Updating POTF2: A New Hope

I find myself surprised at how many figures/accessories in POTF2 are still finding their way into my displays 25 years later...

I'm in the process of overhauling my collection, and I've begun taking a painstaking inventory of my POTF2 figures and toys. I would like to find a space to display all of the figures, even if they don't have a place in my screen-inspired dioramas. Since I am a completist, I don't want to have a bunch of my stuff in boxes anymore, so I'm working on getting them properly displayed.

For many years, most of my figures have been in some state of storage. They've mostly been in clear plastic shoeboxes, that I had gotten from The Container Store. I generally kept figures/accessories from certain scenes together per some theme (i.e. Hoth, Pilots, EU, Clone Wars, etc.). When I moved from NJ to Phoenix, I had everything in these storage bins, and I probably had something like 125 of them - and that's separate from the large boxes in which I kept all the ships, beasts, and playsets. It's all ridiculous, honestly, but I probably don't need to tell any of you that; if you're reading this you probably have similar issues. It's been a huge project setting all this up since I've moved into my house here. Once it's all done, I'm sure I'll post a whole thing about it later.

In the meantime, I am currently sorting through my POTF2-era stuff. The aforementioned shoe boxes are great, but I've opened, closed, dumped, sorted, re-sorted, dropped, lost, found, mixed, matched, broken, swapped, and generally put them through the ringer over the years, so the integrity of all the figures/accessories hasn't held up great. I wanted to makes sure I have full accountability of everything, making sure each figure has exactly every accessory it's supposed to have. Since our own figure galleries are incomplete here at Banthaskull, especially prior to The Saga Collection, I had to use some excellent resources out there - and I relied on two of them for this project. The first was Dan Curto's tremendous efforts over at Rebelscum (check out Chris's mini-tribute to Dan here). Not only did he take some great archival photography of almost every single 3.75" release in the early days, he specifically did an extremely useful accessory guide, that shows the many nuanced differences between sculpts of the same blaster or lightsaber, so you can see exactly which one of the variants goes with which figure. The second site I checked often was Galactic Figures, which has an outstanding catalog in which you can sort characters and filter by source or line, so you can see exactly how many variations of Tatooine Lukes were made.

Using these 2 resources (as well as our own whenever we got around to photographing a POTF2 era figure), I matched all my POTF2 figures to their proper accessories, and then put them in individual baggies so as not to lose anything. After spending a few hours a day for a week doing this, I have finally accounted for everything. I am missing a handful of accessories, which I should be able to rectify rather inexpensively, but it looks like I have at least one of every figure released in that line. It's an absurd amount of figures that Hasbro pumped out from 1995-early 2000 under the POTF2 banner. With the exception of the Mace Windu preview figure, everything was from the OT, with a handful of releases from early EU sources. I haven't gotten an exact count yet, but there's probably well over 200 unique figures.

This was a long intro, but I wanted to point out the figures that I can't fully retire, because they are stuck in my dioramas for some reason or another. Today, we'll take a quick look at figures from A New Hope. Most of these figures have a "but" attached to them as to why they are included, but a few have obviously just lacked an updated sculpt. So let's get going already...



1. Uncle Owen - This figure was re-released in 2008's TLC Lars Homestead. It was a lackluster set that had great potential if Hasbro had chosen to invest in updates to Owen and Beru. As it is, I try to use the home itself in as much photography as I can. Anyway, technically, I could trash this POTF2 Owen in favor of the one from TLC, but for all intents and purposes, they are identical, so I'll say this figure was never really updated. As such, he's stuck in my non-bootleg sandcrawler scene.

2. Aunt Beru - almost the same situation as above, but worse. The one that was re-released with the Homestead set did not include the pitcher and cup of blue milk. So that prevents me from even pretending I can get rid of this figure.

3. ASP-7 - Purists probably hate this figure, because the character was added to the Special Edition. Nevertheless, it is now part of the film, and Hasbro has never revisited it. It's probably near the bottom of most people's want list, but as long as it's the lone version of the ASP droid, it's got a place on my shelf.

4. Muftak - Never been updated. I admit that an update isn't anywhere on my radar either, but it's kind of a bad figure. It's not embarrassingly stupid looking, but if the line was robust enough, it would be nice to get an update.

5. Wuher - Okay, the figure was updated just enough in 2004 OTC with a major upgrade to the paint, as well as eliminating the ultra-annoying sculpted glass into a separate accessory. That's good enough to be able to dump POTF2 Wuher - or is it? The POTF2 version came with the droid detector. So I need that piece in my display. Now all of this should be rendered moot when we get the Haslab Cantina, but until then...

6. Lak Sivrak - This guy was almost erased by the SE, but he's still there. Hasbro has never revisited this figure. It's very clearly styled as classic POTF2, so he does look somewhat out of place in my Cantina, but I can't get rid of him.

7. Takeel - As Chris has explained repeatedly, we have 4 Snivvian characters from the Cantina, but only 2 of them were on screen in ANH: Zutton and Takeel. The others were Zutmore, who was with Ackmena in The Holiday Special and Blue Snaggletooth - who really never existed in the first place. He was just a Kenner construct/mistake, and he's become part of the lore. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, there was a Blue Snags in TCW, so while nameless as of now, he does exist in the canon! Anyway, while we have an outstanding Zutton, Takeel is still stuck in POTF2-Land, and my Cantina would be less complete without him.

8. Kabe - Kabe was re-released in 2006 (TSC) with a very subtle change in paint apps, but is essentially a repack. The first Kobe was packed together with Muftak, so if you buy the set, you can use both. Alternatively, if you used the TSC version, that one was packed with Nabrun Leids. (Mr. Leids escapes this list because his repaint was a significant enough upgrade to make it a replacement. However, like Wuher, we'll get a new and awesome one in about a year with the Haslab Cantina, so I can scrap both.)

9. Luke Skywalker - This version of Tatooine Luke came with a helmet/blast shield accessory that he uses on board the Falcon when he gets his first Force training. Unless I'm forgetting something, this is the only blast shield helmet accessory in the 3.75" line. So while we are getting a new Tatooine Luke, we'll have to wait for inevitable deluxe version or somesuch to get a new helmet. Until then...

EDIT: Yes! I am forgetting something...as a few of you pointed out, the helmet came with a TLC battle pack, Training on the Falcon. So I can safely ditch this figure - if I ever purchased that set. It was full of repacks so I may have passed on it at the time.

10. Luke Skywalker - After I took the photograph for this article, I remembered that the recent Obi-Wan 3-pack included another T-16 toy, which would technically replace this one (even though it's the same), but I still need this specific figure for the carbon scraper tool accessory. EDIT: Corrected! As several of you have pointed out, I've bamboozled myself because I had included this very POTF2 T-16 accessory in the photographs I took of the OWK 3-pack with Teeka the Jawa. Sigh. Well, then, both the scraper and the toy are necessary to keep around from 25 years ago...

I believe that's every POTF2 figure from ANH that I still need to keep around in my displays because they haven't been properly upgraded, or because they come with some accessory that has yet to be included in later lines. If I missed anything, let me know in the comments.

Tomorrow, I'll take a look at ESB/ROTJ.

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