"Screen accurate" Snowspeeder Pilot Luke
I know what many of you who are reading this may be thinking: "But Hasbro already nailed this figure". For the most part they did, in fact they executed this figure almost perfectly twice with the Legacy Snowspeeder Luke and the Vintage Dagobah Landing Luke. Despite those two superb figures execution there are some colors that are off from the film, at least on the standard Snowspeeder version. Take a look at the ESB still image below of Luke by his crashed Snowspeeder, notice how the pants are a dark orange and the top coat is the lighter orange.
The Legacy Snowspeeder Luke was molded entirely in the lighter orange, the Dagaobah Landing Luke was molded in a much darker orange that gave it the appearance of being wet. Taking the legs and head from the Vintage Dagaobah Landing Luke and swapping them with the Legacy Snowspeeder Luke's legs and head will allow the OCD driven screen accurate collectors to make the Ultimate Snowspeeder Luke. Place both of them in very warm water to soften the plastic and you will be able to swap the parts. (Disclaimer: Please, do not pull a McDonalds coffee customer move and burn yourself. Fun Fact: Hot water is hot so use some caution and common sense while handling it!) Here is the end result:
Medical Frigate Luke Skywalker
This is a really quick head swap mod to make the Legacy Medical Frigate Luke Skywalker more screen accurate and consistent with the rest of your collection. I am a huge stickler for having the same film era head sculpts on my main heroes. In fact more so than ever as Hasbro has been nailing the main heroes heads like no tomorrow. The head included on the regular Medical Frigate release was pretty nice but pales in comparison to the Dagobah Landing Luke head. That figure sports has, in my opinion, the best ESB Mark Hamil likeness of every single Luke figure created. I attempted to swap heads with an extra Dagobah Luke I had in my cistoms bin and to my surprise the head fit perfectly! Not only that the skin tone matched perfectly as well. I absolutely love the end result and it made me appreciate the Medical Frigate Luke more.
SA Jedi Master Sora Bulq
Over the past few years Hasbro has made super articulation the standard, sometimes to the point of going overboard. Back in 2005-2006 we really saw this transition and an elevated attention to detail. One of my favorite figures from the Saga2 line was Sora Bulq the Weequay Jedi who turns to the Darkside after the Clone Wars begin. (FYI - I have made a lot of Darkside Customs of him and it would be a very easy redeco for Hasbro to make him without new tooling. See below for an example...) Sora's upper body is fantastic and the arms allow him to hold his Lightsaber with both hands better than most other Jedi figures. The sculpt is great and the only flaw would be his preposed legs. Interestingly enough the bulk of Sora Bulq (Pun intended) was reused with the Legacy Tarados Gon but they went back and upgraded the legs to be fully articulated. I do not see Sora being reissued or upgraded any time soon so I took matters into my own hands. When I purchased the new and flawless Vintage Kit Fisto. I sent the 2009 Target Geonosian Arena Kit Fisto to my custom chop shop. The upgraded legs on that figure are pretty close to the looks of Sora's so I decided to experiment and see if I could perform a pop/swap with the legs with zero dremmeling. Well, it worked and looks great! This is a great way to perfect a near perfect figure!
Here is one of my Dark Sora Bulq customs in reference to my comment above:
As you can see the "Little Differences" can make a big difference to your figures! Until next time!
