Got Vader from that fantastic ThinkGeek sale (thanks again, ShawPaw!) and I’m glad I did. I was planning on waiting for an ESB version, but couldn’t pass up that great deal. I have Sideshow’s original ANH Vader and was maybe planning on just tracking down the HT head to swap out, but ultimately I’m glad I got the full figure because it’s really impressive and a good improvement over Sideshow's—although I won’t say “huge” improvement.
I haven’t had too much time with him, but the first thing I did was do the cod piece mod and it made a huge difference. I tried messing with the belt and the boxes—tried shimmying them over the velcro, but it was starting to wrinkle the front of the belt that way, and investigated bending the hooks on the boxes, but I’m afraid they’ll break since they’re plastic. So it looks like the only viable solution would be to remove the velcro like people here have suggested.
Getting Vader precipitated me having to get a larger shelving unit, so I went to Ikea this weekend for one, which doubles the space I have now and will give the figures some room to spread out. They were looking pretty crowed on their shelves, so it was a long time coming.
I haven’t had any time since I started commuting into the city, so I haven’t had a chance to put together the shelves, and I haven’t even finished getting all of Vader’s stuff out of the box! I’m most likely not going to bother with the voice feature, but I’m really debating not bothering doing the belt lights either. Maybe I’ll do the lightsaber, though. I’m actually in the process of removing all the batteries from my other figures (in case of leakage, plus I don’t really use them anymore), so I really have to wonder if it’s worth the trouble to add them to Vader.
One thing: my Vader’s cape was really wrinkly, particularly around the front bottom edges. Is the cape safe to iron? Or steam? Any suggestions from someone who had to deal with cape wrinkles?
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