| Rancor First Shot | |
| Prototype collectors are accustomed to seeing first shots of action figures. First shots of the larger vehicles and creatures from the Kenner line have turned up with less frequency. Here you see a first shot of the Rancor creature that was shot in a brown plastic that is substantially darker than that used on the production toy.
I don't have a loose Rancor lying around to which this pre-production example can be compared, but you can get a sense of the darkness of the plastic used for the body by comparing it to that used for the hands. The light brown color of those hands is similar to the color of the production toy.
This particular first shot seems to have been assembled and used for some heavy testing. It's pretty beaten up; some of the plastic around the mouth is even chipped, right at the spot where the two halves of the toy were sonic-welded together. The piece lacks the date and legal information, which is normally molded around the base of one of the arms. And as you can see in this last photo, the words "unmarked female" are scrawled onto the base of one of the feet. Though this sounds like lingo from some kind of weird personals ad, I think "female" in this context refers to the interior of the part, which probably featured a housing intended to accept a pin, all of which helped keep the thing together. In fact, the halves of the legs of this piece are not welded but are imperfectly joined. You can easily slide your fingernail into the seam between the parts. |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ron Salvatore |
| From the collection of: | Ron Salvatore |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | Return of the Jedi |
| Licensee: | Kenner |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Category: | Prototypes / Action Figure Related |
