plastic form, so this guy ends up looking…surprisingly polished? It’s like somebody really thoroughly shellacked him, or maybe like he’s Cousin It’s much taller brother. He’s definitely not as intimidating as later versions of the character would be. Of course, in its own way, perhaps that’s more appropriate to the character, who was generally pretty lovable in the film. Maybe Kenner was onto something there. The figure’s paint work is pretty simple. Mostly, he’s just molded in brown plastic, with a little paint here and there for the eyes, mouth, and bandolier. It gets the job done, but it’s certainly not extensive. Chewbacca was originally packed with his bowcaster, which my figure no longer has.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
As I’ve touched on a few times before here, my vintage Star Wars collection was kind of jump-started by my Dad giving me his old figures when I was growing up. Chewbacca was amongst those figures, and, since I’ve established here on the site that my first Chewbacca wasn’t a default one, this guy was kind of my go-to Chewbacca for a good long while. Like a lot of the vintage figures, he’s goofy and dated, but he’s also a really nifty little figure.
Changing gears only slightly from last week, I have another movie tie-in blaster for you. I mean, it’s mine, it’s for me. You can’t have this one. The review is for you, though, so you’re welcome. With the building hype surrounding the upcoming Solo film, of course Hasbro brought some goodies to the table. Today, I’ll be looking at the supposed primary weapon of everyone’s favorite space-faring shag carpet, at least for this movie (we don’t like to talk about the Nerf Bowcaster). As a bonus, I’ll be reviewing this blaster entirely in Chewie’s native tongue.
Rara arrarRA RARA rara rARAAA rrrrrr aa A r AR A a RR r RRRR A AAAA ra ARRAARAA aarararra raar ar ra rarar rrr aa ra raa rarra ararr aara ok, that’s enough of that. What I said was, this blaster was released in 2018 as branded merch for the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story. Despite its size, it’s actually a very simple blaster, mechanically speaking. It’s effectively a muzzle-loading shotgun that fires two darts at once. It might have been nice to have a staggered trigger on the blaster like the Roughcut, but that would have added a significant amount of additional bulk and moving pieces, and subsequently driven the price up. It does seem like Hasbro are trying to be a little more wallet friendly with this round of Star Wars products, probably after seeing how slowly the more recent Deluxe Stormtrooper blaster and its $80 price tag moved. As with all Star Wars blasters now, the Chewbacca blaster features lights and sounds and uses the Glowstrike darts to approximate the feeling of firing a laser weapon. The sound effect in this blaster is fairly satisfying and bass-y which is definitely fitting. The use of real-world firearms as the bases for the movie props once again gives this blaster pretty good ergonomics. This blaster in particular is built on the receiver and stock of an M60 machine gun. I feel confident that the Nerf version is substantially scaled down from the original but they’ve kept the grips a good size so it’s not bad. The stock of the blaster has a storage area under the butt plate, and is removable, using the 
standard Nerf stock attachment lug. There’s also a rail on the top of the blaster for the included scope if you want, or you could remove it and leave it off forever. That’s valid too, especially with a scope like this. At least you have the option to take it off without using a hacksaw. I know it’s meant to look like the movie prop, so I can’t fault Hasbro for including it, but it’s just a narrow tube in a weirdly shaped shell. The scope on the Han Solo blaster pistol has a sight front post so you can at least pretend you’re aiming it properly. It might have been nice to have something like that here, but sadly no. Something noteworthy about this wave of Star Wars blasters is that the boxes actually advertise range claims. Historically, Nerf only bothers doing this if the performance is at least halfway decent, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when that turned out to be the case here too. It’s almost even more impressive when you remember this blaster fires two darts at once using a single plunger tube (we also don’t like to talk about the DoubleDealer). Having to reload 2 darts for every trigger pull does slow down your potential for follow-ups, the decent amount of power, the lights, the sounds and the Glowstrike darts make this a great blaster for ambushing your younger siblings, especially at night. The Chewbacca Blaster comes packaged with the stock, the scope, and 6 Glowstrike Elite darts. Batteries are only required for the lights and sounds, and the Glowstrike functionality. Fortunately, they come already installed in the blaster.
The Figure In Question 