Post · bonfire.cafe

I got this picture of one of our #skypirate Captain standing along side Lando.

I was looking to get a comparison between one of our hand painted toys and a commercially released toy from the 80s.

Except I didn't have any commercially released toys from the 80s around, I had a 2010s bootleg of the surprisingly rare limited run '85 General Lando.

(I have more to say about Lando, it'll go in the next post.)

So this is a very good factory made bootleg of one of the more complicated toys to come out of the Kenner Star Wars line, standing next to our Mysterious Air Pirates captain.

In terms of level of detail and quality of production, I'd argue that they're pretty much equivalent.

#skypirate

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social · 1 hour ago

My understanding is that General Lando was pulled early because it was significantly more expensive to produce than many of the other toys in this line, because it has a lot more paint than most of the other figures Kenner was releasing around that time.

Kenner was spun off into a separate company in 85, and then purchased by Tonka in 87, and by Hasbro in 91.

They were not doing well financially when the official version of this toy was released, and even without the extra detail and paint, it probably would have been a fairly limited run.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social · 45 minutes ago

And then there's the whole racism element. Lando is a Black man. White parents refused to buy toys of people of color. Lando was destined to sell poorly, even without Kenner's financial issues.

But, today? Today Lando is one of the more In Demand characters in Star Wars. Vintage Lando toys outsell every other character when we're doing shows.

There's a larger conversation to be had here about racism in toys and collectibles, but I'm not the one to lead it, so I'll leave it at that.

(And all this is without getting into the whole issue of Lando being the only person of color with any real dialog in the original Star Wars Trilogy, but the subject of racism in Star Wars has been dissected by people significantly more adept at this kind of analysis than me. See Samuel R. Delany's review of A New Hope for example.)

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social · 32 minutes ago

Anyway, I think it's really neat that our hand painted jointed injection molded action figure looks perfectly normal in situ with vintage Kenner Star Wars toys.

We're not producing jointed figures very quickly right now, for lots of reasons, but we'll be able to produce more jointed figures and faster in the future.

And in the mean time, we *are* producing jointed action figures.

Would you like to see a new one, check the picture.

Two ~10" 3D printed robots standing behind the same sky pirate toys, and a 3 3/4" injection molded robot.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social · 23 minutes ago

Our newest character Kumiai-ki (The Mighty Labor Union Machine), is inspired by the vintage "Super Robot" or "Shogun Warrior" line.

You can see Kumiai-ki standing here standing with a vintage Grendizer toy.

Kumiai-ki is fresh off the production line. These are not final colors, and he is currently unpainted.

But putting him side by side with Grendizer? It is immediately apparent they're part of the same family.

Grendizer, a red yellow and blue robot standing next to Kumiai-Ki. Kumiai-ki has a black torso and green extremities.

1 more replies