 Hello everybody hooded cobra commander 788 here and this time we're gonna do something a little different. Normally this channel is dedicated to vintage GI Joe toy reviews but in honor of the 38th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie in 1977 and the upcoming movie The Force Awakens in December of this year I am going to present some vintage Star Wars action figure toy reviews and I'm gonna do it in the hooded cobra commander 788 style which means long-winded and pedantic. These reviews will probably be monthly and they will not replace any GI Joe toy reviews. You'll still get the same GI Joe toy reviews you got before. These will be in addition to the Joe toy reviews so you don't have to worry about that. Some of my GI Joe people may not be too happy with me dabbling in the dark arts of vintage Star Wars toy reviews. In fact don't tell them. So let's look at the toy. We're going to look at the first version of Kenner's three and three-quarter inch Han Solo. This is Han Solo and as you can see we have two action figures that means we're gonna be looking at a variant. This figure was first available in 1978 as part of the first wave of Star Wars carded action figures. The figure was first available on cards with the original Star Wars movie logo on it. As the subsequent Star Wars films came out it was repackaged with cards with those later film logos on them. So Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983 and starting with those Return of the Jedi cards they used a different photograph of the actor and I much prefer this original photograph of Harrison Ford as Han Solo on the original cards. It's a much more dynamic photo than the later picture that they used on the Return of the Jedi cards. The figure came on a card back like this. As you can see it has the Star Wars logo on them and of course there was a bubble that contained the action figure. Now this one of course is not in very good shape. This doesn't bother me as much as it would probably bother other collectors. Other collectors would probably be mortified at the condition of this card back. It doesn't really bother me that much. As you can see a kid kind of added his own artwork here with a pan and even with some crayon. This I don't really mind this so much. It kind of reminds me of the way we used to treat these cards when I was a kid. We certainly didn't treat them as though it was a collectible that was going to be worth something someday. If we kept them at all they would end up like this drawn on and cut up and so forth. The card features a photograph of Harrison Ford as Han Solo as he appeared in the first Star Wars movie. It has the character's name here in this caption Han Solo. It was produced by Kenner and this is a 12 back card meaning the cross-sell on the back that shows 12 characters that you could buy as action figures. This is a generic card back. You would have got the same card back with any of the other figures you got at the time. This was not like G.I. Joe that came later that had individual printing on the card back with a file card. The Star Wars figures were not doing that at that time. It has a mail away offer for an action collector's stand. You could clip out 12 proofs of purchase and send away to get this thing and that's what has been done with this one. The proof of purchase has been clipped out for the mail away offer. Han Solo was of course introduced in the first Star Wars movie that was Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope released May 25th 1977 and he was played by Harrison Ford. Han Solo was introduced in the Cantina scene in Moss Isley on the planet of Tatooine. He was hired by Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi to take them to the planet of Alderaan. Han was the pilot of a smuggling ship called the Millennium Falcon and of course he had a partner and co-pilot Chewbacca. Let's look at Han's accessory. He came with one accessory, a laser blaster. This I think is often referred to as the smuggler's blaster. It has since been dubbed the DL-44 blaster and it is a reasonable approximation of the laser blaster that Han Solo carried in the movie. It's perhaps a bit clunkier than that movie blaster but this is a tiny accessory and so it probably has the amount of detail you would expect for a miniature laser blaster of that time period. Perhaps lacking in detail from what you might expect from on modern action figures but pretty good for the time. The profile of this blaster is very similar to the real world weapon the Mauser C96 broom handle. It's not an exact match and of course it's a bit beefed up from that real world weapon but the similarity is undeniable. It probably was inspired by that German pistol. There was an equivalent of this laser blaster in the GI Joe universe and it came with Destro. Destro's pistol was also inspired by the Mauser broom handle and this also is a laser pistol so even though they are a bit different Destro's pistol is a bit skinnier. They do draw their inspiration from the same place. Let's look at the articulation on Han Solo. He had the typical articulation for Star Wars action figures of the time meaning he had five points of articulation. He could turn his head all the way around. He had a swivel at the shoulder both shoulders. He could swivel his arms all the way around and he had swivels at the legs so he could move at the legs and he could swing them back too so he had a full 180 degree range of motion on the legs and that was it for articulation. That was pretty much the most articulation you would get for these vintage Star Wars action figures. Some Star Wars figures had less articulation like Chewbacca who had four points of articulation because he could not move his head like the Han Solo figure could. Let's look at the sculpted design and color of Han Solo starting with his head and this particular version of the Han Solo action figure is referred to as the small head version. This version of the head sculpt is really not too bad. It's a fairly handsome fellow but it doesn't really look much like the actor that played Han Solo. This doesn't look like Harrison Ford at all. You've got some wear on the paint on the hair there and that's something you'll have to look out for on all of these Star Wars action figures. Now this was the small head version and at some point I guess it was decided that the head on this action figure was too small so they replaced it with the big head version and on this one they went too far in the other direction because this head now looks like it's too big for the body. This head is the proportionate size of and the shape of a balloon. I prefer the original head to this one although the original head is maybe a little bit too small. This one I just don't think looks that good at all. The likeness to Harrison Ford is maybe slightly better than the first one but not a lot. I think somewhere around the lips there's a bit of a similarity to Harrison Ford but other than that this doesn't look really anything like Harrison Ford. In fact if you didn't know this was supposed to portray Harrison Ford you wouldn't look at this figure and say hey I know that guy it's that actor. The head on this big head version of Han Solo that I have here is a bit loose and that is something you'll have to watch out for if you're looking for these action figures. Loose joints and paint wear are the two main problems you will run into. Here's the thing about these head sculpts and the actor likenesses. The thing is these early figures were not very good at that. Most of them didn't look very much like the actors they portrayed but they got better. Some of the later figures depicting the actors in the movie did bear a greater resemblance to the actual actors but these early years it was a bit rough on trying to depict Harrison Ford, Kerry Fisher and Mark Hamill in small plastic form. On his chest is a white shirt with an open collar. Very 70s. The only thing missing is a little chest hair poking out the top. This is white paint on black plastic so you really have to be cautious about paint wear on this. That black background will try to bleed through the white paint very easily. Then he has his famous black vest which looks really good. Got some detail on the back and on the front we have some pockets. As far as I can tell this pocket configuration is the same or pretty similar to how it appeared in the movie. Not that you'd notice that much it is black on black after all. The arms have long sleeves and pinkish painted hands and this right arm is permanently bent and the hand is frozen in this pistol grip position which works pretty well for holding the laser blaster accessory. Not too bad it doesn't hold it too firmly so that pistol can fall out. Be careful of that but it does look like it was designed to hold this weapon. The sculpting of this arm has him in a quick draw shoot from the hip pose and they may have been thinking of the cantina scene in which Han Solo shot Greedo from behind the table. My memories of playing with these Star Wars figures are a bit more vague than my memories of playing with G.I. Joe because I was younger at the time but I seem to remember not liking this permanent bend in the arm. I didn't like it when you gave me a limb that was permanently fixed in one position. I wanted to be able to pose this and not have the elbow permanently bent that way but that's just what we got at the time. The left arm has this very stiff looking open hand and well let's just say it looks like he has permanently chosen paper for every match of rock paper scissors. Around his waist he has his belt and his hexagonal shaped belt buckle. Some detailing on the belt there and of course he has his holster slung low cowboy style. This holster doesn't look like it would actually fit the pistol that he came with but it's non-functional so it doesn't really matter. The legs are very skinny and on either side we have a red stripe going down the side of the pants and this is pretty close to how it appeared in the movie. The movie costume had a broken red line and this is a solid red line going down the side but this is certainly an acceptable level of detail for this scale and to finish it up we have some tall Wellington style boots and some pretty small feet. There's another weird variant with Han Solo. As you can see these legs are black and most of them were molded in black plastic as you would expect but some of them like this one were actually molded in white plastic and painted black and you can tell by looking at the holes in the feet this is where you would put the foot pegs if you want to put the figure on a stand but you can see there's some paint where there and inside the hole on the foot that's actually white plastic they've taken an entirely white leg and painted it black which makes no sense to me there's no actual white on this leg I don't know why you would do it that way paint applications on action figures were fairly expensive and added quite a bit to the cost of producing the figure but for some reason we've got white legs with black paint on them taking a look at these figures overall the articulation is adequate for the time it got a little more awkward with later vehicles like the Speeder bike where you had to put the figure in straight-legged and that looked really weird and of course like the tauntaun they had to put in a special trap door to accommodate the lack of articulation now even as a kid I kind of had a problem with this even though this is kind of the best we had at the time I still did not like the unnatural poses you had to put these guys in in order for them to fly around on their spaceships and ride around on their tauntauns and things like that as far as the actor likeness again and not that good but it got better with later versions the accessories was very limited only came with one accessory but it's appropriate and if you think about it what other accessory would he really come with this is really the only accessory Han solo needs at the time Star Wars was so huge we really only cared about getting a Han solo action figure it didn't have to be perfect at the time Kenner had the practice of not packaging vehicle drivers with the vehicles that they drove for instance the tie fighter pilot did not come with the tie fighter toy now it's conceivable that kids might want a Han solo figure packaged with the Millennium Falcon toy but even if Han Solo were to be packaged with the Millennium Falcon you would still want a carded version because Han Solo did a lot in the Star Wars movie that was outside of the Millennium Falcon he was a key character and so you definitely would want that character carded so this figure has some good points and it has some bad points but hopefully it's good enough to kick us off with some vintage Star Wars reviews and why not let's go ahead and reunite Han with his partner Chewbacca there you go that looks good that was my review of Han Solo I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting a Han Solo action figure I hope you found this video informative if you like it don't forget to give it a thumbs up on YouTube and don't forget to subscribe to the channel I've got a lot of great news Star Wars and GI Joe toy reviews coming up you don't want to miss them and don't forget to like the Facebook page you get a lot of updates there you don't get anywhere else thanks for watching and I'll see you next time