FETT HELMET: "Mystery Helmet"...?
- Thread starter MaskMaker
- Start date
Too Much Garlic
Master Member
It is sorta known now, but the name stuck. I'll leave it up to those knowing more to detail everything.
thedentedhelmet.com is the best source for this information, here´s a nice overview of the Fett-helmet-history:
http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/misc/TDH_Images/fett_helmet_history.png
The very left helmet on the bottom is the mystery MYSTERY HELMET
Enjoy !
http://www.thedentedhelmet.com/misc/TDH_Images/fett_helmet_history.png
The very left helmet on the bottom is the mystery MYSTERY HELMET
Enjoy !
MaskMaker
Well-Known Member
Coolness. I recently remembered a photo I had taken at the 1995 Halloween Trade Show in Atlanta. It was taken at the Don Post booth and is of me wearing their Boba Fett prototype helmet. I can put it up if anyone wants to see it. I was wondering if this might be the Mystery Helmet.
By all means, please post it up!
propologist
Sr Member
I distant relative to boba fett . She helped stitch his undersuit and was the one that told him to wear clean underwear the night before he went out with Jabba to dump Han in the sarlacc pit. We all know what happened after that.
Too Much Garlic
Master Member
A prop person on the movie painting the different paint style helmets.
At least that's what I gathered.
SingleSeat
Well-Known Member
It is that line of Fett helmets in fan hands that is most closely aligned with what became the Marrow Sun and Sgt. Fang casts and/or any re-recasts thereof. It is a cast lineage that shows some lineage to one of six helmets assembled for the original production. The particular helmet in question was originally photographed for Kenner's promotional materials and packaging, but was later stolen. Prior to being stolen, a cast was made, and its lineage lives on most closely to the original as Rogue Studio's cast.
Sandy was the primary painter and assembler who was commissioned to turn Fett from a white "supertrooper" to what we saw on screen. She can also be credited with bringing in the altered cape, glove patch, and "wookie scalp" elements that we all know and love, along with the vast majority of painting themes and techniques. She may not have been Fett's mommy, but she was certainly his guardian angel.
Agreed. You never know where a missing link in the story between Don Post Studios and the Mystery line might pop up next. The Mystery helmet has several unexplainable inaccuracies that are clearly intentional and of another cast generation. It could easily have either something or nothing to do with DP's work. Throw up the pics!
Sandy was the primary painter and assembler who was commissioned to turn Fett from a white "supertrooper" to what we saw on screen. She can also be credited with bringing in the altered cape, glove patch, and "wookie scalp" elements that we all know and love, along with the vast majority of painting themes and techniques. She may not have been Fett's mommy, but she was certainly his guardian angel.
Agreed. You never know where a missing link in the story between Don Post Studios and the Mystery line might pop up next. The Mystery helmet has several unexplainable inaccuracies that are clearly intentional and of another cast generation. It could easily have either something or nothing to do with DP's work. Throw up the pics!
SingleSeat
Well-Known Member
PM sent. Reasonable question, but I made a deal to respect her privacy and let her call those kinds of shots. Of course her name is known to many, but I'm not going to be the one to publicize it even more for the fan buffet as a matter of principle, and I would hope other folks would do the same out of humanity rather than any like or dislike of me. Until she says otherwise, I'll keep my trap shut. It doesn't matter anyway because she doesn't know enough to satisfy the fan hunger (that traditionally mistreats such folks) and what she has contributed is already out there for fans to use. The only "secret" with her is her level of exposure to fans, and she can be in charge of that. Nor would I press her to get more or less involved or build relationships that serve fan mass agendas rather than her own. She painted Boba Fett, she contributed greatly, and her work will live on for a long time. That's about it.
The original "Mystery Helmet" was my cleaned up and repaired version of what the guys call the "Lava Helmet"-.
I'm not sure if there was more than one, or if I ended up with the only one, but I originally bought this (or one that looked identical) off eBay a year or so before AOTC came out, thinking it was a Don Post recast at first. I eventually wanted to fix it and up and mold it for a group costuming thing that all my cheap friends eventually bailed out on, but as I got working on it, I started noticing a bunch of little things that didn't match the Post version. (visor taper, keyslots too narrow (for the Post), etc.)
I eventually asked here (TDH wasn't around yet) to find out what the heck I had, and that's where the term "Mystery Helmet" came from.
The original story we heard was that it was one of ten unmodified copies that the Don Post employees at the time made for themselves while they had an original helmet for laser scanning. The person who told me about that certainly believed it and fronted the money for mold materials and the first casting. (over $500.00 for the casting alone)
Now a few years ago, everyone tells me that the original story is sort of a fan "legend" and never really happened, but that mine is still somehow related to the PP2 helmet. :wacko
To this day, all I know with any real certainty is that the original seller was a K. (Kelli, Katey?) Boyette who was selling it for her boyfriend in the FX industry, it looked identical to the Lava helmet when I got it, and that it builds up into a very nice, and very affordable (125.00 + S/H, PayPal to SgtFang@aol.com) movie size helmet.
-Sarge
I'm not sure if there was more than one, or if I ended up with the only one, but I originally bought this (or one that looked identical) off eBay a year or so before AOTC came out, thinking it was a Don Post recast at first. I eventually wanted to fix it and up and mold it for a group costuming thing that all my cheap friends eventually bailed out on, but as I got working on it, I started noticing a bunch of little things that didn't match the Post version. (visor taper, keyslots too narrow (for the Post), etc.)
I eventually asked here (TDH wasn't around yet) to find out what the heck I had, and that's where the term "Mystery Helmet" came from.
The original story we heard was that it was one of ten unmodified copies that the Don Post employees at the time made for themselves while they had an original helmet for laser scanning. The person who told me about that certainly believed it and fronted the money for mold materials and the first casting. (over $500.00 for the casting alone)
Now a few years ago, everyone tells me that the original story is sort of a fan "legend" and never really happened, but that mine is still somehow related to the PP2 helmet. :wacko
To this day, all I know with any real certainty is that the original seller was a K. (Kelli, Katey?) Boyette who was selling it for her boyfriend in the FX industry, it looked identical to the Lava helmet when I got it, and that it builds up into a very nice, and very affordable (125.00 + S/H, PayPal to SgtFang@aol.com) movie size helmet.
-Sarge
SingleSeat
Well-Known Member
Background Information
Go use the search function you noob. HA! Just kidding. Since I really can't speak to any stories of what happened with DP employees, former employees, or licensed DP products, maybe some crude pictorial deduction will help explain was is generally known. Please pardon my photoshop work.
I'll start with the mystery breed. I've drawn arrows to show some things the helmets share on these pictures made available by Art Andrews, SgtFang, and TDH members, so let me know if any of you don't want them up. I'm using pictures of the SgtFang, MS1, "Lava," Rogue Studio's buck, and the original helmet that is often described as the "pre-production 2" helmet, or PP2. They are by no means the extent of the similarities or differences, but I'm just pointing out some glaring items. The arrows contain colors, and I've given you a key. Red is strictly a characteristic common to "Mystery" casts. Teal is a "Lava" characteristic. Green is a shared original ILM Fett helmet characteristic. Hopefully, this can show how some things are shared, or not shared, between casts. There are many other differences between both the Lava and the Mystery, but these are simply ones that I can show easily in some photos I have on-hand. This is by no means a scratch-by-scratch comparison down to the millimeter which is probably beyond the scope of this thread. The last photo is simply to add more question marks as the red arrows follow the mold line differences between the "Lava," original ILM helmet, and Rogue Studio's buck.
With the "Lava" and Mystery helmets, the commonalities are uncanny starting in the forehead arrows which are mal-aligned along the front-to-back mold line. Some of what started out as errors or rough spots in the "Lava" are manifested as solid inconsistencies in the Mystery helmets. The right mandible hex jog appears to have started in the "Lava" as a scrape/dent and smoothed into the Mystery as a jog. The left rear trim behind the ear looks like a mold flaw in the "Lava" while it is more smoothed yet flawed in the Mystery line. The cheek corners and ear trim bottom corners are of course clearly intentional modifications common to both Fang and MS1. These are elements the the "Lava" does not have. However the upper left corner of the dome squaring-off warp that shows up in the "Lava" shows throughout the Mystery helmets like a big white flag. This is significantly different from the original helmet and it appears like something that would happen in the molding or casting chain of events rather than any intentional modification. The dome is so multi-dimensional that even the best fan-sculpt has a hard time coming close to approximating such compounded curves in different directions.
*note, the SgtFang example is the first version, rather than your current offering which lends repairs to some of the areas in question.
Editorial Opinion
This evidence is why the most popular theories surrounding the "Lava" are that it is a product of either a highly degraded mold (that produced Rogue Studio's buck), or some of the sloppiest molding and casting work ever, a combination thereof, or a second horrible or degraded mold entirely. The "Lava" is interesting, but it and any members of its family are some of the sloppiest, most horribly warped tubs of lard I've seen in Fett. The fact that they contain direct elements of the original helmet can't really make up for the fact that the dimensional departures from the original cast are so severe that it would take so much work to repair accurately that it would lose too much of its progenitor only to become another fan-made cast. They are more interesting left alone rather than painted, yet I would also add that the "Lava's" warping on all facets has either been repaired or is not present in the Mystery line other than the dome. On the fringe of this discussion is the popular BobaMaker helmet which, due to its uncanny similarities to a Mystery cast, I deem as a modified Mystery recast until I see a photo that shows otherwise. As for the scratched-up dome of the original helmet, word on the street has it that the de-mold process didn't go so well and the mold was cut along that line with sharp tools. This gives credence to either creating another mold, or attempting to repair or use a highly damaged mold in a different way, giving birth to the "Lava."
SgtFang, I can believe that your original helmet was in rough shape, but the reason why I don't think you actually had a "Lava" to start with is the fact that the common Mystery elements are shared exactly and independently between your helmet and the Marrow Sun. Right off the bat, the two casts were showing identical modifications made by someone other than you, somewhere, outside of the 1st and 2nd generations of the original. Unless you had knowledge that one of your helmets is a recast of the other after reaching either of your hands, the MS was known to have originated in a separate eBay auction around the same time as yours did. If you had any more photos of your original helmet as you received it, that could help solve the mystery.
Go use the search function you noob. HA! Just kidding. Since I really can't speak to any stories of what happened with DP employees, former employees, or licensed DP products, maybe some crude pictorial deduction will help explain was is generally known. Please pardon my photoshop work.
I'll start with the mystery breed. I've drawn arrows to show some things the helmets share on these pictures made available by Art Andrews, SgtFang, and TDH members, so let me know if any of you don't want them up. I'm using pictures of the SgtFang, MS1, "Lava," Rogue Studio's buck, and the original helmet that is often described as the "pre-production 2" helmet, or PP2. They are by no means the extent of the similarities or differences, but I'm just pointing out some glaring items. The arrows contain colors, and I've given you a key. Red is strictly a characteristic common to "Mystery" casts. Teal is a "Lava" characteristic. Green is a shared original ILM Fett helmet characteristic. Hopefully, this can show how some things are shared, or not shared, between casts. There are many other differences between both the Lava and the Mystery, but these are simply ones that I can show easily in some photos I have on-hand. This is by no means a scratch-by-scratch comparison down to the millimeter which is probably beyond the scope of this thread. The last photo is simply to add more question marks as the red arrows follow the mold line differences between the "Lava," original ILM helmet, and Rogue Studio's buck.
With the "Lava" and Mystery helmets, the commonalities are uncanny starting in the forehead arrows which are mal-aligned along the front-to-back mold line. Some of what started out as errors or rough spots in the "Lava" are manifested as solid inconsistencies in the Mystery helmets. The right mandible hex jog appears to have started in the "Lava" as a scrape/dent and smoothed into the Mystery as a jog. The left rear trim behind the ear looks like a mold flaw in the "Lava" while it is more smoothed yet flawed in the Mystery line. The cheek corners and ear trim bottom corners are of course clearly intentional modifications common to both Fang and MS1. These are elements the the "Lava" does not have. However the upper left corner of the dome squaring-off warp that shows up in the "Lava" shows throughout the Mystery helmets like a big white flag. This is significantly different from the original helmet and it appears like something that would happen in the molding or casting chain of events rather than any intentional modification. The dome is so multi-dimensional that even the best fan-sculpt has a hard time coming close to approximating such compounded curves in different directions.
*note, the SgtFang example is the first version, rather than your current offering which lends repairs to some of the areas in question.
Editorial Opinion
This evidence is why the most popular theories surrounding the "Lava" are that it is a product of either a highly degraded mold (that produced Rogue Studio's buck), or some of the sloppiest molding and casting work ever, a combination thereof, or a second horrible or degraded mold entirely. The "Lava" is interesting, but it and any members of its family are some of the sloppiest, most horribly warped tubs of lard I've seen in Fett. The fact that they contain direct elements of the original helmet can't really make up for the fact that the dimensional departures from the original cast are so severe that it would take so much work to repair accurately that it would lose too much of its progenitor only to become another fan-made cast. They are more interesting left alone rather than painted, yet I would also add that the "Lava's" warping on all facets has either been repaired or is not present in the Mystery line other than the dome. On the fringe of this discussion is the popular BobaMaker helmet which, due to its uncanny similarities to a Mystery cast, I deem as a modified Mystery recast until I see a photo that shows otherwise. As for the scratched-up dome of the original helmet, word on the street has it that the de-mold process didn't go so well and the mold was cut along that line with sharp tools. This gives credence to either creating another mold, or attempting to repair or use a highly damaged mold in a different way, giving birth to the "Lava."
SgtFang, I can believe that your original helmet was in rough shape, but the reason why I don't think you actually had a "Lava" to start with is the fact that the common Mystery elements are shared exactly and independently between your helmet and the Marrow Sun. Right off the bat, the two casts were showing identical modifications made by someone other than you, somewhere, outside of the 1st and 2nd generations of the original. Unless you had knowledge that one of your helmets is a recast of the other after reaching either of your hands, the MS was known to have originated in a separate eBay auction around the same time as yours did. If you had any more photos of your original helmet as you received it, that could help solve the mystery.
Last edited:
Great info here!
Just one point I would add (not much that can be added after all the detail SS is throwing out :thumbsup) in case anyone is confused is that the PP2 or Pre-Production 2 wasn't dubbed by TDH. I only mention this because someone came to me just a few days ago thinking that was a TDH designation, but the name originated in the Star Wars Chronicles. Personally I think PP1, PP2, and PP3 are misleading because it implies a straight lineage from suit to suit while in reality the fett family tree has a number of branches... but we have used those names because they were in Chronicles and they have stuck.
Just one point I would add (not much that can be added after all the detail SS is throwing out :thumbsup) in case anyone is confused is that the PP2 or Pre-Production 2 wasn't dubbed by TDH. I only mention this because someone came to me just a few days ago thinking that was a TDH designation, but the name originated in the Star Wars Chronicles. Personally I think PP1, PP2, and PP3 are misleading because it implies a straight lineage from suit to suit while in reality the fett family tree has a number of branches... but we have used those names because they were in Chronicles and they have stuck.
SingleSeat
Well-Known Member
Ok, I had thought it was so I edited my post. I'd agree that Fett is just one big pile of parts when it comes down to it. While the labels help people communicate they probably tunnel-vision the newbies.
It depends on what your priorities are. You could start by deciding whether you seek lineage or artistic preference -- related to a real prop or fan-made. If lineage is your choice then the MR would be the way to go first if you can repair the visor, and the MS1 or 3 (no longer made) or 'Fang, second. However, cost could be a determinant with the MR as the most expensive and the 'Fang as the least expensive. The only nod in my mind to an MS over a 'Fang would be that it is fiberglass (i.e. the original helmets were fiberglass), but again it's up to you if the price jump is worth it. They are outwardly identical, although SgtFang improved his cast by working out some of the inherited flaws. TDH is a good place to find various casts, or you could hit SgtFang up right here. As far as a direct cast...not available for sale as you can imagine. If you ever find the uber-rare "Lava," my opinion from above stands -- worth looking at, but not worth painting. It would be the worst lineage-driven option as a wearable prop.
Otherwise, fan-made sculpts such as the MSH1 or 2 ("Movie Sized Helmet"), MLC, FPH, and TF also circulate through the fan community. Fan-made sculpts sometimes seek to counter the flaws in lineage-driven casts such as the Mystery dome, so it is a matter of personal preference. I don't really have a favorite among them since I'm a lineage kinda' guy, so take your pick or sculpt one yourself.
The last segment is that of Rubies and the formerly licensed Don Post helmets. I'll let you do the research there, but they are grounded more in low-end costuming rather than prop replicas. Yet the fairly inaccurate DP Deluxe forayed into high-end replicas in the late '90s and was selling for $7-800, whereas a very accurate MR today might go for $4-500 if that gives you an idea of progress in the licensed replica world.
In either case, the onus is on you to do your research and know the details that you're buying. Don't just take anyone's word for it that this helmet or that one is the best thing ever. No one can possibly explain every detail on a forum, so your eyes will have to do the walking, and Fett can be a pretty long road if you stay on it. Bottom line: whatever makes you happy.
clonecollector
New Member
This is a very informative thread... just when you think you know something about these helmets... you learn even more! Thanks for sharing guys!
Similar threads
