Star Wars Lightsaber Forge: Darth Vader (2021)

Welp, this was one of the best decisions of my life.

Almost a decade later, I have to admit that I care about Star Wars, again. Casually. Prequel Era ONLY. I’m once again here for Anakin and Obi-Wan. Have you seen Hayden and Ewan doing things like Agree to Disagree? Beautiful.

I found this on clearance, so I decided to make good on a long-standing idea of mine: A Vader saber for Alessa, to mirror the one I have for Heather. In that capacity, it’s even more apropos than I was expecting, but let’s put a pin in that, for a moment.

Ummm, how about FOREVER, since I just sold all of my Silent Hill media 😂

I think this is a great fucking toy. Force FX and custom saber snobs may scoff at it, but I like toys, dammit. Props are cool, but there’s an appropriateness to having the associated wares. I’m well aware of what I’ve said in the past about this economic model and how it impacts fiction. Hush. I’m moving past that. Plus, that isn’t ALWAYS the case; it isn’t inevitable.

While I’ll openly share that it’s largely hollow, the plastic is really robust. You can bang the pieces together, drop them, and roughhouse with it all as much as you’d like. It feels notably chunkier than my Luke saber and I am 100% here for it. It feels so good, in hand! The half-ring for attaching it to one’s belt is simply painted molding, but that assuages my neuroses about intricacy, and prevents it from flapping around, which is exactly all that it would do for most people. Not everyone is geared-up for cosplay. The activation button depresses for purely cosmetic/role-play reasons; there are absolutely no electronics, in any part of it. Perhaps this shares a mold with the electronic variant?

I keep referring to it as being comprised of parts, because that’s the gimmick of this specific line of sabers: You can pretend that you are building them! Or, disassembling them for repairs. There are push-pin connectors that pop through holes, once a piece is in place. Consequently, the bottom portion can rattle a little bit, but it is NOT coming off, until you depress the pin and pull it out. There’s a BladeBuilders port present, meaning this range is backwards compatible with the line from which my other sabers derived.

The emitter requires you to screw it on, akin to a bottle cap, and it can be put on such that the shielding ends up on the wrong side. Fixing this is as simple as removing it and rotating it 180 degrees, horizontally, before screwing it back on. Even then, there’s no harm in it, other than annoying anal-retentive sticklers for detail. In fact, because there's threading present on both ends of the middle segment, you can assemble this such that it's essentially left-handed. Further, you can utilize this modularity to make it amenable to reverse-handed grips! This level of customization is very appreciated, as lightsabers have a tendency to clutter themselves with power-switch blocks and other doodads. To the point that custom versions of famous sabers can be ordered with or without them, depending on the company.

The bottom piece has a molded and painted Kyber crystal, so you can pretend to bleed it. If you get a Jedi’s saber…you can commune with it? That sounds like what a Jedi would do, since in this case the Force has already lead you to it—it’s already been placed in the saber! It’s a fun role-play feature. I approve.

That said, because of the Kyber crystal’s presence inside the hilt, you have to unscrew the emitter and remove the blade assembly wholesale, if you want to display it un-ignited. Given that putting this together and taking it apart is its raison d'être, I’m not upset, in the slightest.

I can't recommend this enough, especially if you can get it for a few bucks, like I did.

With The Rumor of Lucas's Return, I Think It’s Time To Remake The OT out of 5
I’m full of nuclear takes~

BladeBuilders Basic Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker Lightsaber Heather Mason Beam Saber (2017?)

I'm going to excise my ramblings, leaving nothing but my assessment of the piece itself, since I have parted with all of my Silent Hill media.

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.

BladeBuilders Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker Lightsaber (2017?)

I'm going to excise my ramblings, leaving nothing but my assessment of the piece itself, since I have parted with all of my Silent Hill media.  

This is a pretty standard telescoping affair, but it does have a rudimentary motion sensor to modulate the sounds. It has power-up and power-down sounds, in addition to the requisite hum, swooshes and clashes. For the price, it works worked perfectly for my purposes, as I'm I was in the process of collecting a weapon for each of the Silent Hill protagonists. There's even a bit of orange on the hilt. Good enough.

For a description of the BladeBuilders gimmick, please see my review of the basic version of this saber, here.