Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: Star Wars 99 Stormtroopers Join The Empire

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What happens to the 99 Stormtroopers that join the Empire? This book walks you through their amusing journey.

Star Wars 99 Stormtroopers Join The Empire was written by, Greg Stones, a lifelong Star Wars fan and author of six illustrated humor books. The book is available in hardback and is 96 pages with full color images throughout. This book has been called a “clever nod to Star Wars fandom”.

This humorous book, pokes fun at the troubles the Stormtroopers face in their ultimate demise. Each page describes the predicament of some stomtroopers and provides a colorful illustration of each. There are appearances in the book by many characters, including Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and K-2SO. The story counts down the troopers until only one remains.

This book is a quick but amusing read for any Star Wars fan.  As fans, we have all joked about Stormtroopers.  This book provides a unique and creative written and visual display of many of those jokes. It is a fun read and would make a great gift for a fellow fan (or yourself) that likes a good laugh.

Star Wars 99 Stormtroopers Join The Empire will be available on July 25, 2017. It can be pre-ordered at this link.

We would like to thank Chronicle Books for sending us this copy early to review.

Book Review: Star Wars Super Graphics A Visual Guide to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

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You’ve seen Star Wars on the big screen, now experience it from a data perspective.  Star Wars Super Graphic gives readers a behind the scenes look at their favorite movie, through charts, graphs and other infographics.

Star Wars Super Graphics A Visual Guide to a Galaxy Far, Far Away was written by Tim Leong, the Creative Director at Entertainment Weekly magazine. The book is available in paperback, is 176 pages with full color images throughout. It has been called a “visual love letter to the vast Star Wars Universe.”

This book is full of facts and figures presented in a fun way. Each page contains information about Star Wars in a bar graph, pie chart, Venn diagram or other infographic. The book touches on lots of topics in the Star Wars universe, such as the number of words in the opening crawl of each movie, where to start reading and watching Star Wars, an intergalactic map of the stars, blaster colors, droid classifications and a whole lot more! The author provides the reader with colorful easy to interpret visuals of information that as a fan, you may already know or you may have never thought about.

Although there is not a lot of reading to do in this book, it is a fun read! It is a playful look at Star Wars with easy to digest visuals, interesting topics and is very informative. This book will quickly become your “go to” book for Star Wars information – next time you are debating who mentions “the force” more often, turn to page 40 for quick easy answers!

Star Wars Super Graphics A Visual Guide to a Galaxy Far, Far Away will debut at San Diego Comic-Con.  It can be pre-ordered at this link.

We would like to thank Chronicle Books for sending us this copy early to review.

 

Review: Imperial Probe Droid Sixth Scale Figure by Sideshow Collectibles

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Now shipping from Sideshow Collectibles is the Imperial Probe Droid Sixth Scale Figure! Some collectors will remember the previous version with the Hoth Base from 2014. That  version has been long sold out, so if you missed it then, now is the time to grab it (sans the Hoth add on) before it sells out again!  I will dig in to all the details shortly, but this is a beast and a must have piece in your collection! From the articulation to the weathered deco and lights, this guy has it all, and it’s HUGE (as it should be).

First, we take a look at the box and how it comes packaged, this guy is not hard to assemble but, take it slow as there are tons of little working pieces on the articulated legs.  Each leg is labeled so just match up the numbers and you are good to go. There is a very easy to follow guide included!

This has sounds and lights, but you first need to remove two small strips before the batteries will be usable.  Below are close ups of each section where you need to remove these strips.  Also, you will see a small ON/OFF molded to the inside of the body, but there is NOT a switch there, the button to operate the light is on the exterior top. I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to figure out if my sample was missing a switch or broken before I realized it was not there. My guess is maybe that was the intent to have a switch in there, but it was later moved to the exterior.

Once you have all that done, you just snap it all back together and pose it as you wish.  There are a ton of possibilities, use you imagination. Next, we will take a look at the light up eye.  You get two different lights, the white/blue and the yellow/orange.  The first one is mega bright and lights up a dark room easily, while the yellow/orange is dimmer.  Both worked well, one click for white, another click for yellow, third click is off. 

It only has one sound, but it is an iconic one. Just press the button on the side and you’ll hear the  garbled transmission sound effects just as they were in the movie.  You can hear it below in a short clip we uploaded to Instagram when it arrived. 

 You can spin the head around 360 degrees, it stands at 17″ H (431.8mm) x 7.5″ W (190.5mm) x 7.5″ L (190.5m).  The Imperial Probe Droid Sixth Scale Figure by Sideshow Collectibles is a great piece, it has an awesome paint application, great weathering and articulation. There are also 2 extending antennas that you can extend as you wish or mix it up and keep one short and one long! The display options on this are diverse. 

 

We want to thank Sideshow Collectibles for providing this sample to us to review, you can click here to add him to your collection today