It was bound to happen eventually. Like any self-respecting Star Wars fan, I have one of the greatest toys every made – the Master Replicas Lightsaber. As anyone who has played with one will tell you, the first time you get ahold of one of these and activate it you get a rush that is possibly the greatest toy experience of your life. What we wouldn’t have given as kids to have one of those! Ok, it may have taken 30 years but hey, at least we have ’em now. And I don’t care how old you are, swinging one of those things around puts such a grin on your face it’s easily the second best form of stress relief in the known universe. That is, it’s all fun & games until what happened last night happens to you…
Here is a video of what the Darth Vader lightsaber replica is supposed to do [NOTE: I swear to god this is not me]:
Ah, the thrill of saber ignition! The confident hum of the swing! The power of the clash effect! The wonder of a do-it-yourself Vader costume and homegrown visual effects! Sadly, I can only experience a small fraction of these emotions ever since disaster struck last night. Here is a video of what my own personal Vader saber does now:
See? It’s really broken, i’m not just looking for attention. Ok, yes, I admit I do have a few other sabers, but this was my only red one! Plus it’s an original Master Replicas and not some crummy Hasbro wannabe (truth be told I’m not sure if Hasbro cheapened up all the sabers after they took over from MR last year, but the Hasbro Obi-Wan is noticably lighter and of lower build quality) so replacing it with a new one isn’t really an option.
I could send it in to Ultra Sabers to either have it fixed or converted to a Luxeon saber (that means they replace the stock blade with a removable one and illuminate it with a blindingly bright LED at the base of the saber), but I like the idea of having an orignal MR Vader. I suppose since all true Jedi complete their training by building their own lightsaber, I should at least learn how to fix a fake one myself if I have any hope of joining up (in the capacity as Jedi Craft Service or something).
I’ll let you know how it goes. Anyone want to place bets on whether I fix it or burn down the house trying?
In other news, as I was hunting around Youtube for appropriate saber videos, I found I wasn’t the only one to botch a home practice session:
This video proves that rotoscoping software has just gotten way too cheap and easy:
And this one proves that parental supervision of lightsaber wielding children isn’t just a good idea, it should be the law:
And, last but not least, a new item I know you’ve all been waiting for:
Lightsaber chopsticks will finally be available at the beginning of next month! Hooray! Because all good Jedi love sushi.
That’s all for now… and hey – let’s be careful out there!
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Voting checkbox. Sorry about your saber though :( I’ve broken props before, and it sucks horrendously!
I like to imagine that Darth Vader’s apartment in the Death Star looked exactly like that first video. Complete with scorch marks.
Looks very much like a bad connexion to the batteries – probably VERY easy to identify and fix once you open it up. You can do it!
One of my friends had a couple ForceFX sabers in college, and we went out in the field next to our dorm and smacked them around, never too hard. Well, apparently hard enough when I was blocking a hit and broke the blade. Now I didn’t break it off, it got crooked, but still worked perfectly sound and light-wise. I think he superglued it back straight. Odd that yours could take a little tap and not work at all…
And parts of that video were inappropriate Mojo. We didn’t need to see you “shaking your thing”, if you catch my drift. ;-)
I’m sure you check the batteries, right? You didn’t mention it, just checking.
Nice background on the TV there. Any chance you can share? Gotta love Voyager!
Totally off topic: what kind of TV is that? Would be interested to hear what a FX connoisseur like you watches. (42 inch Hitachi over here. BSG BluRay looks awesome on it, thank you very much!)
My fiancee is in hysterics because apparently listening to your narration about your broken saber, if you’re not watching the video as I was, sounds like you’re speaking metaphorically about another activity one might engage in alone at home.
hey there,
i hope everything will turn out ok and you will get this thing fixed very soon so you can start swingi… wait, are those ANOTHER 10 or so lightsabers at the end of the video ?!?!?! :o
if so, shame on you :P ;) i don’t even got near one of those things, and you seem to have a frakking warehouse full of them .. :P
Aw man! Why did you have to show me that website? It’s bad enough that they now make replica light sabers, now I can customize the things!
I say you try to fix it and if you can do fix it great and if you can’t send it off Ultra.
I know that one is your pride and joy but you do have others.
1.) The scene of you shaking the lightsaber is so unintentionally and inappropriately hilarious that I nearly fell off my chair. You’d best be prepared for that part of the video to go viral.
2.) You have my sympathies on the apparent death of your favorite saber. I have the Luke Skywalker blue one and it is a prized possession. Those lightsabers are, far and away, the best geek toy ever made, period.
3.) I have faith that, when you crack that sucker open, you’ll be able to suss out and fix the problem. It may be nothing more than a simple connection knocked loose by the impact with the lamp. On the other hand, if some weird electrical jolt happened when the saber made contact with the lamp, you may have fried the circuitry in the saber’s hilt. That doesn’t seem likely, but when you’re dealing with lightsabers anything is possible.
I hope you’re able to resurrect it, Mojo. Keep us posted.
If memmory serves repairing/making a lightsaber is part of jedi training. Just do the opposite of what he manual days, just like the Return of the Jedi Radio Drama says.
Charge the batteries, duh!
I have a functioning Vader Force FX lightsaber. I’ll let you have it if you take me to the Caprica in-house FX team and let me live with them. Because I’m a nice guy!
Mojo, you fool. You’re not supposed to turn on a lightsaber by flipping the switch. When have you ever seen anyone in Star Wars turn on a lightsaber by flipping a switch?
Still, I think you should dissect the beast to fix it. What more can you do to it, you know? I’d love to see what makes those things tick.
Since I recall no online evidence of Mojo assembling a commercial model kit, let alone engaging in a mechanical project of lightsaber magnitude, I’d have to responsibly advise against trying to fix it. (I’m not quite sure why the opinion poll is split, fixing lightsabers is no joking matter.) However, I’m confident you could fix the video so it shows a fully functional lightsaber and redo the audio so it fits the footage.