The Empire Strikes Back brought a lot of costume changes - and thus a lot of new figures - for our core characters. From ESB alone we get Han in Bespin and Hoth clothes, and frozen in carbonite. Han in Hoth gear, or, as the card officially says, Han (Hoth Outfit), comes with the same blaster Han came with from the first movie, and has the parka up. Granted, this is how he wears it throughout most of his scenes, but later figures in the 90's series also has him parka-down. The parka is also navy-blue, but later versions in the 90's corrected it to a browner hue more accurate to the movie.
Hoth Han came on ESB and ROTJ cards with no obvious variations. the neat thing with this figure though is that you could actually holster the blaster, unlike the original Han.
Why should you own this figure? Five reasons:
1. You can holster the gun, you know, for when you're doing other things like, uh, combing the flakes out of Chewie's fur?
2. This figure is involved in two cool scenes: cutting a tauntaun open, and having a firefight with a probe droid.
3. In honor of all Minnesotans, I feel a deep connection to a warmly-dressed character.
4. Only Han in Hoth gear would have the guts to stuff his friend into, well, tauntaun guts.
5. Han was at his coolest when he yelled, "Then I'll see you in hell!" In fact, this was probably why it made this such a good movie - Han was loyal to his friends and didn't take crap for it.
Backstory:
Well, for Han's backstory look at my other Han posts. For this particular outfit, I can say whattyawant? It's simply cold weather gear. The biggest mystery here is: is it Han's outfit, or did the Rebellion provide it? The world may never know.
Want the full story? The Wookieepedia article
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I owned one in 1980. I own one now. I've probably owned him for the majority of the intervening years.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet it had never, ever occurred to me that the holster might actually work.
But, yes! You can stuff the pistol's "magazine" in the loop! Brilliant!
Was that deliberate? If so, "holstering weapon" would have been quite a selling feature, wouldn't it? Especially for a figure whose arm is stuck at right angles...