I got some cool stuff here and there from people for Christmas, but it was the little thoughtful things that touched me the most. Today’s two Hot Wheels spaceships came from a co-worker and were exactly that. I think she bought them as partially a gag gift, because she was clearly taken aback by how delighted I was with them. A while back I featured some of the other Hot Wheels ships in this line and I’ve been meaning to get back and pick up some more. It’s Hot Wheels… Force Awakens style, baby!

The packaging is nothing outrageous, although I am totally impressed that Mattel prints individual card art for each of these vehicles and you get a very nice look at the ship through the bubble. I’ll confess, I’m rather confused by the whole wide array of tiny Star Wars ships on the market today. Hasbro’s got a couple of their own lines going on, Mattel has these, and I hear tell that Disney stores have their own as well. I’ve been quite happy with the Hot Wheels ships I’ve purchased so far, so I was very happy to get some more in the line. Let’s pop these open and we’ll start off with Poe Dameron’s X-Wing…

Man, I love this fighter and that’s mostly because of some of the great scenes it featured in. One of my favorite of those scenes was when Poe’s fighter came ripping over the water on the planet Takodana and inspired his squadron with the great line, “Don’t let these thugs scare you!” God, I loved that. That one line characterized Poe better than three movies worth of dialogue did for any Prequel character. Anyway… this is a really nice piece considering the scale. Yes, it’s a little chunky in the wings and wing cannons, but it’s nothing that really ruins the aesthetics of the tiny model. The body is die cast metal, giving it some nice heft, and the wings are plastic. The cannons aren’t at all bendy and they’re straight as an arrow, which is more than can be said about Hasbro’s bigger and far more expensive version of Poe’s X-Wing. There are plenty of panel lines and other details in the sculpt and the paint is pretty sharp. The wings are permanently fixed in the attack position and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Moving on to the TIE Fighter…

Yeah, if the X-Wing was really nice, this little TIE Fighter is downright fantastic! Like the X-Wing, the TIE Fighter features a die cast metal body and plastic wings, or in this case solar panels. Yeah, we see a little chunkiness in the antenna, but otherwise I’d say this ship is near perfect for the scale. I particularly like the texturing they did for the panels and the fact that they are really solid pieces without fear of warping. The paint here is also gorgeous. The silver trim on the cockpit window is sharp as is the red stripe. I gotta get me at least one more of these babies!

Both ships come with the same snazzy clear plastic stands, which double as little “Flight Navigators” for your index finger, providing it isn’t as old and large as mine.

I think the going rate for these are around five bucks and I think they’re well worth it. These lines do tend to irritate me sometimes with their lack of relative scale, but in this case the X-Wing and TIE Fighter display beautifully together and I’m now rather anxious to hunt down the Original Trilogy counterparts to these excellent little ships and maybe pick up a few of the other offerings. Nice job on these, Mattel!