Slot cars? Star Wars Speeders

OK, show of hands. Who’s a Star Wars geek? OK who’s seen the movies? OK, who has ever heard of Star Wars? You know, “May the force be with you”. Big guy in black that has trouble breathing. This movie clip should help. Well if you haven’t, you’ve been stuck on some tropical island for the last 4o years. And you didn’t invite me? I am definitely built for warm weather. Anyway back to Star Wars. I was standing in line as a kid to watch the first film in the series released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars. I paid to watch the movie 14 times before getting a bootleg video copy. Only kidding. Call off the FBI. Then I saw the next two although, not 14 times, but a lot. Hey I had extra time on my hands just graduating from college with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. Those jobs didn’t exactly grow on trees then. Fast forward about 30 years or so where I’m now a dad with a 13 year old daughter, who just like dad, is into Star Wars, but bigger than me. Getting my drift here on how this Star Wars thing is big and transcends generations? And it will only get bigger because the planets, in this case Dagobah and Coruscant, have aligned. With Disney’s recent purchase of Lucasfilm, the Star Wars brand will become even stronger especially because new movies are coming out.

So how do slot cars and Star Wars hook up? That’s because Lucasfilm, now Disney, licensed Scalextric and is now producing the Speeder Bikes as slot cars. Hey stranger things have happened. The two I’m talking about here are the Star Wars Paploo Ewok Speeder Bike 1/32 Slot Car and the Star Wars Luke Skywalker Speeder Bike 1/32 Slot Car. I had seen images of the Speeder Bike but was a bit skeptical on what the actual product would end of looking like but after I opened both boxes I realized I was way off. The details on both bikes are excellent considering their size. There are panel lines on the body of the bike along with the mechanics including a light up led laser cannon. It rides on what appears to be a 1/43^rd power platform. You can see Paploo Ewok’s face, his headgear, and weapons belt. What’s not to love about the little guy? The same is true for Luke Skywalker. On the track I was thinking they might top heavy but they are not and that, at least partially, has to do with their speed, which is not very fast, but fast enough for the Speeder Bike. My big track has lots of turns and inclines and they both ran well. So running on “The Battle for Endor” track set Scalextric also sells, they would be excellent. They retail at $69.99 but you can find deals all over the place so make sure you do some searching. I saw one site which was selling them for around 55 bucks. The kids, sure they can be for you, will love these and want to add as much as they can to their collections. May the force be with you.