While going through my collection of open Star Wars figures, it suddenly came to me that kids have it really great when it comes to having figures to clash lightsabers. Back in my day there were only three official Star Wars figures that had lightsabers: Obi-Wan, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader. You may have had multiple versions of Luke, but if you wanted to reenact a lightsaber scene that didn’t involve coloring a toothpick and putting it in the hands of a Stormtrooper, then you had to go with those three choices. These days, there’s a virtual cornucopia of lightsaber wielding figures to choose from.

Before we proceed let me pause for a moment. I’m not saying that kids couldn’t make other figures into evil or good lightsaber battlers. Kids have tons of imagination and can include other figures into their play worlds. Hell, I literally had Steelheart of the Silver Hawks marry Green Lantern at one point in my childhood for one of my “plots” and I also managed to use Encyclopedias to fill in for the Death Star trash compactor. What I’m getting at here is that there’s one thing between having fun as a kid by mixing all your figures and another where you’re trying to fit the stories you make up into the same world of the movies you’ve seen roughly a billion times.

Thanks to the Star Wars prequels, that kind of play world has really opened up a whole world of possibilities for kids. Love them or hate them, they did a lot in the way of having more lightsaber-battling heroes and villains. With the release of Phantom Menace, three main lightsaber wielding characters and subsequent toys came out: Darth Maul, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon Jin. Darth Maul in fact was an incredible addition to the Star Wars roster of characters, simple because it was the first time there was an official red lightsaber wielder in a Star Wars movie who wasn’t Darth Vader. Even better for kids was the fact that he had a double bladed staff-like lightsaber. But it didn’t end there, because there were figures of characters like Mace Windu and Adi Gallia with only the promise of more figures on the way due to the fact that Jedi were plentiful in the prequels.

With all these new Force users that featured lightsabers, you’d things would have been perfect, but no that was not the case. Now there were tons of good guys with sabers, but you still only had Darth Maul representing a saber-wielding villain. Sure there was Darth Sideous in The Phantom Menace, but he didn’t come with a lightsaber. The next prequel film, Attack of the Clones, added even more good guys, like an older Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan, more Jedi Council members, and some cool alien Jedi. Still, the only new lightsaber wielding bad guy was Darth Tyranus, a.k.a. Lord Dooku. Even if he could team up with the formally deceased Darth Maul and a time displaced Darth Vader, there were plenty of Jedi to overwhelm these Dark Side users in the toy world.

There was a brief exception to this rule with the release of a Concept Stormtrooper from the Expanded Universe. Kids could play with a proto-Stormtrooper that actually carried a lightsaber (and a shield!), but judging by the figure’s rarity it’s price on the secondary market, it’s hard to imaging that this figure ended up in the hands of kids. Another earlier bad guy release was the Expanded Universe Emperor Palpatine from Dark Horse Comics series Dark Empire who again was extremely scarce in stores.

It wasn’t until the advent of the original Clone Wars cartoon and rise in popularity of Star Wars comic pack figures did kids get a lot more bad guys for their lightsaber fighting. General Grievous, though not a true Force user, was introduced as a multiple lightsaber wielding villain in the first Clone Wars cartoon. Also introduced in the Clone Wars was a character by the name of Asajj Ventress. The Clone Wars led right into the release of Revenge of the Sith. In ROTS no new evil force users were introduced, but it did give us the first ever on screen view of Darth Sidous/The Emperor armed with a lightsaber, which of course led to the first Emperor toy to come packaged with a lightsaber.

Also as a side note, General Grevious’s personal robot guards were seen in in both the original Clone Wars cartoons and in ROTS using weapons that could effectively block lightsaber attacks. This added a little more variety to the figures who could spar with Jedi.

The floodgates opened after Revenge of the Sith. While evil Force users didn’t become super common, there have been a lot more of them released through comic packs in the last few years because in Star Wars comics and the books there are evil Jedi everywhere. There were Antares Draco and Ganner Krieg, and the awesomely-cool-looking Darth Talon (who came with a distant relative of Luke Skywalker). Other sets like the Evolution three packs of figures have brought us the evil versions of characters from the video games The Force Unleashed and Knights of the Old Republic II. Darth Revan and Darth Malak from the first Knights of the Old Republic game were released on single cards, but like what happened with the concept Stormtrooper it’s doubtful a whole lot of Revins or Malaks made it into the hands of kids.

One of the coolest things about these Expanded Universe figures is that many of the good and bad guys/gals can be more fluid in the toy world, meaning they aren’t grounded as deeply in set plots as their film counterparts. I’m sure there are a lot of kids that read comic books, but there are probably a lot of kids whose first exposure to characters like Darth Talon is in the comic pack. These figures can fight along side or against characters from wholly different eras much easier than say a match up between Darth Maul and Luke Skywalker. Another example is that we still haven’t seen Asajj Ventress die on screen, whereas the end of Darth Maul is pretty much set unless you kick up your imagination a few more notches.

It’s a good time to be a kid into Star Wars when it comes to a variety of characters and it can only get better. There’s more CGI Clone Wars episodes next year and then there’s the eventual live action Star Wars TV series, not to mention more figures from the Expanded Universe to provide plenty of new fodder for lightsaber wielding heroes and villains for kids… or they can just color a bunch of toothpicks.

I just want everyone to note that:

1. I realize the lightsaber colors on the above pic are all wrong. I… lost the sabers that went to the EU characters in the move.

2. They are standing on G.I. Joe stands. I’ve got way more sitting around that will ever have Joes on at one time, so why not use them for Star Wars figures?