Kenner Star Wars Luke vintage

[drquest]

This always bothered me as a kid.... Why did the Episode IV Kenner Luke come with a yellow saber? He clearly had a blue one in the movie. Let's move forward to ESB, and the Bespin Luke has another yellow one! I believe the 12" Kenner Luke had a blue saber, but Ben had the yellow saber??

[starsky]

yes i noticed that as well! i think someone at kenner may have goofed!!

[palitoy]

I guess it's probably related to the slap dash manner of how quickly they had to get those out. That or they had some sort of Toyetic explanation, I've never heard it but maybe because they wanted everyone to have a different colour of blade?

Didn't Luke and Ben both have blue light sabers in the film?

Let's not forget these:

[Mikey]

Perhaps when the toy details were being hashed out the movie post production was not done yet - leaving the lightsabre color anyone's guess.

[Werewolf]

Kenner had to do a lot of fill in the blanks with artistic license. They based the toys on unfinished effects, early concept art and B&W photos. Check out the first SW posters, Luke's light saber blade was yellow and white.

[Hedji]

Ben's saber is yellow on his 12 back card art too.





I had and loved that yellow inflatable saber.

[Werewolf]

Here's a clip on the making of the light saber effects. Before rotoscoping in the color, all the blades were glowing yellow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIefj6dOhnM

[drquest]

Yeah I can buy it that Kenner was looking at pre-production stuff, but by the time ESB came out, everyone knew what color light saber he was using by then.

[palitoy]

Check out the first SW posters, Luke's light saber blade was yellow and white.

HA! Winner! It's even on the package. That's a terrific theory.

[Werewolf]

Yeah I can buy it that Kenner was looking at pre-production stuff, but by the time ESB came out, everyone knew what color light saber he was using by then.

Back then 100 percent movie accuracy wasn't a really big deal for children's toys. The blasters were black in the movie but molded in a blue/green for the figures.

By ROTJ they had changed Luke Jedi's Lightsaber to Empire blue and even later on made a running change to correct it to Jedi green.

[Klosterheim]

I loved the Bespin Luke yellow lightsaber because it had the handle and it was a decent length and thickness.

Aside from safety, I don't know why lightsabers used to have the bendy thin tip.

Did prefer Ben's blue one at the time.

Colors don't seem to matter in the toy world, unless used to be more attractive.

Star Trek phasers were light blue instead of black and grey.

Klingons didn't carry phasers, but had red ones.

[Nostalgiabuff]

my understanding was that they only had black and white photos to base the toys on. I surmise that for empire they just kept with the flow and did not care about accuracy

[EmergencyIan]

Back then, it always bothered me that the x-wing fighter Luke had dark brown hair! I remember going through the pegs looking for one with blonde hair. LOL

- Ian

[drquest]

I just found it funny that even by the time they got to Empire Strikes Back they still had the wrong light saber for Luke.

[cjefferys]

Back then, it always bothered me that the x-wing fighter Luke had dark brown hair! I remember going through the pegs looking for one with blonde hair. LOL

- Ian

It bugged me too at the time, but I've since read that the black part is supposed to be his raised visor, not his hair. But in the movie, his helmet visor is a translucent yellow, so who knows!


I just always wondered why the large size Luke and Ben had reversed light saber colors compared to the small Luke and Ben.