| Kenner Change Notice for Tusken Raider Gaffi Stick | |
| This piece of paperwork related to the Tusken Raider action figure reflects a pre-production change to the color of the "gaffi stick" accessory with which the toy came packaged.
Specifically, it reveals that the accessory was initially planned to be injection-molded in blue plastic. Unfortunately, the Pantone Matching System (PMS) number referenced doesn't correspond to any currently-in-use number that I can find, so we can't be sure what this "blue" looked like, but I think we can be fairly certain it was a steely, dark-toned blue, similar to what was used for the guns of many Empire Strikes Back-era action figures. My guess is that the folks at Kenner saw that the gaffi sticks used in the film were partially made of steel, and they chose the blue color in order to mimic that material. You can see by clicking here that the earliest known mock-up gaffi stick seems intended to represent metal. Later on it must have become apparent -- perhaps even through a Lucasfilm intervention -- that gaffi sticks were mostly comprised of wood. Hence the switch to a brown color you see noted on this change notice. As you can see by clicking here, the Pantone color referenced is pretty close to what was released with the Tusken Raider figure. This is a pretty significant modification to the figure. And none of us would know it occurred had Ross Cuddie not found this piece of paperwork. You can read about his find here. |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ross Cuddie |
| From the collection of: | Ross Cuddie |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Kenner |
| Year: | 1977 |
| Category: | Prototypes / Product Concepts |
