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. (more…)