Command your own Star Wars Army

I remember having some epic backyard battles as a kid where my friends and I gathered all of our little green army men to create gigantic confrontations where we would spend hours yelling "bam bam", "boom" and mimicking other sounds of war while we pretended to be four star generals commanding our forces against the enemy.  All of the boys in my neighborhood had a toy chest full of these plastic figures, plus toy tanks, trucks and artillery and other various military props to go along with them and we'd spend whole afternoons playing "army men".  These were really basic toys but yet they were some of my favorite play things growing up.

Thirty years later the little plastic army men of my youth have been replaced by action figures and video games by today's kids.  So when I was wandering down the toy aisle at the store the other day with my son and saw the new "Star Wars Command" toys on the shelf it brought a smile to my face, and of course I had to pick up a set for my son ... and me ... to play with.  The "Star Wars Command" toys are essentially the green army men of my youth but they aren't green and they are made up of Star Wars characters that you can create armies out of.  We picked up a set for $4.99 that contained 8 "soldiers" and 1 "general" figure.  The soldiers were split between storm troopers and tusken raiders to pit against one another.  The general bonus figure was actually just one of the nicer storm trooper poses that was colored slightly better than the others in the package.

There were several themed sets in the $4.99 range to choose from plus some other more expensive sets that offered more figures plus vehicles to go along with them.  The expanded toy sets ranged in price from $9.99 to $60.  The sets with vehicles have really nice sculpts for the space ships and war machines included in them that really impressed me but were somewhat disappointing because they aren't to scale with the army men figures and are actually smaller than the toy soldiers.  I remember with the toy sets of my youth we had trucks that you could throw your soldiers in the back of and tanks that could roll threw your squad of army men.  That quality of play is lacking with these new Star Wars army men.

Hasbo did a nice job with the individual sculpts for the Star Wars characters in these sets.  The molds for the figures that came with the "Star Wars Command" play set we picked up had very nice detail for a small plastic toy.  A negative though was the assortment of figures included in the set we received.  While you want to have "army builders" which means lots of duplicates of characters and poses to build up an army, the variety was really lacking for a 9 figure assortment.  Of the stormtroopers, 3 of them were in the same pose of looking through binoculars ... I could see maybe 2 in the package but really a 1/3 of your assortment. The binocular troopers were like the radio operators for the green army men of old, you didn't mind having a couple to build up your army but they weren't the fun ones you really played with. Here in this play set you have the vicious and dangerous tusken raiders battling against some guys looking through binoculars. Kind of puts a damper on imaginative play for a kid! The other three stormtroopers were in an exact same pose with a laser rifle.  While the sculpts were both nicely done for these figures couldn't the toy manufacturer have added one more cool action posed storm trooper to the set?!  Plus for the tusken raiders all three of these sand people are in the exact same pose...couldn't they have made one or two more sculpts to make the play set a little more interesting?  Plastic injected molding can't be that expensive of a process to have been cost prohibitive in adding a few more details to make these toys a little bit nicer for people to enjoy. 

If you want to be nostalgic and have your children experience playing army with little plastic soldiers picking up the "Star Wars Command" toys isn't a bad buy based upon the price and will provide an afternoon of fun.  Unfortunately, my son lost interest  after the first day of playing with these figures because he said they were "all the same guy".  He just wasn't interested in playing with a bunch of army men looking through binoculars which made up a bulk of his playset. Based upon the limited characters available through the various play sets and the large number of duplicates of the less interesting sculpts packaged in these sets I don't see us buying more sets to try and create a grand Imperial armada or vast Rebel force.  If Hasbo begins to enhance the product with more variety though we might give it a second glance because the army men themselves weren't bad it was the lack of variety that really put a damper on enjoying them.

BOOK REVIEW: KENOBI

Have you ever wondered what happened between Star Wars Episode III and Episode IV during the period in which the Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi lived on the far off planet of Tatooine keeping a watchful eye over " the new hope" as the crazy hermit Ben Kenobi?  Not much has been addressed over the years about that time period in the Star Wars mythos where this key character transitions in life from middle age warrior to elderly wizard. That is the focus though of a new novel by John Jackson Miller titled: STAR WARS: KENOBI.

In Miller's book, a few weeks have passed since Obi Wan battled Anakin on the lava planet of Mustafar.  Kenobi believes Anakin to be dead, not knowing of Darth Vader, and has taken Luke to live with Anakin's step-brother, Lars Owen, on the desert planet of Tatooine.  Obi Wan plans on laying low and keeping a quiet watchful protective eye over Luke but the locals don't make that as easy as that might seem as Kenobi is entangled in a series of adventures despite his best efforts to avoid them.

The story is an entertaining bed time or vacation read that doesn't take a lot of time to devote to finishing. I  read the whole book over the Labor Day weekend.  It takes an interesting angle by portraying the story with a Western theme, with a few gangsters thrown into the mix because you can't be on Tatooine without including Jabba the Hutt's gang.  The focus of the story is on the battle between the settlers of an oasis near where Kenobi sets up his hermit camp, and the Tusken Raiders (Sand People) who don't want humans encroaching on their territory.  The characters fit into the theme of cowboys from the American Western movies and the Native Americans they battled within that genre.  It was an interesting approach to tell a tale from this famous space opera as a Western and the author did an admirable job of replicating a Wild West theme on a distant planet from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.  Miller develops interesting characters on both sides of the conflict and Kenobi essentially becomes a secondary character until the last few chapters of the book.  You don't mind that Kenobi is essentially a second-tier character in a book with his title on the cover though because the author does a nice job of developing the primary characters and plots of the book to hook you in so you want to know their stories and outcomes. I believe that not having the book entirely focus on Kenobi was actually a nice approach for the novel to take and gives readers a look at the Star Wars Universe from a different perspective which gave the novel a refreshing viewpoint to fans who already know a lot about the central characters from the movies.  Yet the words in print still portrayed to the reader a feeling as if you were watching one of the Star Wars films.

For the most part I enjoyed reading KENOBI, but there were some things I found disappointing.  The biggest disappointment in the book was that a mystery so many die hard Star Wars fans have, how does Kenobi learn to vaporize himself during the Death Star duel with Darth Vader and subsequently communicate with Luke from the dead, isn't answered. Kenobi meditates throughout the book in lengthy passages trying to communicate with his dead Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin, from Episode I, and the reader is waiting for an eventual response.  We never get one it essentially is Kenobi just rambling to himself throughout the book. He is caught doing this by the settlers and gets the name "Crazy Ben" for talking to himself.  We know from the movies and also this story that Kenobi doesn't have these skills at this point in his life that he has later on in the original trilogy movies. So the question remains unanswered.

Also I always pictured the Sand People as might warriors from the first time I was startled as a kid as they ambushed Luke Skywalker and made me jump out of my seat in surprise, they are portrayed that way in all the movies, but Miller takes the approach of presenting them as a dying race in a similar scenario as unfortunately the American Indians faced in our United States history.  While that is an accurate historical portrayal of how unfortunately things were for native Americans in the Wild West it really diminishes the image of Tusken Raiders for fans.  I can understand why the author did this to develop the story and character for the Sand People's leader but he could have had just that one tribe be down and out rather than the whole race of beings on the verge of extinction.

Additionally the whole story only involves the first few months of Kenobi being a "hermit" on Tatooine and his dealings with a select group of settlers and Tusken Raiders.  It would have been nice to have had a broader story detailing more about Kenobi's more than a decade watching over Luke Skywalker as the child grows up.  I guess though writing it this way open up more possibilities for sequel books for the author.  Plus you probably don't want to read a war and peace length novel on this topic so breaking this time period into short stories is most likely the best approach.  I have to say though I had such high hopes and looked really forward to reading this book and afterward it just seemed to be lacking.  The story was just a little too simplistic for me in the end.

That being said, I did enjoy reading the book overall.  It was a nice distraction from the stress of everyday life taking me away to a fantasy world for a few hours during my Labor Day weekend.  If you are looking for a book that you can just sit back and  just enjoy the adventure, I would recommend picking up STAR WARS: KENOBI.  This book will keep your attention and amuse you during a long plane ride or while sitting by a pool and when it comes to a paperback that is my primary objective for picking out a fantasy novel...will it take me away ... and KENOBI does complete that mission.

Check out this book profile from the publisher for more info about this new Star Wars story:

The Republic has fallen.
Sith Lords rule the galaxy.
Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has lost everything . . . 
Everything but hope.
 
Tatooine—a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders. A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy.
 
Known to locals only as “Ben,” the bearded and robed offworlder is an enigmatic stranger who keeps to himself, shares nothing of his past, and goes to great pains to remain an outsider. But as tensions escalate between the farmers and a tribe of Sand People led by a ruthless war chief, Ben finds himself drawn into the fight, endangering the very mission that brought him to Tatooine.
 
Ben—Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero of the Clone Wars, traitor to the Empire, and protector of the galaxy’s last hope—can no more turn his back on evil than he can reject his Jedi training. And when blood is unjustly spilled, innocent lives threatened, and a ruthless opponent unmasked, Ben has no choice but to call on the wisdom of the Jedi—and the formidable power of the Force—in his never-ending fight for justice.

DISCLAIMER:  I received an advance reviewer digital pdf copy of Kenobi from the publisher.  The thoughts and opinions in this post are my own.