Fight for the Dark Side With General Grievous’s Spinning Electronic Lightsaber

Whether you watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars or are just a fan of the original trilogy, light sabers are cool. I remember being a small child, contemplating with my female friends the different ways to use light sabers. After all, a light saber is an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

Genereal Grievous’s Spinning Electronic Lightsaber is transformable into four different configurations. It comes with two lightsabers and a spinning gyro-grip, so you can set it up to be two stand-alone lightsabers (best when there are two kids); one spinning, two-sided lightsaber (best for maximum impressiveness); a single, spinning lightsaber and a single, regular lightsaber; and a two-sided, non-spinning lightsaber. Your kids will have a great time switching it around to fit the current battle. You can also lock the spinning gyro-grip in place, so it won’t spin.

Once you get the configuration of choice, press the red button to turn the lightsaber on. It makes a light saber-ish noise and lights up. Start swinging it around and it will make lightsaber-ish noises. If you hit something with it (gently, I keep telling my kids), the light flashes a bit and makes another noise. The noises sound authentic, but aren’t high fidelity. Still, they’re decent enough for play.

To turn the light sabers off, press the red buttons again, or they will also shut off on their own after a while. The three parts are pretty easy to attach and detach from each other. The lightsabers themselves also collapse for easy storage and extend for fast play. Each lightsaber takes three AAA batteries, not included.

They’re designed for kids age 6 and up, which sounds about right to me, if you keep your kids away from the breakables. When you have the full size spinning lightsaber together, it is quite long (about 57 inches). It’s easy to knock things down in the house, so make sure it is used in an open area, or outside.

The General Grievous Spinning Electronic Lightsaber retails for $39.99, but it is cheaper on Amazon. And if your kids aren’t big fans of the Empire, they can pretend that they stole the weapon from the bad guys.

Note: I received a sample unit for review.