A little while back, I was visiting one of my favorite flea market stalls, and saw a familiar sight: the vacuous back-end of a BladeBuilders Lightsaber. Except the blade was nowhere to be seen… Turns out they released a basic version without sounds, meaning there was room in the hilt for the blade to completely retract into!
SOLD!
I alluded to it ever so briefly in my review of the electronic variant, but what sells me on Luke’s Jedi saber are the colors of lower-tier versions of it. High-end replicas accurately recreate the lathed-out, delicately rendered area below the emitter, as well as its copper coloring. Cheap ones? They fill it in and slather it with orange paint. Yeah, it looks crude, but I’ll take crude and solid over daintiness any day of the millennium.
This specific version is much more of a costume accessory than a fully-featured toy…on its own. Since I shamefully failed to mention it in the other review, the open end is designed to take connector pieces that allow you to Frankenstein different sabers together. Obviously, this exact one didn’t come with any, but it doesn’t seem that new examples will, either. I remember that the electronic one came with a single connector, but there are some sabers that come with multiples. I’m not going to rain on a child’s creativity just because I’m an old curmudgeon. It’s a neat system, even if it isn’t for me. And, the empty end ports have never bothered me. A gimmick that doesn’t significantly compromise a toy? Be still my heart~
The only complaint I can personally lodge against it is that the pieces of the blade nest together in a specific way. Though, there’s no actual harm to them being crammed in willy-nilly, as thick and robust as they are. A kid is free to have stress-less fun; I’m the one who has to take a minute to fiddle with it, to get them all satisfyingly aligned, as pictured.
No rest for the anal-retentive.
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