The Vintage Collection Grail Series Should Continue With The POTF Anakin

Posted by Chris on 05/17/22 at 07:05 AM Category: Vintage Collection

https://www.banthaskull.com/images/news/potf_anakin_grail.jpg

The "Grail Series" is now three figures deep. We've gotten modern releases of the Rocket Firing Boba Fett, POTF Yak Face and Droids Boba Fett. Those are three of the rarest vintage Kenner items. You can count the Ebay supply of all three on one hand. As I've said many times, I actually wouldn't want to own the real thing of any of those. It's too much money tied up in something imminently fragile. There's a certain degree of stress with trying to preserve and curate something that was never intended to last.

I once had an extremely high grade 12-Back A Han Solo, but I realized that I literally had thousands of dollars riding on a forty year old piece of adhesive tape keeping the blaster secured to the side of the bubble. If it gave free, and the blaster started rattling around the bottom of the bubble, the value would have been nearly halved. That's not for me. I want to be able to display and appreciate my collectibles. That is why I very much enjoy when Hasbro releases modern replicas of these inaccessible vintage Kenner holy grails.

I don't want to see this unofficial subset of the Vintage Collection stop any time soon. There's certainly a few more to get to, but I would argue that the POTF Anakin Skywalker figure should be next. The figure itself is not rare, as it was a mail away for the 1984 line, but packaged 1985 Power of the Force samples are rarer than funny sitcoms. The trick is that the modern figure would need to have a Sebastian Shaw likeness, and it remains to be seen if Disney would allow this. I know I'm in the minority here, but I would be fine using the translucent body from 2007's TAC 30-45 Anakin Skywalker's Spirit figure. The POTF '85 figure was clearly intended to be sourced to Return of the Jedi, and we only see Ani as a ghost on-screen. Plus, a middle-aged physical Anakin Skywalker would make no sense.

The fact that the 1984 figure wasn't a "spirit" figure was assuredly due to Kenner limitations at the time, and you all know how I feel about fixing Kenner "mistakes.”