Good old original Luke Skywalker! A fabulous figure in its day, and one the 6 year-old me simply adored :-D. Mind you, even back then as a child, I marveled at the stupidity of a saber tip that broke if you so much as looked at it! Not that mine did, because I was a good boy that looked after his figures (if sadly not the packaging, which was looked after by the dustman), and at the end of every play session, carefully removed sabers from arms and placed them, along with all other weapons and non-attached accessories, into a small orange plastic snap-shut box for safe-keeping. And that ladies and gentlemen, is how I never lost a single weapon ;-)
But back to Luke! Of course as an adult collector, I am now fully aware of the double-telescoping history of the figure and hence (up to a point!) why the non-double-telescoping version of the saber is the ridiculous shape that it is. I say up to a point, because quite frankly it didn't exactly take Nostradamus to foresee that leaving a much thinner tip to the saber could only result in most of them bending and or snapping off! Kenner could and really should have known better and altered the design... except that I imagine it was probably cheaper to change the mould from that used to make the double-telescoping sabers into that for the saber we all know, rather than redesigning it into something more robust. I don't know this for a fact, but since money usually talks, I imagine that was the primary motivator.
Anyway, Luke! There are lots of variants to be had on Luke, and perhaps strangely for a collector like me that clearly loves the vintage toys, I personally, whilst completely respecting those collectors for whom they are grail items, have never been all that taken with the double-telescoping saber figures. This is perhaps just as well, since originals cost an absolute fortune these days (when you can find them), and it is for this reason alone that a set of Revalve-it DT sabers crept into my collection years ago. I don't really regret buying them, but neither do I feel it appropriate to display them in my main figure cabinet any longer, as they were the only things in there that weren't vintage originals, so out they've had to come. I only include the DT Luke here because the figure itself is a different COO from the others, so if the repro saber offends your sensibilities, I beg your forgiveness on this occasion and ask that you focus on the figure itself instead of the fakery protruding from his arm.
As for the variants themselves, I have a mix of different hair, leg and eye colours, including light brown, dark brown and very dark brown hair Lukes. Sadly I have no ginger haired Luke farmboy (and given the current prices of those, I doubt I ever will), but I do have a pleasing Palitoy 12 back reseal comprised of all original parts that I resealed myself.
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