We Still Need Another Bespin Guard To Satisfy The O96 Requirements

Jerry Seinfeld has a joke about morning guy and night guy. Night guy constantly makes decisions for which morning guy has to pay the consequences. Night guy stays up too late and morning guy is tired all day. Night guy drinks too much and morning guy wakes up with a hangover. Similarly, the Kenner of the late 70's and 80's constantly made decisions that created conflicts for the Hasbro's modern Vintage Collection. This typically comes in the form of either blatant figure inaccuracies or figure and card conflicts. We've already seen this play out once.

Take the example of the vintage Rebel Soldier (Hoth Battle Gear):


The figure is what is commonly referred to as the Echo Base Deck Officer, and the card art shows the Hoth Rebel Soldier. These are two completely distinct characters. Vintage Kenner didn't care about issues such as this. Heck, they wholly invented Walrus Man and Hammerhead from the neck down. The modern Vintage Collection is about getting as close to perfection as possible. This conflict was solved by splitting the vintage Rebel Soldier (Hoth Battle Gear) into two releases: VC68 - Rebel Soldier (Echo Base Battle Gear) and VC120 - Rebel Soldier (Hoth):


One release gets us the vintage Kenner figure, and the other release gets us the vintage Kenner card. We have this same exact situation with the recently announced Helder Spinoza figure. This represents what is referred to as the "mustachioed" vintage Kenner Bespin Guard:


The figure is clearly Helder Spinoza as identified by the distinctive horseshoe mustache. The card, however, is a completely different Bespin Guard named Pedar Solardo who sports a full beard. Per Sr. Product Designer Emily Cantelupe's quote on Galactic Figures, this Vintage Collection release for Helder is getting a new card design:

In order to more accurately portray this character, we’ve also given him a new cardback image which more accurately matches Helder.

This is 110% the correct approach. Modern figure releases should strive for as much accuracy as possible instead of duplicating Kenner mistakes, but this does leave a gap as far as the vintage Kenner card is concerned. I hope we get a third release of this Bespin Guard sculpt at some point for Pedar Solardo to go along with the announced Helder Spinoza and Isdam Edian.

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