1/6 Hot Toys - MMS 279 - Star Wars Episode IV: 1/6th scale Darth Vader

[irezumi]

I think what I need to do is get someone like jkno to post some pics of his Vader and stormie full size helmets (MR) side-by-side and get an idea of relative scale to then compare to the HT Vader and stormie helmets.

MR only made a ROTS Vader, and the MR stormtrooper is highly inaccurate to the screen used lids.
eFx made a comparable Vader helmet though...

 

[TonTon]

Just swapped out the cod piece with the SS ANH one, seems sized better. Only last mod I really want to do is repaint the chest armor.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Hey Guys,

Being somewhat of a Vader nut and owning several 1:1 scale screen lineage Vader helmets(eFX Legend and the famed SL). A true 1st or 2nd gen 1:1 scale Vader helmet is pretty big once you see it in person and then have a chance to compare it to say a Don Post fiberglass helmet which is also a 1:1 scale piece. Its the whole copy of a copy shrinkage deal. This is even present on my ANH SL vs the eFX Legend helmet, even though both originate from the Rick Baker mold taken off the original screen used ANH helmet, the the SL is one generation closer and therefore slightly bigger than the eFX.
The HT helmet is closest to accurate and scaled correctly for the rest of the HT line. The Kaiyodo is slightly underscale for the other HT figs and so is the Hasbro dome. The HT Vader looks surprised because the dome sits too high and the underside of the eyelids are painted grey instead of black like they should be. I can post pics of my eFX Legend next to my RS stormtrooper lid and you can see what I am talking about.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

Hey Guys,

Being somewhat of a Vader nut and owning several 1:1 scale screen lineage Vader helmets(eFX Legend and the famed SL). A true 1st or 2nd gen 1:1 scale Vader helmet is pretty big once you see it in person and then have a chance to compare it to say a Don Post fiberglass helmet which is also a 1:1 scale piece. Its the whole copy of a copy shrinkage deal. This is even present on my ANH SL vs the eFX Legend helmet, even though both originate from the Rick Baker mold taken off the original screen used ANH helmet, the the SL is one generation closer and therefore slightly bigger than the eFX.
The HT helmet is closest to accurate and scaled correctly for the rest of the HT line. The Kaiyodo is slightly underscale for the other HT figs and so is the Hasbro dome. The HT Vader looks surprised because the dome sits too high and the underside of the eyelids are painted grey instead of black like they should be. I can post pics of my eFX Legend next to my RS stormtrooper lid and you can see what I am talking about.

Thanks! I remember thinking that Vader's helmet was incredibly large, and the robes and shoulder armor helping to make it look more proportionate. If you were wearing just a Vader helmet your heat would look enormous.

I'd love to see your pics.

 

[parrasmaniac]

That's a nice looking Vader, parra!

thank you TonTon! now futzing, futzing and futzing, but that is the fun part!

 

[paulcarson]

Hmmm... I thought the HT was oversized ? Somewhere between the Kaiyodo and the HT was the ideal ? My head hurts !

 

[TaliBane]

Hey Guys,

Being somewhat of a Vader nut and owning several 1:1 scale screen lineage Vader helmets(eFX Legend and the famed SL). A true 1st or 2nd gen 1:1 scale Vader helmet is pretty big once you see it in person and then have a chance to compare it to say a Don Post fiberglass helmet which is also a 1:1 scale piece. Its the whole copy of a copy shrinkage deal. This is even present on my ANH SL vs the eFX Legend helmet, even though both originate from the Rick Baker mold taken off the original screen used ANH helmet, the the SL is one generation closer and therefore slightly bigger than the eFX.
The HT helmet is closest to accurate and scaled correctly for the rest of the HT line. The Kaiyodo is slightly underscale for the other HT figs and so is the Hasbro dome. The HT Vader looks surprised because the dome sits too high and the underside of the eyelids are painted grey instead of black like they should be. I can post pics of my eFX Legend next to my RS stormtrooper lid and you can see what I am talking about.

That would be great. I really don't do 1:1 at all. And jeez, that sounds complicated. TooMuchGarlic seems to be a Vaderologist and he had stated that the Kaiyod was correct to (I think) the "Fox helmet" which I think was used for touring in the 80's but was from the same run as the screen-used stuff. He did a 3D scan of that (or another?) screen helmet and created a 1/6 version and he says Kaiyodo is same as that size-wise.

The best thing would obviously be compare screen-used stuff, but I'm not sure the helmets were ever displayed side by side at shows. There's tons of pics of the individual costumes, but not sure there's any where say a stormie and Vader or Fett and Vader are close enough to compare relative scale. And so many SW helmets (3PO, stormie, Vader and Fett) are affected quite noticeably by lens distortion, making domes look bigger or smaller, or narrowing the whole look.

When I got the Kaiyodo (which I do think looks better than the HT in-hand) I rolled my eyes and said "too small" and the HT "feels" right to me - even if I think the Kaiyodo looks closer to Vader stepping off the screen than the HT.

 

[Jack Bauer]

The Kaiyodo is accurate in shape no doubt, but in size as compared to the rest of the HT line, it is undersized. TooMuchGarlic knows a ton about Vader, we are fellow Vader nerds at the Prop Den.

 

[Sturtrup]

Proportion in 1/6 scale is affair of mm! So a few mm too many in the whidt of the shoulder can give you the appearence of a underscaled helmet or viceversa. I think that, with all the proper scaled body part, kaiyodo is the more accurate and in the worst case 1/6,2 scaled.

 

[SilverStar17]

View attachment 263401View attachment 263402

The lighting on these are awesome. Great photos!

 

[General Hawk 7]

So I put my batteries in the back of my Vader, and he made a breathing sound. Now he won't make any sound. I even removed and reinstalled the batteries. I am putting them in according to the instructions. (Like I said, they worked the very first time.) And I've flipped the little switch up and down. Nothing.

Battery problem? Or is this a problem with the figure?

 

[teleray]

I faced the same issue when I first installed the batteries in mine. I swapped the batteries used in the remote control with the batteries I initially used in the figure and that seemed to fix the issue.

 

[TonTon]

If anyone wants MP3s of the audio tracks send me a PM with your email. At least you could play them on your phone, etc.

 

[General Hawk 7]

I faced the same issue when I first installed the batteries in mine. I swapped the batteries used in the remote control with the batteries I initially used in the figure and that seemed to fix the issue.

Yeah! I just tried that myself. It worked for some reason. It makes no sense...but it worked!

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

A lot of folks have said that the chest armor is a little over scaled, so I did some quick research, and the armor on the figure dose come down a little low on his chest, if you compare it to ANH images. So I went ahead and sanded a bit from the bottom edge. What's nice is that the little "U" shaped indentations on the armor are up where they should be, the armor just dips down too low in the middle, so sanding off the excess doesn't do anything other than just make it look more accurate. I also filed down the edges of the shoulder strips that extended past the bottom of the armor.


Vader Screen Grab (notice how close the "U"s are to the bottom edge of the armor:



Before Mod (you can see how much it dips down in the middle):



After Mod (I could probably shave off a hair more):

 

[Tinman2000]

I re-posed this guy yesterday to make room for Fett and was reminded of his crappy gloves...wish they would have skipped the interrogation droid and delivered better ones.

 

[TaliBane]

WTC, you are on a roll! I can't wait to see how your figure turns out. Your eye for detail is just astounding (almost as astounding as your disregard of the price you paid for that figure!)

The chest armor is a MAJOR improvement, and even though the HT indents look like they aren't quite wide enough compared to the costume, it's great that they were positioned so it's still accurate after the trim.

I re-posed this guy yesterday to make room for Fett and was reminded of his crappy gloves...wish they would have skipped the interrogation droid and delivered better ones.

It's a mystery how those gloves got through. They are just so OBVIOUSLY crappy you wonder how it got all the way to a released figure.

 

[generalgrevious]

they don't bother me as it does to some. I like them better then those oven mitts we always seem to get

 

[General Hawk 7]

So Vader's electronics are back to not working again this morning. (Just got it working last night)
I sent Sideshow Support a message about it. Hopefully they will take care of it for me. (Should I have called them instead?)

 

[TonTon]

If you check out the instructions you'll see that the figure has a 15-minute automatic shut off for the audio. So I'm pretty sure any body you get will have the same type of issues--needing to turn it off before that 15 minutes (which is nearly impossible with the clothes on) or stripping him and removing the batteries, maybe waiting a half hour or a day, then putting them back in or whatever.