LUKE - My Hole Is Too Tight!

A few years ago I wrote a article on another forum about the whole Yak Face Offer that never was situation and it received zero responses, so I rewrote here and it started a healthy debate which pretty much solved the riddle, so I figured I'd try again with theory I put forward a few years back that also received absolutely zero responses.

A few years back I had bought a Luke Farmboy from a friends shop, it was the brown haired No COO Tri-Logo variant, it was a little dirty but cleaned up real nice. Back thenI used to photograph ever figure I bought for the purpose of my own catalogue and used to include weapons regardless of whether they came with them or not basically for the sake of the photo.
Anyway, it was while adding a weapon to this Luke that I noticed that the lightsaber would not fit in the arm, I tried several but none would, I even tried some really thin Ben Kenobi sabers I have but not one would fit. When I looked at the whole from the underside it was partially closed, but this was not a result of excess flashing or anything like that, it was the way in which the arm had been moulded. The roof of the lightsaber cavity was half way across the saber hole which resulted in the hole been a semi circle so no saber would fit.

Here is a picture:



The fact this was a result of the mould and not flashing got me thinking, this is not a one off factory error, the moulds don't work like that, this is the result of the actual mould or in this case one of the cavities in the mould (for this figure there were two cavities in the mould) and then it dawned on me!
This is the figure that was packed on the Tri-Logo card, or at least the most common variant found on the Tri-Logo card and what is the one thing that is often associated with that..... the mis-packed weapon!
The brown haired No COO Luke when packed on Tri-Logo cards can basically be found in three different ways, with the correct saber fitted into the arm, with the correct saber loose in the bubble or with a Luke Bespin Saber loose in the bubble. The general assumption was that this was just a typical Tri-Logo weapon mis-pack which isn't exactly uncommon.
This got me thinking that maybe the reason why the saber was packed loose in the bubble was actually because it it wouldn't fit in the arm and not just because they couldn't be arsed and just slung it in, then at some stage possibly someone came up with the idea of packing the Bespin saber instead, at least that could be jammed into the arm where as the original saber was basically useless. Ultimately this would have been a much cheaper alternative to having the mould altered and corrected especially this late in the game.
Finding Tri-Logo Luke's with either the loose original saber or the loose Bespin saber are not uncommon which again is because these would have been produced in exactly the same numbers as the correct ones as the mould had two cavities and the problem only appeared to be with one of these cavities so it was a 50/50 split.

So, any thoughts? Does this seem like a logical theory? and is there anybody out there with a Tri-Logo Luke MOC that can hopefully clarify this? I admit that trying to look down Luke's arm from the back while still packed on a card would certainly not be an easy task but you never know.

Thanks for reading

I was a little bit worried for a minute about opening up the thread, after reading the title and who the author was.

Interesting question. Hopefully some of the focus collectors out there, will be able to help you out.

Can you take a picture looking at the opening in hand? Is it the same oval shape all the way through?

Haha, thought that might scare a few locals

The front end is fine, the oval starts at this end, the entire tube is a full circle, so from the front it is fine. It's the roof of the saber cavity in the arm that's too low that causes the problem.

This is the bit that causes the problem, it should be deeper, the male part of the mould must have been wrong in some way.

I have this Luke with the exact same problem. Not sure if I have it still or not but nothing would fit in there. I'm pretty we talked about because I ended up sticking a bespin saber in it lol

You have serious problems Chief....

We've discussed this before - I'm certain you've solved the riddle of the loose saber in the Trilogo MOC. Really good work.

My own Luke Trilogo MOC has the exact same hole in the saber arm that you highlight.

I wonder if Holger [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has seen similar evidence during his research?

Interesting I have the same problem with a China raised bar Luke farmboy. Unfortunately this doesn't fit very well to the Trilogo theory. As far as I can see the whole is narrow in a different way then yours. It seems that there are kind of small flaps on each side (left and right) of the whole inside the arm (tried to make a Picture). I asked myself who could he had a saber when on card. Well this idea makes sense. Probably this one come with a loose saber too .

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Alex, I think your reasoning is very sound. I've just checked my no coo brown hair Lukes, one has a normal saber arm, the other is exactly the same as yours (I guess that may explain why it didn't come with a saber).

Alex, does you example have the same imperfections on the fingers?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Yep this makes sense to me, a well explained theory Alex

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Dirk, it maybe possible that yours is caused by excess flashing within the arm.
I have a few Vader's with this problem, it is more likely that they just slipped through quality control, rather than being due to a defect with the mould itself, as in the case with the Euro no coo Luke.

Very logical theory Alex

[700][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.][/700]

@Akial
Dirk, it maybe possible that yours is caused by excess flashing within the arm.
I have a few Vader's with this problem, it is more likely that they just slipped through quality control, rather than being due to a defect with the mould itself, as in the case with the Euro no coo Luke.[/quote]

Yes this could probably be, but the theory about the trilogos is really good makes sense

ourchickenshack wrote:Very logical theory Alex

[700][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.][/700]

, great htread I have this problem with a light brown haired version as well

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

In the case of your China Luke, it sounds definately like this is a result of excess flashing around the hole.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Here is a shot of my three Luke's from this family, Hong Kong COO, No COO (full hole) & No COO (blocked hole) all three have the imperfection on the hand Steve which means it was there from day one in both cavities of the mould. This was probably a result of the pantographing process when the mould was created at that factory. The imperfection is not present on the other Luke families:





What is confusing about this figure is that I have never seen this problem the Hong Kong COO figures, only the No COO figures which means that this mould issue must have occurred when the moulds where altered for the no COO which is also possibly when the factories moved as some did. It's difficult to understand how this imperfection would have happened but that's when it did.

Thank you for checking Alex.
The reason I asked is that my no coo 'full hole' does not have these imperfections to the fingers & I was hoping that the imperfections on the no coo 'blocked hole' were unique, so that this detail could be used to potentially help determine whether all moc Tri-logo Lukes with loose sabers have a 'blocked hole'.

As a Farmboy focus collector, I love this thread and I really think one can say that this all sounds pretty logical. I followed the hole discussion on Facebook as well and all together got me thinking the problem is solved.

Years ago, I worked in automotive manufacturing, producing aluminum parts via mould injection just as our fave figures were made.

The channel is too narrow on the upper part of the arm, correct? And from the seam, it appears that the actual saber opening is part of the bottom mould. From a manufacturing perspective, it's almost certain that the die for the top half was slightly out of spec, and this would have been hard to see until they were at the assembly stage. The manufacturer would have had to make a choice between scrapping the entire lot and waiting for a new batch of arm pieces, or just make them as is. With the line coming to an end, they most likely decided to just carry on and assemble what they had. It just wouldn't have been economically feasible to do it the 'right' way.

Not all arms from this COO would have the issue though. It would have been an issue on only one or very few cavities, as the die would have had multiple top arm piece cavities on one die. That actually makes me think they might have tried to scrap the defect parts, but all parts from the same cavity were probably dropped into the same bin, and with them mixed up, many got through.

This is actually a more common manufacturing issue than you'd probably think. It just wasn't a high enough priority to meticulously go back and get rid of the garbage.

Ian

Cheers Ian, that is interesting

TYpically it would seem that there where 2 cavities in the limb mould judging by the COO stamp, so it would produce two sets of limbs in one injection. The problem seemed to be with one of the cavities. The three figures I showed early are Hong Kong, No COO full hole and No COO half hole, all have the imperfection on the fingers which would lead me to believe this imperfection was in both cavities and it was there as a result of the original pantographing process when the mould was created.
How ever Steve has said that his No COO full hole does not have these imperfections which would therefore imply that this imperfection was only present in one of the cavities.
I on the other hand have both a full hole and half hole that both have this imperfection which would suggest that the problem occurred somewhere in the production stage and wasn't there from the start of the No COO production run, or alternatively the problem was corrected.

It's the roof of the lightsaber cavity that would intially seem to be the problem because it is covering half the hole however this is not the case, I have checked the depth of the roof of the saber cavity at the hole entrance on all three examples and they are all identical, the actual problem is not the saber cavity roof at all, it is this section here:


This section is notably longer than the other two figures, even in this picture below, despite it been the one that's slightly further away you can still clearly see the difference:


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

From the picture above, could this have happened from the mould been out of spec how you described earlier?

Here are pics of my no coo 'blocked hole' & 'full hole' saber arms Alex showing the hand detail. As you can see, my 'full hole' example does not have the flaws to the fingers that my 'blocked hole' & your 3 assorted examples from this family have.

 [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Thats sounds locical at all. And its interessting to see all the sherlock holmes work here! Great,
So what is with Obi-Wan on Trilogo Cards? He also comes with a loose saber on some cards?
But for now i never had a Obi Wan were the saber hole is closed... any of you?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Hi. That's a very Interesting theory, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I'd have to check the arms from both of my Trilogo Lukes (70-B and 70-C cardbacks) which are both packaged with the saber loose.

If that theory happens to be correct, it would mean that the bespin sabers which are commonly found instead of the regular sabers, are packaged that way on purpose, and not because of shortage or whatever reason...

Also, if the bespin saber is included on purpose, I doubt it would have been done at the final assembly factory, where the figures were sealed onto their carbacks because it would have been too paintful to swap the sabers. So it would mean that the bespin sabers were included from the original factory in asia because of the arm issue to be known... ? have we found regular Lukes with bespin sabers in factory baggies?

I confirm the regular Trilogo Ben also comes with the saber loose; but original Luke and Ben packaged on FRENCH (medium bubbles) Trilogos comes with their sabers placed in the arm.


stephane

Very interesting I did not know this, So I guess anyone say in North America who finds a trilogo with a bespin saber that is not a rare find good to know as people who don't know this make think it's a boo boo and try to charge more. As I have seen Tri-logo lukes at the toy shows with the regular saber loose in the package and never really thought much about it. now it makes sense. Thanks for the info.

And me when I seen the post Re: LUKE - My Hole Is Too Tight! I thought alright party time lol. You all corrupted me lol

General Kahn, based on your extensive research is the smaller and tight hole due to plastic shrinkage from the different plastic polymers used?

Alex I read this over a week ago and wanted to say then, Great job. I really enjoyed reading your theory and it seemed sound to me.

Great theory and photos. Thanks very much.