Black Series Darth Vader reveal helmet coming...? Hasbrocon

I bought several of these for modding and gifts. The price can't be beat and down the road people will be wishing they got one after these all get sold out. Expect them to get a lot more expensive NIB on Ebay in the future. It is great that Hasbro went into doing a reveal helmet - but I don't understand why most people keep considering this to be an ROJ helmet. The symmetry and color scheme shows it to be based on ROS - as many Lusasfilm Disney licensed toys have been for years. I personally don't like the symmetrical look of the ROS Vader, but the reveal scene at the end of Episode III is the big finale, so I'm into this. High end reveal helmets are extremely expensive and hard to get, so this is a bargain for entry level display. And the sounds are just extremely cool. There's not much that can be done to fix the shortened neck which is a shame. But there's lots that can be done to improve the rest of this as a project. For starters, here's some orthodontic expanders I got from Ebay for the greebles on the exterior forehead and neck. I got a pack of ten (stainless steel) for about $25. Large and small ones are needed. Then I also got a batch of old hard drive heads $20 for the inside of the mask. I'm going to carefully glue these real metal parts over the molded simulated parts of the mask to give this a more realistic look.

The mask is a mix from ROTJ and ROTS.But more ROTJ.The ROTS facemask has a complete different look.The neck is extreme long.The nose is different.The eyelenses are flat and not curved.Also the parts on the head are different.Look on the "ears".The golden expanders are also a marker for ROTJ.The ROTS has a complete different design of the expanders and that with a silver/chrome finish.I don´t wanna say that you cannot make a great ROTS style mask from this..but ROTJ is the easier way to go.
 
The biggest problem with this otherwise nice mask is of course the dome, as others already discussed. While this piece makes for a very nice display with just the mask and neck piece and no dome, it still drives me nuts the dome Hasbro supplied is so small and cartoonish. I therefore took to fitting a Rubies Supreme DV helmet dome on to this mask. I had one sitting around that came new in box, but badly scratched. I'm going to fix it up by 1) fitting it with the magnetic mechanism of the Hasbro Helmet, 2) adding epoxy putty to the edges of the helmet so it looks thicker, 3) add multiple coats of primer paint in a stripe on the center of the helmet to better define the missing center strip that should be there, and then lastly 4) paint the entire Rubies helmet (after light sanding) in primer and then gloss back. I'm also going to harvest the real metal tusks from the Rubies mask and put on the Hasbro in place of those plastic ones. Here's the Rubies dome sitting on the Hasbro. As you can see, getting a dome of approximately the correct size and shape on this Hasbro mask suddenly adds a lot more credibility to it's overall look. At least that's my humble opinion.

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Great idea...I still have some of this old domes in the basement from the "old times".:)
 
The mask is a mix from ROTJ and ROTS.But more ROTJ.The ROTS facemask has a complete different look.The neck is extreme long.The nose is different.The eyelenses are flat and not curved.Also the parts on the head are different.Look on the "ears".The golden expanders are also a marker for ROTJ.The ROTS has a complete different design of the expanders and that with a silver/chrome finish.I don´t wanna say that you cannot make a great ROTS style mask from this..but ROTJ is the easier way to go.

I agree. The ROTS Vader has a very distinct look (that I don't care for AT ALL), that I just don't see in this helmet. The only real similarity is that it is symmetrical.
 
I'll guessing Amazon UK hasn't received their stock yet :( I've had no emails to say it's delayed, but it's not been despatched either and the money hasn't been taken yet. I don't mind waiting though, just do long as it arrives in the next few weeks.

edit: Amazon customer service have told me my helmet will ship tomorrow (23rd April) for delivery on Tuesday, so we'll see if that holds up :/
 
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Amazon.de - listed for 130€, so over 150 USD. Listed, but not yet available.

No real discount on the other BS helmets up to now, so i don´t expect to see any low prices.

For example - Poe is available for 96€ insted of 106€ before.
 
I managed to order one on Very.co.uk. Only £91.99 and they say they're expecting stock on the 5th of May. And I have six months to pay it off interest free. Woop.
 
A number of people rightly pointed out why this piece lends itself to the style of ROJ instead of ROS. They are right! But as Kroenen77 points out, there's a bit of both in this thing and also some things that don't match either style. (The droopy mouth is really wrong.) Other's have shown some really nice ROJ re-paints. I'm still going to head in the direction of ROS because I don't have any ROS displays while I already have 3 in the ANH / ESB style and also I'm tired of repainting things! This is already shiny and black. The neck flare isn't right for either style and I personally dislike the massive ROS flare anyhow. It's easy enough to get the correct non-bubble lenses. The breathing sounds are from ROJ, but who's to say Vader doesn't have wheezy breathing anytime the mask comes off? My plan is to add a little epoxy putty and paint to the inside of the nose to make the hole diameter a little smaller and showing more silver. The painted gold expanders will get blacked out and replaced with real stainless steel silver ones. One can take this in either direction, but I'm wanting the look of ROS so...here's an update. I took the Rubies dome and cut out about 1" of the inside horseshoe plastic to make room for other modifications. This was done with a Dremel pastic cutting wheel.
 

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I removed the magnetic locking plate from the original Hasbro helmet and added longer screws in the screw holes, nuts to hold the screws in place, and 1" black nylon spacers. This then gets positioned into the Rubies helmet with a bit of trial and error. Ultimately I stuck the black spacers in with light duty glue, testing the fit, and then secured the spacers permanently with JB Plastiweld epoxy.
 

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The Rubies helmet, like the Hasbro helmet, is very thin molded plastic. It does not have the beefy look of fiber glass. Having learned what EFX successfully did with their PCR helmet, I added flanges to the front rim of the Rubies helmet create the illusion of it being thicker. This was done by sanding the edge to make it rough, and then applying approximately a 1/4" rope of Apoxie Sculpt putty purchased from Amazon. This stuff is great because it goes on sticky, then becomes less sticky and has roughly a 2 hour working time before becoming rock hard. It can be smoothed out perfectly by just dipping one's fingers in water (just a little) and / or using a soft Bondo rubber squeegee. I got the dark gray / black putty, so you can still see where it is before re-painting the entire dome.
 

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The putty takes 24 hours to be fully dry, but I carefully went ahead and snapped a couple pictures of the Rubies dome on the Hasbro mask. Photo's taken from a slight distance to reduce lens distortion. There's a little adjustability so one can seat the helmet up / down / forward / backward via the screws inside. But I'll leave it alone for now while the putty dries. Next step will be to sand, prime, and repaint this old, scratched, Rubies helmet. In my opinion, these pictures show that with a slightly more accurate size and shaped helmet, this piece starts to look a lot better.
 

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I removed the magnetic locking plate from the original Hasbro helmet and added longer screws in the screw holes, nuts to hold the screws in place, and 1" black nylon spacers. This then gets positioned into the Rubies helmet with a bit of trial and error. Ultimately I stuck the black spacers in with light duty glue, testing the fit, and then secured the spacers permanently with JB Plastiweld epoxy.

I had to do a double take. That looks like my work bench! Lol


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While waiting for epoxy to dry, I'm just playing around with some greebles for the inside and outside mask. Not trying to improve everything, but just some key pieces. Here's one of the small sized (6 mm) stainless orthodontic expanders I got from Ebay. I'll black out the masks's gold and then glue these on. They're not the exact screen accurate ones, but an improvement anyhow. I also put in one of the hard drive heads just to show the size and look it will have. Got a bag of assorted ones from Ebay. First I need to remove the rubber shield around the lenses (and also replace the lenses and add red plastic.) Also, the silver painted pair of "suction cups" in the forehead area, or vacuum terminals..whatever they are, really look cheap. I'm going to cover these with a pair of very small rubber suction cups having thick wire fitted into them. Sort of like the high voltage connector on CRT monitors and TVs tubes.
 

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Amazon UK just pushed the delivery date yet again to somewhere between 12 -22 May. Absolutely useless first it was 20 April, then 30 April and now this. Will be cancelling the order and buying elsewhere!!!!!
 
Just got despatch notification from Amazon UK :) Could be that the current 2-5 weeks shown on the site is because all of the initial stock was pre-ordered.



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Well I just got my fourth notice of a change of delivery date but this time it is good news and it should be here by Tuesday unless I get a fifth in the meantime!
 
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