Rebuilding the Falcon

The one on your left is my 1995 POTF2 Falcon, the one on the right is my original Falcon from around the time Empire Strikes Back was in theaters. I remember the day I picked this up with my mom, but that is a story for another day... or blog. This is about rebuilding my old childhood Falcon, as I get more and more into it I plan on posting images of what I have and what I have done, this may take a long time, but that is okay just be warned that every once in a while it will pop up here on the blog.

Cantina Time

I have really been thinking about Vintage Star Wars lately and going through my vintage toys as well. There is something about these first figures from the Star Wars Saga that really are special. It doesn't help with posts like the Empire Strikes Back Catalog at Yesterville Toy Room or this awesome collection of R2 Units and Original 12 at Doc Atomic's Attic of Astounding Artifacts. To date these two post are among my favorites of any blog on the whole world wide web. I do not know how many times I have revisited and re-read each.

Well, with that I thought I would wrap up my Cantina Buddies with my friend Snaggletooth here. I remember when these guts came out and was ecstatic to learn their names. Of course these are the names we knew them as, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Snaggletooth and Greedo. I always felt as a kid that they didn't try with Greedo's name. I realize he is mentioned by name in the movie and the others are not. Plus in fact they really didn't try with the others, I just though he needed a different name back then to match his Cantina counterparts. Weird huh?

He may not be blue, but I dig em!

Another thing while I'm on the subject. Vintage weapons were awesome. Plain, simple awesome. Sure I like the ultra detailed stuff we have today, but back then you lost a blaster you could steal one from a Stormtrooper and whoa la! New blaster goodness! I still do this today, Snaggletooth's Blaster was swiped from my Death Squad Commander (you can tell I'm an old schooler, cause I still call him a Death Squad Commander), which was probably swiped from a trooper long ago. You know I need to find an inexpensive source for vintage weapons so I can arm all my old buddies.



So, I just want to thank the master of the toy room from Yesterville and Ol' Doc from that Attic of Awesome for keeping that Vintage Vibe alive and Snaggletooh would like to raise a blaster in your honor!

May the Force Be With You

Hammer Time!

"My music hits me so hard, makes me say oh my lord, thank you for giving me a mind to rhyme and two log feet!"



I think this is the last of my Vintage Cantina dwellers, and it's my favorite of the bunch! Hammerhead, or as everyone calls him nowadays, Momaw Nadon. You know, I realize that at some point George Lucas thought, we need to name these characters, or someone did, anyway it seems they put more effort into the original Star Wars characters that the newer ones. Momaw Nadon just sounds cool, Elan Sleazebaggano (from Episode II) just sounds like you couldn't think of anything. Really, this poor guy's name is Sleazebaggano, no kidding, and he is like a sleaze bag, surprising enough, that hangs out in a bar. I would much rather hang out with my man Momaw in a bar.

(ed. I forgot I still have my Snaggletooth, coming soon to a blog near you!)



Okay, back to the toy. No one new the cantina patrons names, except poor Greedo, back in the day so they received names like Snaggletooth, Walrusman, and Hammerhead. Which was cool by me, and to tell you the truth I still refer to him as Hammerhead. What I think is cool is that the vintage figure is pretty close to the build of how he is portrayed in the modern line. Of course he's not wearing screen accurate garb, but no one cared back then, it was just cool to have this freaky looking guy!

"Later player!"

"He don't like you..."

He'll always be Walus Man to me, I know his real name is Ponda Boba, but he didn't go by that until 1989!

"Wally" would get so drunk that he would try to take his flippers off and run across the hot sands of Tatooine. Thank goodness he wore that orange leotard over his pants, making it too difficult to strip down all the way or we would be chasing a walrus looking dude all over the place trying to stop him from making a fool of himself.



We never could figure out why he wore those flipper boots, I mean he had normal feet, he kept telling us "They're hip, man" and "The chick's dig em".



His look never really caught on, he wasn't as dapper as Greedo, he eventually lost the web footed look and went with a really cool jacket, then someone went an lopped his arm off.


"Stay Cool!"

Another Buddy from the Bin

I've been sorting through my toy bins, it's time to really thin out the collection, and came across another old buddy. Greedo was one of my old drinking buddies back in the day, he always new how to dress to impress.



Dig his color coordination, those greens really bring out his skin tones. I ran across a few of my other bar room buddies from back in the day on Tatooine and will be posting them in the future.



It's good to see these guys come out in the daylight every once in a while instead of our usual hangout. Going to seem weird, but when I was a kid I had the 45 record of the Cantina Band Song and I played it non stop on a little record player I kept out back of a card board Star Wars bar I fashioned out of an old box and some scrap. My drinking buddies and I would hang out and swap stories of smugglers, starships and the Kessel Run, 12 parsecs! Paaaaalease, we were talking about doing it in half that time.

Firestorm DCUC Style!

Something old, something new or Now vs. Then, I haven't decided on a feature title yet. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Here's a shot of the new DCUC Firestorm. You've seen him by now numerous times all over the web. I just got mine so that is one reason I'm throwing him up on the blog.



The second is I wanted to show a side by side with Kenner's Super Powers Firestorm. While the DCUC has articulation coming out the Wazoo and the cool transparent fire feature, I think the paint is a little more sloppy and for some reason I'm digging the Super Power's design on the figure's chest more.



Plus take a look at how the design lines up on the back of each figure. Now I do not know enough about Firestorm to determine which is more character accurate, but my design side is liking the Super Powers solution way more than the DCUC version. Still I think it's sweet that Mattel is bringing these more articulated versions out and that wouldn't (and didn't) stop me from buying this guy or more of the DCUC.

Vintage Jedi - Ol' Ben

You thought Yoda was in pretty good condition! This is my original Obi Wan Kenobi from the 1978 Kenner Star Wars line, with original saber I might add. I remember needing to get this figure to train my Luke figure, but that was probably it, he was much too old and frail to combat the evil Empire at the time. I would have to say that at that time Old Ben was not my most favorite of characters from the movie, but as time goes on he has become one of my top ones. Funny how things change when you get older.

He has become so much my favorite that when I sat down to check out the recent Family Guy Blue Harvest episode I was really offended at how he was portrayed in the show. Now I'm not an old stick in the mud, I can handle Family Guy in doses, but a show that's whole gimmick is "that's like the time (insert funny moment in pop culture here)" kind of gets old. Back to Kenobi, as I'm sure to have made some Family Guy fans upset, I think it goes back to what one of my readers has said about respecting our Jedi Masters as little kids, and to me Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda are really the two I think of when you mention Jedi masters.

I will say that I really love the simplicity of vintage toys sometimes, the articulation and paint applications are basic, but just enough to spring board that imagination. I don't think I ever wished my toys could hold numerous poses as a kid, okay maybe it would have been nice if the Stormtroopers didn't look like they were handing you their blaster when you posed them, but that's all part of the appeal of these vintage figures. I really dig today's figures as well, but you can't beat these originals for what they are, fun toys.

Vintage Jedi - Lil' Yoda

I thought it would be fun to throw up some of my "Vintage Jedi". I have a handful in various conditions, one of my favorites and probably in the best condition is none other than the Original Jedi Master himself, Yoda! This would be my original Yoda by the way, not a purchase from a toy show or flea market. I have probably only bought two vintage figures that way, the rest in my collection are all O.G. baby!

For the life of me I can not figure out how this little guy made it to the present day with out losing all his accessories. I'm lucky to have maybe five blasters left from my original figures, but Yoda here must have used the force or something to hold on to his cane, belt, and snake. Also looking at the photo I can say this is by far the best Yoda figure Kenner / Hasbro ever made.

I mean look at that kind , all knowing expression on his face. They do not make Yodas like this anymore. Nowadays they all have this fierce look on their face, waving a little green lightsaber around, jumping around and doing what looks like a Jedi floor routine for the intergalactic olympics while they stab Clonetroopers. I guess I'm a sucker for the kinder, gentler Yoda. As a kid I had no problem with Yoda not needing a lightsaber, he pretty much showed he was powerful when he lifted that X-Wing out of the swamp, that was proof enough for me that he could hold his own in any situation without resorting to a weapon. Did I miss the message of the Yoda from Empire Strikes Back? "Wars not make one great."

Epic Force Stormtrooper

This week's Stormtrooper (SOTW: Week 15) is the Kenner (now Hasbro) Epic Force Stormtrooper. The Epic Force line could almost be considered the starting point for the Unleashed Series that Hasbro is currently running. The exception is that these figures are not posed in "extreme" action poses, they are more or less in your standard character movie poses. The Stormtrooper here is again represented in that classic shooting stance that you see through out the original trilogy and movie still photos for packaging and advertisement. The iconic Stormtrooper stance.

Standing at about six and a half inches tall this figure is a fairly good representation of the Stormtrooper. Limited in articulation, the head turns and arms are slightly re-position-able, these are mainly for display and not so much for play, which knocks the play value down quit a bit. Another knock for the kids would be that the figure is permanently attached to the base. One cool feature, wether or not it is kept in the package, is that you are able to view the figure in the round. The base includes a little gear driven turntable, by turning the small disk built into the back of the base the figure will rotate giving you a 360 degree view of the sculpt. If you decide to keep it all boxed up this feature is accessible through the packaging.

Released in 1998 and part of the Star Wars: The Power of the Force line of Toys, this trooper is joined by Boba Fett, C-3PO, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia.

Kenner's Superpowers Firestorm

I'm not sure what it is about this costume or character that I like, but I always thought this was a cool figure. this represents one of the few Kenner Superpowers figures that I own (The other two being Batman and Robin). I never really considered myself a Superpowers collector, but I truly love this line of toys. I am always on the look out for a decent Joker, Flash, and Aquaman.

Firestorm here, while not one of my most favorite of heroes, does hold a special place in my collection. Not only because of the cool costume but because he was one of the first action figures I purchased open from a comic shop, purchased open from anywhere really at the time. This was way before Ebay was all the rage, maybe even before toy collecting became so big.

I would frequent a group of comic shops one of them being an up and coming shop called Heroes and Fantasies. Heroes and Fantasies is now a chain of shops in the city, and has kind of lost it's way since it's inception in my opinion. Anyway, I had seen this figure on a few of my trips there and after about a month of thinking about it, I purchased him for eight bucks. At the time I thought that was a little pricey, now just a drop in the bucket.

Firestorm is from a time when action figures really meant action. Each of the Superpowers toys had a great built in action feature, Firestorm's is a punching action. Along with the action features, this line also had comic and cartoon tie-ins and featured some of the greatest mix of DC Superheroes and Villains to date. Standing at about 3 3/4 inches tall this is one of the best lines as far as hiding the mechanisms in such a compact and well executed form. To me these figures still stand the test of time as far as look and playability, even compared to all the super articulation of today. This line is by far a shining example of the right amount of articulation, gimmick, character mix, and marketing can produce.

One of the first toy guides to surface on line was created by Jason Geyer and features an amazing look into the different series of figures, playsets, vehicles, and behind the scenes prototypes. I recommend checking this site out if you have the time, as it is one of the few that is the most comprehensive in it's field on the subject of Superpowers.

Lil' Trooper

Wow! Has it already been a week? Talk about losing track of time. Well I've been very busy at work and at home. Work we are preparing for the increase in Spider-Man 3 movie merchandise and at home I'm completing some yard projects.

Anyway onto the Trooper of the week! This guy actually came out a few months before the trooper from last week, kind of a filler product if you will. He's a small die cast piece put out by Kenner (which is now Hasbro) about the size of a walnut (or if you've been reading, a hair under a Jawa on the Utini Scale), and was branded under the banner of Action Masters. The line contained some of the space and superhero licenses that Kenner had at the time; Star Wars, Aliens, Superman, and Batman to name a few.

This little guy was one of several Star Wars characters represented, including Darth Vader, C3-PO, R2-D2, and I believe Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and ol' Ben Kenobi.