Welcome back, my toy-dusty friends!
As you remember, we’re discussing the six new 2018 Star Wars “Vintage Collection” figures.
Yeah, I opened most of them. Couldn’t resist!
Before we talk about the figures themselves, first a little history. This isn’t the first time Hasbro released new figures in vintage style packaging.
Let’s rewind to 2004.
A handful of characters were released with all new sculpts with vintage packaging, and they were called “The Original Trilogy Collection.” Here’s two of them:
And then in 2006, five more figures were produced with the vintage packaging, and they were part of “The Saga Collection.” Here’s two of those:
Inside each “Saga Collection” figure package was a sticker, unique to that figure, and an order form. If you collected all five of these figures and put each of the five stickers on the form, you could send it to Hasbro for a free George Lucas in Stormtrooper Disguise figure. This Lucas figure was never available in stores and could only be obtained through this, as Hasbro called it, “Ultimate Galactic Hunt.”
And, uh, I may know someone who did this…
Later, from 2010 to 2013, Hasbro produced “The Vintage Collection” which included characters from all six Star Wars movies in the vintage style packaging. This was the first time any of the prequel figures received the vintage package treatment. According to jedibusiness.com there were 115 figures produced for this collection. Here’s three of them:
Again, the figures themselves were not vintage sculpts. For the above picture I included an original 1980s Hoth Luke and Wicket for comparison.
Also, in this line there were quite a few characters that had never been made before, and sometimes this would be advertised with “Character Debut” stickers, as seen above.
During this run of figures, Hasbro really outdid themselves by creating a vintage looking Boba Fett figure in the vintage packaging that you could send away for if you bought five other Star Wars figures. This was another one that was never available in stores. It’s pictured below, and I included my original 1979 Boba Fett figure (released the year before The Empire Strikes Back as a mystery character) for comparison.
As you can see, these figures are very similar. This is the closest Hasbro has come to releasing an original Star Wars Kenner figure sculpt with original packaging. But it’s not 100% the same. The new one has a rocket-firing backpack. And Hasbro was actually making good on a promise made by Kenner over 30 years ago.
In the 1970s Kenner had advertised the original Boba Fett figure as having a rocket-shooting backpack, but due to safety concerns at the time, the figure ended up without one.
Since then, rocket firing toys have become common, and Hasbro, having purchased Kenner in 1991, decided to release a vintage looking Boba Fett figure as originally advertised with the rocket-firing backpack!
As mentioned above, The Vintage Collection came to an end in 2013.
But now, five years later, The Vintage Collection returns with six gems!
Now that we have the history lesson out of the way, we’re FINALLY ready to discuss the six new figures…
Oh my, look at the word count.
This post is getting too long, so we’ll discuss these six figures tomorrow.
I promise!
