Luke Skywalker - OTC - Basic (OTC #26)

The Rebel hero Luke Skywalker interrupts his Jedi training with Yoda to fly to the Cloud City of Bespin, to rescue his friends who have been captured by the evil Imperial leader, Darth Vader. As he fights to free his friends, Luke battles Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel and discovers that this terrible villain is, in fact, his own father.

They may have not been all perfect, but one character Hasbro made interesting for both kids and collectors in the 3.75” with each successive release is Luke Skywalker from Episode V, wearing his “Bespin Fatigues”. Every time Hasbro tackled this particular version of Luke Skywalker from the ground up, they either achieved a great likeness, or they added some really cool features that were screen accurate. When it came time for The Original Trilogy Collection to commemorate the released of the Original Trilogy on DVD, Hasbro had quite a few “Luke Skywalker (Bespin Fatigues)” action figures under their belt. Obviously they would go with the most recent sculpt, and that’s exactly what they did. So they dusted off the tooling of 2002’s SW Luke Skywalker (Bespin Duel) (‘02 #29), cast the figure for the second time and gave him an all-new (and perhaps more accurate) paint job. While not perfect, it’s hard to show disdain for this figure. It seems like the appropriate release for The Original Trilogy Collection basic figure line. Hasbro had to use a lot of older sculpts to pad the line, but this one offers a little bit more and when counted, has more than average articulation.

For the 2004 OTC release, Luke Skywalker loses his subtitle. That was one of the most annoying things about The Original Trilogy Collection. They called every Luke Skywalker figure “Luke Skywalker”, every Darth Vader figure “Darth Vader” and every Han Solo figure “Han Solo”. Unless you’re looking at them or have their sequence number memorized, you’re not going to be able to tell them apart in a list. Anyway, Luke Skywalker has many other changes as well. Technically given an all-new paint job, all of the dirt has been left off for this release. The battle-damage is significantly muted and his boots are a completely different color from the 2002 release. The 2002 Star Wars “Saga” figure went through its own metamorphosis to eventually have the magnetic hand attachments removed, but Hasbro brought them back for this release. They’ve also brought back the metal lightsaber hilt (which looks nothing like Luke’s lightsaber by the way) with removable lightsaber blade attachment. As you know, the small tip that plugs into the metal lightsaber hilt is VERY fragile and will snap if the figure fall over and the blade hits a surface, so be extremely careful with it.

But that’s not all of the accessories Luke Skywalker has been given. He comes with a blaster pistol that fits perfectly in a functioning holster. That was a big deal in 2002 and it’s a necessity now. Lastly, he comes with the same tourniquet as the original 2002 action figure too. It still fits nicely over his injured hand. It too has received a different paint job as well. The biggest disappointment here? We do not get a second chance at the weathervane. We’re not exactly sure why they cut it out here. They still included the E-Web cannon with the Snowtrooper, so why didn’t they give collectors a second stab at the huge accessory that originally came with this figure? It would have been nice. Still, the figure comes with 13 pints of articulation (if you included the action feature button on his back). It’s mostly swivel articulation, but it seems to work with this sculpt. Packaged, Luke Skywalker looks fantastic in The Original Trilogy Collection packaging. His backdrop is a scene from The Empire Strikes Back and generally looks amazing. Hasbro has stepped up articulation with The “Vintage” Original Trilogy Collection, so this figure has instantly aged, but it is still a figure to offer a great deal of play.