Dumb Question - Palitoy vs Kenner

[sith-smith]

It hard sometimes not to look back on things we think we saw/felt and realise that things we remember are jaded somewhat by recent knowledge. I'm fairly certain the large head Han was something I saw as kid...bit thinking again, I'm wondering if it was at a carboot sale in my early 20's!!

I remember seeing a rebel base for sale in the local toyshop as a kid, probably late 70's.

However it was almost certainly an imported Kenner deathstar...pity I didn't get it back then!

 

[Snaketibe]

I remember the large head Han Solo very well as a child because I didn't want one! Not being a very wealthy 6-year old, and with Star Wars being somewhat popular as I recall (and with a LOT of sweets needing to be bought from Mrs Drury's Sweet Shop with my pocket money, if I'm honest!), the figures flew out of Ware Toy Shop like rockets! It took me ages to get all 12 and by the time I actually found a Han for sale it was the inflated head version (and to this day, I still cannot fathom how anyone at Kenner could possibly have thought that monstrosity was an improvement over the small headed one!). My friends all had the small head version and it looked pretty much like Harrison Ford (well OK, it had a centre parting ;-) ), unlike Mr Balloon Head, and so it was the small head version that I wanted too. God knows how many Palitoy 12-back large head Han Solos I had left sitting on the shelf by the time Empire came out, but not having a time-machine to find out just how rare that figure would eventually become in the future, all I cared about was getting my sticky little hands on the version that didn't look crap! In the end I did a swap with my brother's friend who had the unimaginable good fortune to own two (yes, count them, TWO!) small head Han Solo figures! Imagine that, ladies and gentlemen, if you will and if you can! The exact specifics of the transaction have blurred somewhat in my memory since, but I do know it involved at least one stormtrooper, and that I walked away with the small headed prize that I wanted, a few months late to be sure, but I didn't care :mrgreen:

 

[lee gray]

I still can remember when I got a bespin guard on a kenner card and remember it well as i had been use to seeing palitoy and the figure was glossy and I thought it was a new company making the figures replacing palitoy and somehow seemed cheaper because of it, only in the 90s did I find out that kenner was actually the main toy company.

 

[Hod10]

I get a buzz from both, I get the most nostalgia from the Palitoy logoless cards and I'm not sure why exactly (more of them in my hands at the time probably). I have some vague memory of the Palitoy logo being on some, maybe. I had R2-D2 with sensorscope and C-3PO with fixed limbs bought me at the same time so the shelves in shops were very mixed late 1982 onwards. My memory is a mixed bag basically. A lot were Kenner and had the Palitoy sticker which I tried to peel off in the hope I could see more ships etc. I had Dengar as a mail away I think (Palitoy) and I remember my mum trying to mail away for Ackbar (Kenner) and they sent me 4-Lom instead which I already had, Palitoy said in an accompanying note that they had ran out of stock for Ackbar, so not quite sure what had gone on there. They didn't ask questions I had to lump it.

 

[sith-smith]

I remember when I was a kid that all my figures were Palitoys until right near the end (when we seemed to get flooded with Kenner stuff). One of the things that stood out as a kid was that Kenner stuff seemed to be of worse quality. I don't know whether this was objectively true or not, but I do remember that most kids seemed to think so and we all genuinely though that Kenner stuff was a knock off Taiwan import or something.

Does anyone else remember this and is it reflected in actual quality in the vSW figures?

I thought exactly the same. I was familiar with knock off toys as my dad worked in the toy industry and used to point out how some of my toy soldiers were copies.

The first Kenner carded figure I remember seeing was a Han - with a large head. My childhood one was the small head version. So I naturally assumed it was cheap foreign knock off.

I can't remember if I gave up on that though later on as a lot of my ROTJ cards were Kenner!

 

[edd_jedi]

I can't quantify it because I'm not a variant collector, but as a MOC collector I have always thought I could notice a difference between the actual figures on Kenner and Palitoy cards. Kenner figures seemed to use duller and more matte paints, Palitoy figures were more glossy and quite often poorly applied (sloppy.) But whether there is any truth to that I don't know. I just remember vividly how different a Kenner ESB Han Solo figure was to the trilogo one I already owned. Noticed it with various Luke Bespin MOCs too.