Ecce Falcon
This is the story of the gigantic Millenium Falcon I now proudly own. Read at your own risk, toy haters (and haters of youth, innocence, frivolity, and joy!).
Here’s how it normally works: at the start of a run, a toy line doesn’t take a lot of risks, and so the stuff that gets made first sees a lot of compromise. Nobody’s sure how well the line is going to do, and so corners are cut. Sure, some properties come closer to being a “sure thing” than others, and sometimes a new line gets a lot of money poured into it. But toys are still toys, and very little is a guarantee, so companies rarely take risks in the early days of a line. In addition to that, the constant improvement in technology means that the longer a toy line hangs around, the better able a company is going to be to do creative and impressive things. All of this means that some of the really great toys in a given line frequently show up more towards the end of its run than the beginning.
Back in the original run of Star Wars toys, this meant that vehicles like the Imperial Shuttle © and the Desert Sand Skiff ©, and figures like Han Solo © in Carbonite © and Luke Skywalker © in Stormtrooper disguise © came out so late in the line that I was in college by the time I found out they’d been made at all. (This is roughly like being in college before finding out you have a brother nobody mentioned before.) Ships like the X-Wing and TIE fighter were produced so early, they paled in comparison to the far more complex, far larger, and far less iconic Y-Wing and A-Wing. And when the line was rebooted in the nineties, those old, lesser molds of the X-Wing and TIE were hauled out and repainted, and dammit that’s all we got, and we liked it. (until, ahem, both the X-Wing and the TIE were given more appropriate treatment in years to come, and then reissued again and again in minor variants)
In the case of the more recent line, Galoob produced better and more sophisticated Action Fleet playsets in 1999 than it ever had before. Instead of being essentially backdrops for the vehicle line, they made fully realized environments for interactive play, with figures and ships able to recreate even the most subtle nuances…. of The Phantom Menace. Within a year, Galoob was bought out and gutted by Hasbro.
In the same vein, some of the most elaborate, impressive toys made for Star Wars have been associated with the prequels rather the original trilogy. Granted, that’s hardly the end of the line’s run, but it does reflect both the improvements in technology and the stronger faith in the brand held by Hasbro. The prequels tend to get much cooler toys, and the biggest playset/vehicle ever released, the Royal Starship for Episode I, is perhaps the best example. A massive toy representing a classic ‘50’s silver craft, the toy had a proper lowering boarding ramp, a bridge, a repair bay with a working elevator to allow astromechs out onto the hull, a deployable escape/fighter craft. It was a wonder of a toy. Judged as a pure sci-fi toy, it was the greatest toy ever. Judged as a huge box in the basement, it was a perplexing allocation of space to a prequel toy that could otherwise be used more wisely. For, like, that huge NECA Balrog. Man, that thing is awesome.
For a long time, it seemed as though the best quality Star Wars toys were always going to be associated with the prequels. The announcement that a massive electronic AT-TE, a vehicle prominently featured in two prequels and this summer’s animated Clone Wars theatrical release, was coming out confirmed the suspicion. The toy line thrives on dollars from kids, and kids like the colorful action of the clone wars. They enjoy the original stuff, but it looks older, moves slower. It’s not as exciting.
And then the pictures leaked, and then the details leaked, and then the announcement came: the Millenium Falcon was about to receive the most balls-out awesome treatment any Star Wars toy had ever received. This thing was going to kick ass, take names, date your sister, get your history teacher drunk, and roar out of town on a rocket-powered, monkey-navigated chopper with blue flames pouring out its exhaust and lighting shooting from its wheels. It was, to be blunt, a Millenium Falcon toy from hell on both acid and steroids. It was going to get biz-zay, consistently and thoroughly. But, you know, without all the smug sarcasm, because it actually was going to kick major amounts of ass.
And it comes at the perfect time. I both wanted and needed a super kick ass Star Wars toy in the wake of the past year. My love of toys is not simply a matter of stress release, but I won’t deny that’s a big part of it. In the past year, when baby and law school have turned toy collecting into a combination of standing pre-orders with internet retailers and the occasional browsing of Target’s toy aisle while picking up diapers, I have not had a chance to do any real toy runs, spend any real time in a toy store. I needed a cool toy, and I needed a chance to roam a toy store looking at cool toys. So when it was revealed that the Millenium Falcon would be released with a glut of product promoting the theatrical release of the Clone Wars movie, and that this would itself be promoted with special midnight openings of Toys R Us….
My original plan had been to stop by Target on a Saturday morning, prepared to hit multiple stores if that proved necessary. But knowing that weekend morning and early afternoon hours are precious around here lately, I wasn’t comfortable with dedicating all of them to a toy hunt. A midnight toy run, however, meant less traffic, meant getting the toy sooner, meant sacrificing hours that would have no more useful purpose (like, you know, sleeping). It also meant participating in that sense of occasion and fanboy excess that I hadn’t seen since 1999. It was the perfect plan.
So a friend of mine and I decided to head out to Framingham. He came by at 10, I drove us out there. When we arrived, a little before 11, the parking lot had some scattered cars throughout - nothing to indicate that the place was closed for the night, but nothing to indicate anything special was happening, either. We did notice some people sitting around parked cars, though, so we stood out by the door, double checked that the place would be opening in an hour, and waited. The crowd slowly swelled around us. At around 11:20 or so, the 501st showed up. A smattering of stormtroopers, a Fett, a Death Star gunner, and a few prequel/EU characters I have trouble identifying. We made awkward small-talk with them; there was a curious lack of energy to the crowd. With no real enthusiasm for the actual Clone Wars movie, it seemed most people were here just to get some toys, and while we were all excited enough to trek out to TRU in the middle of the night, we weren’t quite going to start “whoo-hooing” and so on. The toy collecting culture shares with the goth culture a certain amount of ironic self-awareness; both are willing to gather in large groups wearing ridiculous outfits, but they remain too aware of the silliness of it all to lose themselves in tidal waves of mindless enthusiasm. Which isn’t to say we weren’t all very happy to be there.
At midnight the doors opened. I am terrible at counting crowds, but I suppose there were probably 50 people or so, maybe 75. First in line, my friend and I made it to the display while it was still empty, and grabbed a Falcon with no difficulty. I then turned around and saw the throng behind me - I could barely move with this thing. My friend and I took turns guarding the cart with its Falcony goodness while looking over first the other Star Wars merch and then the rest of the toy store itself. Man, it felt good to be in a toy store again - especially a store like TRU, which has tons of stuff other stores don’t carry, things I’d never buy for myself but love to look at. Around 1 or so, we headed home. I got home so late I barely had time to take the toy from its box and make sure I had all the parts.
So now I have this ridiculous Falcon. That’s the story of how it came to be mine. Now, a moment to reflect on the majesty that is what has come to be known on the forums as the BMF. The double entendre probably wasn’t meant, but it should have been.
The first thing that strikes you is the size. This isn’t what had me excited; to be honest, I would have preferred something smaller and easier to store. But I have to admit, huge toys can be impressive for their hugeness, and with something like the Falcon, it does seem appropriate. It’s strange to dedicate large amounts of space to something like the Royal Starship, or even an Imperial Shuttle. But the Falcon? The most iconic part of the most iconic movies of the most iconic…er… something? The Falcon really deserves this. The size makes sense.
What really made this version of the ship special was the recognition that not only were certain flaws in the original mold in serious need of attention - that the figures didn’t really fit in the cockpit, for one thing, at least the post-1995 figures - but that it was time to make it look like it did in the movie. I mean, back in 1977 there was no real interest in making something that accurately reflected what took place on screen. The painted cardboard backdrops from the 1977 Falcon didn’t really look like anything that was in the movie; for the 1995 re-issue, they at least made sure the backdrops were movie accurate. But they were still just cardboard backdrops. The actual plastic interior of the ship was just a hollowed out Falcon, with no real detail and nothing movie accurate. The inside of the toy just never really looked like the inside of the ship. It was the toy equivalent of a stick figure drawing - enough overlap to make it recognizable, but nothing even approaching verisimilitude.
But the new one is just astonishing in its fidelity to the source material. Everything that was originally a part of the Falcon toy has been upgraded, to conform more closely to its onscreen counterpart. The training remote, the gunport, the boarding ramp, the cockpit, the smuggling compartments, the dejarik table - they’re all still here, only now they come as close as possible to matching the sets used in the film, rather than merely evoking them. It’s obsessive. It’s dangerously, unhealthfully committed to accuracy. Sure, there are some shortcuts, and not everything is there. A lot of fans have complained that they left out the elevator Lando uses to retrieve Luke from his perch under Cloud City. Moreover, they never fixed the most glaring problem with the original mold, that you can’t actually reach the cockpit from the passenger area or boarding ramp. And while the ship includes some nods to Empire now, almost all of the dialogue comes from Hope. We have 3PO talking to R2 about fixing the hyperdrive, but it would have been nice to hear dialogue like “Never tell me the odds!”, “It’s not fair! They told me they fixed it!” or even “Han will get that shield down, we have to give him more time!” (cynics online are predicting an ESB-specific upgrade in a year or so)
But this is all irrelevant. What they did include is impressive as all hell, and they’ve added new areas. The console where Solo brags about losing the Tatooine pursuit is here, and for the first time, we have a Falcon that features exploits seen in Empire: the sick bay where Leia tends to Luke as they flee Bespin, the “few surprises” laser cannon under the hull that Solo uses on Hoth. It’s got the area where Solo works on the Falcon when they first enter the asteroid field (“Ow! Chewie!”) and they even accommodated the warped perspective of the “escape the Death Star” dogfight by making the wall next to the gunport the same texture as the floor - so if you’re turned on your side, looking at Han in his seat, the area below him is the floor. And they gave everything tons of room to breathe. In fact, as huge as the ship is from the outside, it looks like the increased size is not merely to impress from a distance; it’s a necessary consequence of opening up the interior enough to include all this play space. The cockpit can accommodate four figures for the first time, they can either stand up or sit in movie-accurate seats. (well, Chewbacca would probably not be able to stand with the cockpit closed…)
And then there are the new electronic features, like lightsaber and remote sounds for Luke’s training, and a light-up dejarik table (and holographic figures), and a boarding ramp that lowers slowly (with appropriate sounds) while lights illuminate the landing area. (There are also the dialogue bytes from the film I mentioned before; these bore me) The cockpit lights up; sometimes when you press the start button, it goes through the startup process, and sometimes it “floods” and fails, just like in Empire. Both the radar dish and the laser turret can be moved remotely (though manually) and the turret launches missiles; the gun under the hull also shoots missiles, as does the escape pod, and missiles can be launched from the front of the ship. Basically, if you want to shoot missiles, you’re covered.
And there is an extra, non-canon element: an “escape pod/fighter” that sits in a docking bay. I consider this 50% canon, myself, since we know the ship had escape pods, though we never saw them. Some fans are bitching about this, too, since it takes up space that might otherwise have been dedicated to play features. But I’m happy with it, partly because I know that as a kid I would have thought it was really cool and fun and would have spent as much time playing with the mini-fighter as I would with the Falcon itself. Partly, though, because it looks neat and it shows how much thought went into this toy. They really wanted to give us everything they could imagine, make it as fun and inventive as they could, even to the point of including neat things that make sense that weren’t on screen. This is a toy that pleases the diorama fan, and the kid who likes shooting missles and sound bytes, and the imaginative kid who wants stormtroopers and ewoks flying the ship and sending Boba Fett out in the fighter craft while stashing lightsabers in the storage bin and keeping jedi robes hidden in the floor. Man, I hated that kid.
So Harbso finally gave the right sort of extensive, no-holds-barred, let’s take a risk kind of approach to precisely the sort of subject that really deserves such treatment. It’s immense, it’s absurd, and it makes sense that if you’re going to have a toy this immense, this absurd, that it be the Millenium Falcon.
There are pics of this monstrosity all over the web, but here’s a somewhat concise set of shots that show off some of what I’ve been talking about:
http://www.rebelscum.com/CJ/HasbroBMF/default.asp
Here’s how it normally works: at the start of a run, a toy line doesn’t take a lot of risks, and so the stuff that gets made first sees a lot of compromise. Nobody’s sure how well the line is going to do, and so corners are cut. Sure, some properties come closer to being a “sure thing” than others, and sometimes a new line gets a lot of money poured into it. But toys are still toys, and very little is a guarantee, so companies rarely take risks in the early days of a line. In addition to that, the constant improvement in technology means that the longer a toy line hangs around, the better able a company is going to be to do creative and impressive things. All of this means that some of the really great toys in a given line frequently show up more towards the end of its run than the beginning.
Back in the original run of Star Wars toys, this meant that vehicles like the Imperial Shuttle © and the Desert Sand Skiff ©, and figures like Han Solo © in Carbonite © and Luke Skywalker © in Stormtrooper disguise © came out so late in the line that I was in college by the time I found out they’d been made at all. (This is roughly like being in college before finding out you have a brother nobody mentioned before.) Ships like the X-Wing and TIE fighter were produced so early, they paled in comparison to the far more complex, far larger, and far less iconic Y-Wing and A-Wing. And when the line was rebooted in the nineties, those old, lesser molds of the X-Wing and TIE were hauled out and repainted, and dammit that’s all we got, and we liked it. (until, ahem, both the X-Wing and the TIE were given more appropriate treatment in years to come, and then reissued again and again in minor variants)
In the case of the more recent line, Galoob produced better and more sophisticated Action Fleet playsets in 1999 than it ever had before. Instead of being essentially backdrops for the vehicle line, they made fully realized environments for interactive play, with figures and ships able to recreate even the most subtle nuances…. of The Phantom Menace. Within a year, Galoob was bought out and gutted by Hasbro.
In the same vein, some of the most elaborate, impressive toys made for Star Wars have been associated with the prequels rather the original trilogy. Granted, that’s hardly the end of the line’s run, but it does reflect both the improvements in technology and the stronger faith in the brand held by Hasbro. The prequels tend to get much cooler toys, and the biggest playset/vehicle ever released, the Royal Starship for Episode I, is perhaps the best example. A massive toy representing a classic ‘50’s silver craft, the toy had a proper lowering boarding ramp, a bridge, a repair bay with a working elevator to allow astromechs out onto the hull, a deployable escape/fighter craft. It was a wonder of a toy. Judged as a pure sci-fi toy, it was the greatest toy ever. Judged as a huge box in the basement, it was a perplexing allocation of space to a prequel toy that could otherwise be used more wisely. For, like, that huge NECA Balrog. Man, that thing is awesome.
For a long time, it seemed as though the best quality Star Wars toys were always going to be associated with the prequels. The announcement that a massive electronic AT-TE, a vehicle prominently featured in two prequels and this summer’s animated Clone Wars theatrical release, was coming out confirmed the suspicion. The toy line thrives on dollars from kids, and kids like the colorful action of the clone wars. They enjoy the original stuff, but it looks older, moves slower. It’s not as exciting.
And then the pictures leaked, and then the details leaked, and then the announcement came: the Millenium Falcon was about to receive the most balls-out awesome treatment any Star Wars toy had ever received. This thing was going to kick ass, take names, date your sister, get your history teacher drunk, and roar out of town on a rocket-powered, monkey-navigated chopper with blue flames pouring out its exhaust and lighting shooting from its wheels. It was, to be blunt, a Millenium Falcon toy from hell on both acid and steroids. It was going to get biz-zay, consistently and thoroughly. But, you know, without all the smug sarcasm, because it actually was going to kick major amounts of ass.
And it comes at the perfect time. I both wanted and needed a super kick ass Star Wars toy in the wake of the past year. My love of toys is not simply a matter of stress release, but I won’t deny that’s a big part of it. In the past year, when baby and law school have turned toy collecting into a combination of standing pre-orders with internet retailers and the occasional browsing of Target’s toy aisle while picking up diapers, I have not had a chance to do any real toy runs, spend any real time in a toy store. I needed a cool toy, and I needed a chance to roam a toy store looking at cool toys. So when it was revealed that the Millenium Falcon would be released with a glut of product promoting the theatrical release of the Clone Wars movie, and that this would itself be promoted with special midnight openings of Toys R Us….
My original plan had been to stop by Target on a Saturday morning, prepared to hit multiple stores if that proved necessary. But knowing that weekend morning and early afternoon hours are precious around here lately, I wasn’t comfortable with dedicating all of them to a toy hunt. A midnight toy run, however, meant less traffic, meant getting the toy sooner, meant sacrificing hours that would have no more useful purpose (like, you know, sleeping). It also meant participating in that sense of occasion and fanboy excess that I hadn’t seen since 1999. It was the perfect plan.
So a friend of mine and I decided to head out to Framingham. He came by at 10, I drove us out there. When we arrived, a little before 11, the parking lot had some scattered cars throughout - nothing to indicate that the place was closed for the night, but nothing to indicate anything special was happening, either. We did notice some people sitting around parked cars, though, so we stood out by the door, double checked that the place would be opening in an hour, and waited. The crowd slowly swelled around us. At around 11:20 or so, the 501st showed up. A smattering of stormtroopers, a Fett, a Death Star gunner, and a few prequel/EU characters I have trouble identifying. We made awkward small-talk with them; there was a curious lack of energy to the crowd. With no real enthusiasm for the actual Clone Wars movie, it seemed most people were here just to get some toys, and while we were all excited enough to trek out to TRU in the middle of the night, we weren’t quite going to start “whoo-hooing” and so on. The toy collecting culture shares with the goth culture a certain amount of ironic self-awareness; both are willing to gather in large groups wearing ridiculous outfits, but they remain too aware of the silliness of it all to lose themselves in tidal waves of mindless enthusiasm. Which isn’t to say we weren’t all very happy to be there.
At midnight the doors opened. I am terrible at counting crowds, but I suppose there were probably 50 people or so, maybe 75. First in line, my friend and I made it to the display while it was still empty, and grabbed a Falcon with no difficulty. I then turned around and saw the throng behind me - I could barely move with this thing. My friend and I took turns guarding the cart with its Falcony goodness while looking over first the other Star Wars merch and then the rest of the toy store itself. Man, it felt good to be in a toy store again - especially a store like TRU, which has tons of stuff other stores don’t carry, things I’d never buy for myself but love to look at. Around 1 or so, we headed home. I got home so late I barely had time to take the toy from its box and make sure I had all the parts.
So now I have this ridiculous Falcon. That’s the story of how it came to be mine. Now, a moment to reflect on the majesty that is what has come to be known on the forums as the BMF. The double entendre probably wasn’t meant, but it should have been.
The first thing that strikes you is the size. This isn’t what had me excited; to be honest, I would have preferred something smaller and easier to store. But I have to admit, huge toys can be impressive for their hugeness, and with something like the Falcon, it does seem appropriate. It’s strange to dedicate large amounts of space to something like the Royal Starship, or even an Imperial Shuttle. But the Falcon? The most iconic part of the most iconic movies of the most iconic…er… something? The Falcon really deserves this. The size makes sense.
What really made this version of the ship special was the recognition that not only were certain flaws in the original mold in serious need of attention - that the figures didn’t really fit in the cockpit, for one thing, at least the post-1995 figures - but that it was time to make it look like it did in the movie. I mean, back in 1977 there was no real interest in making something that accurately reflected what took place on screen. The painted cardboard backdrops from the 1977 Falcon didn’t really look like anything that was in the movie; for the 1995 re-issue, they at least made sure the backdrops were movie accurate. But they were still just cardboard backdrops. The actual plastic interior of the ship was just a hollowed out Falcon, with no real detail and nothing movie accurate. The inside of the toy just never really looked like the inside of the ship. It was the toy equivalent of a stick figure drawing - enough overlap to make it recognizable, but nothing even approaching verisimilitude.
But the new one is just astonishing in its fidelity to the source material. Everything that was originally a part of the Falcon toy has been upgraded, to conform more closely to its onscreen counterpart. The training remote, the gunport, the boarding ramp, the cockpit, the smuggling compartments, the dejarik table - they’re all still here, only now they come as close as possible to matching the sets used in the film, rather than merely evoking them. It’s obsessive. It’s dangerously, unhealthfully committed to accuracy. Sure, there are some shortcuts, and not everything is there. A lot of fans have complained that they left out the elevator Lando uses to retrieve Luke from his perch under Cloud City. Moreover, they never fixed the most glaring problem with the original mold, that you can’t actually reach the cockpit from the passenger area or boarding ramp. And while the ship includes some nods to Empire now, almost all of the dialogue comes from Hope. We have 3PO talking to R2 about fixing the hyperdrive, but it would have been nice to hear dialogue like “Never tell me the odds!”, “It’s not fair! They told me they fixed it!” or even “Han will get that shield down, we have to give him more time!” (cynics online are predicting an ESB-specific upgrade in a year or so)
But this is all irrelevant. What they did include is impressive as all hell, and they’ve added new areas. The console where Solo brags about losing the Tatooine pursuit is here, and for the first time, we have a Falcon that features exploits seen in Empire: the sick bay where Leia tends to Luke as they flee Bespin, the “few surprises” laser cannon under the hull that Solo uses on Hoth. It’s got the area where Solo works on the Falcon when they first enter the asteroid field (“Ow! Chewie!”) and they even accommodated the warped perspective of the “escape the Death Star” dogfight by making the wall next to the gunport the same texture as the floor - so if you’re turned on your side, looking at Han in his seat, the area below him is the floor. And they gave everything tons of room to breathe. In fact, as huge as the ship is from the outside, it looks like the increased size is not merely to impress from a distance; it’s a necessary consequence of opening up the interior enough to include all this play space. The cockpit can accommodate four figures for the first time, they can either stand up or sit in movie-accurate seats. (well, Chewbacca would probably not be able to stand with the cockpit closed…)
And then there are the new electronic features, like lightsaber and remote sounds for Luke’s training, and a light-up dejarik table (and holographic figures), and a boarding ramp that lowers slowly (with appropriate sounds) while lights illuminate the landing area. (There are also the dialogue bytes from the film I mentioned before; these bore me) The cockpit lights up; sometimes when you press the start button, it goes through the startup process, and sometimes it “floods” and fails, just like in Empire. Both the radar dish and the laser turret can be moved remotely (though manually) and the turret launches missiles; the gun under the hull also shoots missiles, as does the escape pod, and missiles can be launched from the front of the ship. Basically, if you want to shoot missiles, you’re covered.
And there is an extra, non-canon element: an “escape pod/fighter” that sits in a docking bay. I consider this 50% canon, myself, since we know the ship had escape pods, though we never saw them. Some fans are bitching about this, too, since it takes up space that might otherwise have been dedicated to play features. But I’m happy with it, partly because I know that as a kid I would have thought it was really cool and fun and would have spent as much time playing with the mini-fighter as I would with the Falcon itself. Partly, though, because it looks neat and it shows how much thought went into this toy. They really wanted to give us everything they could imagine, make it as fun and inventive as they could, even to the point of including neat things that make sense that weren’t on screen. This is a toy that pleases the diorama fan, and the kid who likes shooting missles and sound bytes, and the imaginative kid who wants stormtroopers and ewoks flying the ship and sending Boba Fett out in the fighter craft while stashing lightsabers in the storage bin and keeping jedi robes hidden in the floor. Man, I hated that kid.
So Harbso finally gave the right sort of extensive, no-holds-barred, let’s take a risk kind of approach to precisely the sort of subject that really deserves such treatment. It’s immense, it’s absurd, and it makes sense that if you’re going to have a toy this immense, this absurd, that it be the Millenium Falcon.
There are pics of this monstrosity all over the web, but here’s a somewhat concise set of shots that show off some of what I’ve been talking about:
http://www.rebelscum.com/CJ/HasbroBMF/default.asp