Review by Dave Cordes for Star Wars 3.75″ New Millennium Falcon
Rating: 
I’m talking about the (really) BIG Corellian ships now. When the OTC Millenium Falcon came out in 2003 which was retooled from the original vintage Kenner mold I only dreamed of having a larger scale Falcon and Hasbro responded, though as impressive looking as the new larger scale Falcon is, it is only frustratingly as cool as it should have been. Like Han’s beloved ship, this bucket of bolts is always falling apart.
The Pros: IT’S MASSIVELY HUGE! Probably the biggest and best scaled Star Wars vehicle ever made and it’s the next best thing to owning the bank-breaking Master Replicas Studio Scale prop replica costing thousands more. The cockpit now accommodates up to 4 action figures and illuminates when one of 3 different buttons are pressed that make the “hyperdrive,” “liftoff” and “flyby” sounds while the hyperdrive glows a cool blue hue. The interior playset areas have been expanded to include a medical bay to recreate Luke’s rescue from Cloud City. The landing ramp deploys with the touch of a button and slowly descends while making hydraulic sounds. The holochess table illuminates when one of 3 buttons are pressed with over 20 sounds and phrases from “A New Hope” including lines like “Let the Wookie win.”
The Cons: The landing gear absolutely suck! They do not stay on at all. I tried every combination I could by carefully aligning the shapes with the groves and none of them would stay on and easily fall over. As Luke would say, “What a piece of junk!” I am probably going to permanently glue them on though I am hesitant to ruin such a relatively expensive collectible. Also, the plastic material is made out of that awful soft rubbery plastic that Hasbro has been using on everything it has been producing for the last few years for child safety reasons. It feels horribly cheap for a $150 toy that should have used a hard durable plastic in the overall construction. They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to. I would still like to have seen the cockpit and the adjacent corridor connect via an opening hatch and there’s still only 1 gunner station instead of 2 like in the film for both top and bottom gun turrets which fire two spring-loaded projectile missiles. I’d rather the cannon barrels illuminated with strobbing lights and recoiled like in the film. There’s an escape pod vehicle that deploys which is completely made-up. Supposedly the original designer of the Kenner Millenium Falcon wanted to include this feature in the vintage design. Kids may like it but I don’t particularly care for it at all. It’s already been done before on Padme’s Naboo Royal Cruiser. I’d rather they used this area for another omitted movie feature like the topside elevator lift Lando used to rescue Luke from Cloud City.
Overall this hunk of junk is enormously impressive looking, but doesn’t quite feel worth $150. Perhaps around an even $100 would have felt about right on the mark so don’t judge it by its size alone. There were some missed opportunities to make this the truly definitive version of the Millenium Falcon. I’d try to pick this one up on sale, or if your lucky to win it in a chance card game of Sabaac. This baby’s still got a few surprises left in her sweetheart.
