LUKE BESPIN - An Accidental Obsession

I really don't know how my Luke Bespin focus started other than back in 1998 I started buying loose vintage beaters to try and rebuild the remnants of my childhood collection, one day I saw two Luke Bespin's, mint and complete in my local shop, mint and complete, I loved the figure as a kid, so I couldn't resist. I bought them both and that's how it all began I guess, I started buying mint and complete everything and eventually noticed different hair colours for Luke here and there and then stumbled onto the whole COO thing, then foreign stuff etc. etc. So here it is the most complete Luke Bespin variation Loose focus on Earth and few extra bits from along the way






























































































This figure has always interested me and I consider it part of the Luke Bespin story. If you ever take a close look at the hair lines detail on the original farmboy Luke and compare it to the hair lines detail on Bespin Luke then you will find that they are pretty much identical, however the head in general, face wise is different. I believe theat when Luke Bespin was designed, the sculpture used a farmboy Luke head to work from, and altered details here and then, how it was done I don't know, whether he cast it and then re sculpted it, or just used it as a still life, I believe it was used in some way because of the similarities in the hair lines. Now if you look at the Sundance Kid, he basically has Luke Bespins head but with a hat and a moustache. Given the very similar years of release, it is likely that the Butch and Sundance line of figures was been produced at pretty much the same time as the ESB line of figures and I believe that whoever it was who was making the new head for Luke Bespin probably also made the head for the Sundance Kid. Butch Cassidy also basically has Han Bespins head with a hat. Probably never know exactly what happened, but I believe this figure fits into the Luke Bespin story somewhere from the design stage as can be seen in this picture:




This is my childhood Luke Bespin  He is pretty beaten up and has the worlds loosest limbs but he is my original so it's great to have, the pictures below are from Christmas 1983 and the kid behind the Gamorrean Guard mask is me on the floor is a pile of figures and if you look closely you can see the feet of my Bespin Luke already removed from his card, so I guess you can say that my Luke Bespin obsession started on the 25th of December 1983


Thanks for looking

Simply awesome. Thanks for sharing all this great info.

It must have been hell trying to put everything together over the years.

Now you just need some autographs, movie stills, Bespin Micro sets, love letters with Mark, etc.....

An outstanding Limelight Alex, love it, well done mate

I am just blown away, simply amazing my friend

what a great collection , nice anal fisting variant

That is absolutely awesome Don't think there are many Bespin Luke's left in the world
Thanks for sharing

Very inspirational Alex. Your dedication is to be greatly admired!

Hopefully others will do a similar project with a character focus and share it with us.   I'd certainly like to emulate what you have done.

Wow thats an awesome limelight. The Butch Cassidy made me do a double take, fascinating.
Luke Bespin is truly one of the coolest figures out there, and he gets the double weapon bonus as well.

One question, regular photo art or the walking Luke photo art?

Thanks for the nice comments guys

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Of the two, I always liked the walking photo, although blue is my favourite colour I just never liked the other and plus cloud city is white!

In actual fact Luke Bespin has 4 different photo arts, the walking original, the gun photo, the Tri-Logo gun photo and the Lili Ledy gun photo. The Tri-Logo picture is not only reversed like several Tri-L:ogo character pictures, but it is also a completely different picture, the gun is much higher and the background colour is accurate. The Lili Ledy picture is identical to the second 'blue' picture but is much closer and the contrast is quite heavily altered and it also features the correct white back ground colour.
Of all of the 4, my favourite is actually the Tri-Logo picture

Hi Alex,

Nice collection, man. I read your childhood Luke has loose limbs. Have you tried using this method to fix it? I used it on my old Lilí C-3PO and it worked wonderfully.

General Kahn wrote:Of all of the 4, my favourite is actually the Tri-Logo picture

And I thought the Canadian cardback was your favourite of all time.

Thanks for the info. Great stuff. I'm learning everyday!

Always enjoy looking at your focus Alex. Never used to like the Bespin characters and still dislike Han, but Luke is growing on me all the time (apart from the card Back images, though agree Tri-logo is best). Never realised just how many Poch and PBP variants there were. Can’t wait for your latest project.

I had to check this out after your live Q&A over at the Jabba's fb group.

Breathtaking attention to detail, Alex. And the very notion of you trying to explain the existence of this collection to a woman (as described in your interview) is quite hilarious. rofl

That task is hard enough when everything doesn't look the same. (to the untrained eye.)