The Star Wars prequels completely divided the Star Wars community forever. Some hate them, others love them. I’m somewhere in the middle. One of the few saving graces for me is the huge battle scene in Attack of the Clones that predominately features the wickedly cool Gunships. Once I saw the clones landing for the first time, lasers blasting I was hooked on anything and everything clone related. I’ve very recently managed to complete a long term goal of mine, getting a Hasbro gunship with two gun pods. It was long term because first Hasbro had to actually make the pods, plus I wanted a gunship that had opening and closing doors, which Hasbro released for the first time this year. Behold!

Was it worth it worth the wait and expense? Click on that more tab to see!

This Republic Gunship is the Toys R Us exclusive edition. While I already had a gunship that still sits unopened back at my parents house, this version has reworked doors that open and close (so I’m going to try like hell to sell that old one). At seventy bucks it’s overpriced, but I managed to snag this one for fifty on sale. The gunship is fairly large and while it’s not really in scale, it does the trick. In fact, it’s a little larger than I thought it would be.

One of the only downsides to this particular gunship is that it’s the “Crumb bomber” named for the little ugly guy dropping bombs on the side. I was hoping that it was a sticker that I could not apply, but it’s pre-applied so no such luck. I’ll probably kick myself when they re-release this thing eventually with another wicked ass graphic on the front. Speaking of graphics and what not, the paint on the gunship is really bland. This gunship isn’t “dirty” enough to fit into the Star Wars universe. It needs some engine and laser scoring or something similar to jazz it up a bit.

Now the ball turrets came from the Geonosis Assault battle packs. Each battle pack comes with one gun pod and two super articulated clone pilots, meaning that you’re going to have to shell out quite a bit if you want both of these things. In my case it was roughly 24 bucks a pop. The two clone pilots are nice since they are semi-rarish, but I would have gotten more value out of this pack if it had been a pilot and some other trooper. Yeah, you could argue you could use two pilots to actually pilot the thing and two to go in the gun so you really need four all together, but you can’t see under the cockpit canopy so you could stick anyone in there and it wouldn’t matter.

The pods look good and fit nicely on the tabs inside the ship. They can be taken out fairly easily and must be if you want to ever close the doors. The inside of the gunship is fairly spacious. Unfortunately I’m separated from most of my clone army (they’re right here), so a few Marvel Universe figures had to fill in.

Once the doors are closed they fit tight except for the necessary holes for the turrets. There’s a button on the top that can be pushed to open doors, which is neat if you’re easily impressed like I am.

Overall, it was an expensive task to get this sucker together, but once this thing is hanging above my AT-TE it’ll be totally worth it.

*Special thanks to Sam Reese for the Moon Knight. Your email isn’t working anymore, so I can’t think of any way to get a hold of you.