ESB@30: 30 Collectibles, day 1

The Empire Strikes Back was first released in the the US on 21 May 1980. To commemorate the 30th Anniversary of what many consider to be the best movie in the Star Wars saga I'm going to spotlight 30 ESB-related items from my collection.

The first up is a chase item from 2009's Takara Tomy miniature polystone statue collection.

At just 10 cm high it comes in two pieces and perfectly conveys the test pilot for Darth Vader's Carbon-Freezing program. It was released only in Japan but can still be found regularly from importers and on eBay. Other statues in the collection are Vader, Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca. Han in Carbonite is the only one that is specifically an Empire Strikes Back design. Each are randomly packed in sealed plastic "eggs."