The next addition is a 65C Blue Saber Luke. The 65C card has 65 figures on the back and the Emperor mail in offer on the lower corner. It is the last U.S. card that you can find the blue lightsaber Luke, before the next batch of figures were released and the back of the card was updated to 77 figures.

For those that aren’t collectors, but familiar with the movies, you might be wondering why they even made Luke’s lightsaber blue in the first place as it was green in the movie. Here is my theory that makes sense to me. In the early trailers with the Revenge of the Jedi title, some scenes actually show Luke with a blue lightsaber. Here’s a still from one of those early trailers.

It has been said that Industrial Light and Magic was having trouble with the blue for the scenes out in broad daylight, so the decision was made to switch the lightsaber to green. I think this was done very late into postproduction, so Kenner, who was working to get the toys ready in time for the movie release, actually had the blue sabers made up for the toys. Once the decision was made for green, they then moved production over to the new correct color. However, having already made up a bunch of the blue ones and possibly having them packaged at this time already. they just released them in both colors for a short while.

Anyone that cares to take a look can view it here on the rebelscum forums.

Here’s the flyer advertising the event as well.

The real question is how did this combination happen. There’s enough of them out there, that it was deliberate and not just a one off accident. The majority of these type of miscards show up on Trilogo cards which replaced the Meccano cards later on. Did Meccano get a stock of Luke figures, but didn’t have the cards printed up for them yet? And why no accessories other than the palace blaster? Maybe because of Lukes popularity they were having trouble keeping up with demand and were just trying to get them out as quick as they could? It could also have been later on and they were simply trying to get rid of extra figures on extra cards.

This is a press photo that was used in the Seattle Times and is dated June 6th 1983. It was taken at a Toys R Us, the back mentions the child’s name and that he was 5 1/2 the time the photo was taken. He’s roughly a year older than I am. It’s fun to see all the old toys in the photo. You can even see my store display in the lower right.

This year has somehow become the year of “The Force” Lightsaber for my collection. This is one toy that somehow managed to survive my childhood that I still own. Earlier this year, I found a red one that was unused store stock, to go with my original beat up green one. I got it for a great price and was happy to have both colors now. Then, later this summer, I found an auction for the original store display. The display holds 12 Sabers and I have a vague memory of originally getting mine from one of these displays. These displays usually have fairly high Buy it Nows on ebay, but for once I found one on auction and won for a great price. It happened to also fit exactly into the spot I had hoped it would within my collection. Now, shortly after winning the display, I also found a version of the Green saber with the packaging hanger on it. These packages were created in 1984 for stores to hang on pegs rather than using the displays. I picked up a prototype of the packaging last year from a former Kenner Employee and was excited to finally find one of the sabers with the packaging as they do not come up for sale often. That’s it for now on this, but I’ve already lined up two other items to continue this focus, with one of them coming later this week.

Another item that I recently found, is the last U.S. Bagged version of Luke Jedi. I’ve been not he lookout for this for a few years now. The one I was looking for, just simply said Made in Taiwan on the bag, and can be seen, 3rd from the right, in this group photo.

The last item, for now, is the Rebel Rocket from the C-3PO’s cereal. This was the free item in the box of cereal and also included the form for 4 free micro figures. Here’s a picture of the form and the setup within my display. I still need to find the original envelope that the micro figures were mailed in.

Here’s a before and after picture to show how the setup has changed and then individual pictures of each shelf.

For anyone that would like to listen to it, I’ve chopped out the except which can be downloaded here.