Angry Birds Star Wars Jenga “Tatooine Battle Game” by Hasbro

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I first wrote about the Angry Birds Star Wars app and games, and now we have the real thing in hand. That has to be some kind of record. I’m used to hearing about products months before their release, but this time Hasbro developed the app and toys in secret, only announcing them when they were essentially ready to put on shelves. You can find these at some Toys R Us stores, the Toys R Us online store, Hasbrotoyshop.com and probably elsewhere. (Be warned, however, that TRU charges $19.99 for the basic sets like this one, which are $14.99 other places.)

I’ll post about the “Jabba’s Palace” set when it arrives, but it’s pretty similar to this one. They both have Jabba and the Rancor, but while this one has Jedi Luke and (for some reason) a Millennium Falcon launcher, the Jabba’s Palace set has Leia as Boushh and Jedi Luke’s lightsaber as the launcher. Not sure why they didn’t use that launcher for this set. As a matter of fact, I’m not really sure why they needed two sets at all if they were going to be so similar.

Here are the included figures. They’re smaller than I had expected, but are solid (except for Luke, who has a hole allowing him to fit on the launcher) and made of a dense rubbery material. One thing I really do appreciate about the set is that you can easily return all of the pieces to the box for storage.

Here’s the launcher.

In terms of the rules, the game is very simple. The idea is that one player rolls a die to see what kind of structure they have to build and the other player rolls a die to see how many shots they get. Then the attacking player tries to knock down both of the pigs with the launcher.

It just so happens that my son has some of the other Angry Birds toy sets, which I now realize were put out by Mattel instead of Hasbro. They are VERY similar in concept, but Mattel’s birds are bigger and hollow, so they’re lighter weight. It seems that the Hasbro birds are easier to shoot with, since they have more weight and fit onto a holder on the launcher. The Mattel games include a variety of cards and birds of different sizes, and is generally more complex (in a good way). As a game, the Hasbro version seems overly simple, but I guess you will be able to combine sets if you like.

Jabba looks a lot better than the generic pigs they used in the Mattel sets, since they only had stickers for faces.

You also get a code with the set that is supposed to unlock some sort of bonus content in the Star Wars Angry Birds app, although I guess we’ll have to wait until November 8th to see what that will be.