Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Luke Skywalker in Echo Base Bacta Tank

A little while back my local comic shop had a big $5 action figure sale on late 90's and early 2000's figures in dinged up packaging. Being a huge action figure fan I snapped up a ton of figures during the sale. One of them was this Luke Skywalker in Echo Base Bacta Tank I missed out on while I was in college.






Luke in Bacta Tank came carded on the green Power of the Jedi card back. What a cool set with the large diorama pieces as well as the figure. You can tell the diorama piece was designed to be used with an FX-7 droid. The is a little computer station and round stand for the droid.


This scene wasn't the most exciting part of the Empire Strikes Back, but it's another slice of life type scene that really fleshes out the Star Wars Universe. This is the first of two scenes in ESB that show off the medical technology of Star Wars.




The Luke Skywalker figure included in the set is dressed in just a white "diaper" or tighty-whities. He has very limited articulation, but it's not like you are going to be posing him around a lot while he's inside the tank.


Luke's hair is sculpted sort of sticking up, this is to make it looks like he's suspend in water. Luke's face also has a red-ish pink paint app to represent the scars left behind by the Wampa.


Not that you'd probably be displaying this guy outside his tank, but the figure can't really stand on his own due to the position his body is sculpted it. Again this pose is to help simulate that Luke is floating in liquid.

There's no doubt from looking at this figure that Mark Hamill was wearing a SCUBA diver weight belt to keep is from floating to the top of the tank.


So the Bacta tank has couple little features to help simulate the movie. First of all the tank hold water. Second, the lid has clear straps attached to it that Luke's arms fit thought to suspend him appropriately in the tank. The most interactive feature of the tank is Luke's breather hose. The little black tube comes out through the top of the tank and you can blow in it to create bubbles in the tank. Unfortunately the hose is so tiny, that to force air through it, I almost instantly got light headed.


Float on Luke, Float on.


3 comments:

  1. I like the base itself and could see using it with GI Joes other figures in that scale.

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  2. Now this is awesome!!! What a great find dude, and I love that you can fill the tank and suspend Luke.

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