Vintage Kenner X-Wing Toy 1.5-day Project (Vorsicht: Pix!)

[MFP 2020]

My son is almost 4 now and very into Star Wars (he went as "DARVader" for Halloween and he calls anything SW-related "Star Wars The Clone Wars"—as if it's one word) so I've been buying loose figures on the Bay so I don't have to share my original figures (which I was smart enough to keep).

A few years ago (before he was born) I very foolishly donated my original Kenner X-Wing to Goodwill. Must have been on one of my cleaning jags. It was in decent shape, although the lights/sound no longer worked and of course the wings wouldn't stay open without my special toothpick fix.

I just won another one, but it's missing the stickers and canopy and laser cannons, but that's OK because it's for a 4-year-old. Even so, I'd kinda like to spruce it up a little—paint the stripes back on, weather it a bit—so it looks better. (You know, for him.)

Has anyone made a project out of the vintage Kenner X-Wing? (I tried searching but only found threads on the Hasbro FX.) If so, I'd love to see pictures.

Related: Just for fun, I did a comparison of my vintage Kenner "early bird" R2 with my son's new ROTJ R2. Toy manufacturing has come a long way in 30 years.

 

[NAZGÛL]

Re: Vintage Kenner X-Wing toy: Has anyone dolled one up?

My son is almost 4 now and very into Star Wars (he went as "DARVader" for Halloween and he calls anything SW-related "Star Wars The Clone Wars"—as if it's one word) [

Haha, my 2 year old calls his stardestroyer a starwastroyer. :thumbsup

 

[Weezer]

Re: Vintage Kenner X-Wing toy: Has anyone dolled one up?

Haha my 2 year old is Yoda crazy, has a lightsaber and does a pretty mean Darth Vader (heavy breathing... good thing he doesn't know how to use the phone yet)

It's nice to see Star Wars made it into his genetics.

 

[NAZGÛL]

Re: Vintage Kenner X-Wing toy: Has anyone dolled one up?

Haha my 2 year old is Yoda crazy, has a lightsaber and does a pretty mean Darth Vader (heavy breathing... good thing he doesn't know how to use the phone yet)

It's nice to see Star Wars made it into his genetics.

Mine tries to talk with a low pitch voice when doing Vader. i just love it!lol

 

[MFP 2020]

Re: Vintage Kenner X-Wing toy: Has anyone dolled one up?

Well, I got the X-Wing today and I couldn't wait to tear it down. I let my son play with it for a while first, though. My goal is to make it look decent using materials I already have, without spending additional money, but you know how that goes. I'll post some progress pix tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you fellow parents might find this little video helpful.

YouTube - Star Wars Talk to Your Kids PSA

 

[MFP 2020]

One-man show, huh? Well, OK.

1978 vintage Kenner Bros Star Wars X-Wing Fighter. Got this bad boy on eBay for 12 dollars including shipping.

And after a full day in the garage, using only (OK, mostly) what I had on hand, namely big rattle cans (I did buy a couple of jars of model paint for R2 but I could have done without them), here's what I have:

The pics wash out all the details, but you get the idea. I borrowed the canopy and laser cannons from another X-Wing I just got and I'm going to try to cast some new ones and paint them appropriately. We still need a pilot figure. Yes, this is the X-Wing my 12-year-old self always wanted. I think the color is too blue/white, but again, I just used what I had and got it done fast. (I messed up the stripes on the underwing and just decided to follow the existing panel lines to create Red Generic.)

I did find out why the wings eventually wouldn't stay open (there's a little lip on R2 that, when it breaks from fatigue, won't hold the latch down against the spring) and I fixed it by turning R2 around. I even got the little motor inside to spin up. I thought it would be more complicated inside, but I was surprised.

Overall I'm very pleased. I keep seeing little details I want to fix (cowl detail stripes and such) but enough is enough. Now I'll hand it over to my son and let him bang it up some more. (Talk about picky: the first thing he did was try to screen-accurize the cannon tips from horizontal to vertical. That's my boy!)

BIG thanks to REL for the "spray wash" technique and inspiration piece: http://www.therpf.com/f10/efx-x-wing-repaint-103249/

 

[moffeaton]

Man, that is pretty dang cool! You have a lucky kid!!

 

[NAZGÛL]

Yeah agreed, and look at that happy kid! thanks for the vid.

 

[Solo4114]

Love the detail work on it. Very cool. I always wanted an X-wing when I was a kid. The 1995 Kenner series basically repackaged it, so if you go looking for parts, you can, I believe, use POTF parts on an actual 70s/80s era X-wing.

 

[Mike J.]

Smart kid! :lol