You
have to be impressed with what the marketing folks in the late
seventies did with Boba Fett. He was a character that none
of us knew anything about, yet we all thought he was the baddest
dude in the Star Wars universe.
He showed up in the
holiday special.
He was one of the first mail away figures. And he got a
large size figure. All of this before "The Empire Strikes
Back" was even released.
Large size figure you ask? Kenner knew
that boys would want Star Wars Dolls, so their line that was more
in scale with the GI Joes of the day was dubbed Large Size Action
Figures. Ironically, the Princess Leia included a brush and
booklet with hair styles if memory serves correct. The little
girl that lived next door had Leia, I had Luke and Han.
I have to say I've never held an IG-88 in my
hand. That said, I think it's a safe assumption that Boba
Fett had to be the coolest of the large size figures.
Appearance:
The strange thing is that I remember as a kid the regular and
large size Boba Fetts being the most movie like figures. I
think there is just so many little details about his costume that
compared to a character like a Stormtrooper, it's easy to think,
"Wow is he detailed." This was in the days before
the Internet. It was hard to compare this little bit of minutiae or
that doodad to the film, because there just weren't pictures and
screen captures available.
My Boba came out of storage not that long ago. the thing
that struck me was how little detail he actually had. The
sculpt is fairly soft by today's standards and some of the detail
that is there is just off. I have to say I was a bit
surprised. Here was a figure I remembered as one of the
coolest ever, and now he looks a bit like a knock off.
Boba's mainly a green body with gray arms and legs. There
isn't a a terrible amount of paint detail on the body and limbs.
A little yellow for the knee pads and undersized shoulder
pieces. The gauntlets are red and yellow.
The helmet sits on top of a neck that's just a little too long.
For the most part it looks like the Boba Fett we've all come to
know. The most recognizable feature of Boba's helmet is
missing however, the big dent in the front.
That's actually something that is missing from the entirety of
this Boba Fett figure. Battle Damage. Boba wasn't like
his pop, he seemed to like his armor to look like it was scuffed
up and mismatched. Must be some sort of Mandalorian grunge
movement. This figure represent Boba in more of a pristine
condition. No wear on the helmet or scuffs on the
painted areas.
One of the cooler pieces of this Boba Fett figure is the rocket
pack. Is it is screen accurate? No. But for the
era this figure comes from it's close enough. The pack has
almost as many colors as the rest of the figure, and for the most
part looks pretty close to the screen version except for the
missile.
That projectile is different because it's made into action
feature in this figure. Apparently, Kenner wanted kids
to believe this was a grappling hook of sorts. There's a
line that goes through the pack. This would allow Boba to
swoop along the line.
BF also has a separate molded belt with pouches and other
details sculpted on. All things considered, it's not bad.
There is a cloth cape to go over one shoulder. I've never
figured out what that's for. My guess is it's a left over
from the concept drawing of Fett with a poncho type thing on.
A word of caution for the vintage collector. The elastic
on my cape is badly deteriorated. Only one of the two
loops is style fully attached and neither of them have any
elasticity left. Also, the rubber pieces for the jets on the
pack and missile have yellowed a bit.
Boba Fett comes with a pistol. The pistol has an attached
shoulder loop. I have no idea any more if this is even close
to Boba's Empire weapon. I'm guessing it's not. It
does match some publicity photos out there. The thing
is that when it's hanging from his shoulder it doesn't reach his
hand. You have to kind of loop it near his elbow.
Overall, it's a wussy gun for the galaxy's most feared bounty
hunter.
I have to admit my Boba isn't complete. I'm apparently
missing the Wookie braids that originally came with him.
They were a couple of braided strands of brownish and blondish
nylon type stuff with a bead to hold them on the figure. I'm
not sure, but these could still be in storage somewhere waiting to
be discovered.
His appearance isn't terrible, just not as screen accurate as I
remember thinking as a kid. The last glaring example
of this is the scale of the figure. He stands a good inch or
two above the Han Solo figure. As a kid I didn't care.
As a "collector" today I would be upset. But, keeping in
mind the era, he's not too bad. This was the same period of
time when Steve Austin had cartoon bionics under a roll up rubber
sleve.
I was going to digitally add some color to Boba to show
what could have been with this figure when I came across this
tidbit when doing some research for this review. It's a
fully painted
prototype of this Boba Fett figure at the Star Wars Collectors
Archive. While it's not as detailed as say the recent
Medicom version (Check out Michael Crawfords Review
here), it's
still pretty cool. Check out the burn mark on the cape.
Fun:
The Large Size line was a bit odd. The heroes (Han,
Luke, Leia) were similar to other dolls of the day with removable
outfits. The remainder of the line were basically scaled up
versions of the smaller figures. The articulation was
limited to cut joints at the neck, shoulders and hips.
In contrast to that, Boba Fett had ball jointed shoulders,
elbows and knees. This makes him the most posable in the
line and capable of a lot more action than say Luke or Han.
One other small point of articulation was the range finder on his
helmet rotated 180 degrees as well.
The range finder brings us to the next "action feature."
The bionic eye. Okay, it's not a bionic eye but basically
the same as the eye on the Six Million Dollar man figure.
You could theoretically peer in a tiny hole in the back of Boba's
helmet and see what he was looking at. Pretty nifty stuff,
huh?
The last little piece of detailing had was a bit of an action
feature as well. The stripes on the left side of his chest
were a small lenticular piece that changed the red stripe from top
to bottom. I can give you no reason for this especially
since the woefully small sword logo on the other side is a decal
and the skull is completely missing from the shoulder pad.
You can definitely tell that Kenner went for broke trying to
make the large size Boba Fett an "action figure." Boba Fett
reminds me more of the Six Million Dollar Man line mentioned above
than the Star Wars line. You have to think this was an
effort to save the line from cancellation.
I recently came across a commercial on YouTube for the large
size Boba Fett. You can really seem them playing up all the
features. Do you think they knew at the time he'd only have
a few minutes of screen time and 3 or 4 lines in the film?
Overall:
Now,
this isn't the best representation of Boba Fett in the world.
This isn't even the most articulated version of Boba Fett.
However, at the time he was released, he was. You have to
wonder how much the hype and packaging for this figure and his
associated 3 3/4" figure have had to do with Boba Fett's enduring
success. I know a lot of what I use to think about Boba was
influenced by it.
If you think about it, he doesn't really have a
huge role in the film. His whole "brilliant" capture of Solo
was basically a bit of luck. And don't even get me started
on his sail barge performance in Episode 6.
So the lesson is this. If you want to be a
famous bounty hunter, get good PR and marketing people behind you.