Are you afraid you missed a rare 501st Clone Trooper you saw on another site? What's the deal with packaging errors these days, should you buy them? And is it too late to get a Battle Pack that shipped last year? Maybe-- are you willing to work for it? Did you know Order 66 wasn't always meant to be in Revenge of the Sith? All this and more, if you read on!

1. I found the army republic battle pack the other day, just wanting to know if these are straight repacks? I think the "plain white clones" (good band name) have the new helmet sculpt for the first time. I believe the orange and blue clones we already have the new helmet sculpts. Am I correct, please comment.
--Matthew

While there may be minor batch variants, these four figures are indeed repacks. The plain white Clone Trooper with the new helmet sculpt has been issued in the Rishi Moon Outpost Battle Pack and the Remote Control Hailfire Droid, and the other clones came in other configurations in the past. So if you skipped it, it's possible you may have all these figures. On the other hand, as army builder packs go, this is a good one.

2. I was wondering since the new Vintage Collection figures are now being sold without the clam shell cases, is there a place that sells them? I tried one of the ones I had but the blisters on these newer figures are much bigger and won't fit. Any suggestions?
--Dave

There are a number of third-party products (read: not made by Hasbro) out there, although I hear a lot of complaints from people even though some of the carded figures fit. I'd say keep an eye open for the large ones used for 2002+ figures, while they may be bigger they should certainly be more than big enough to house any current figure. (If you want some sort of slim fit case, well, too bad for now-- unless you want to start manufacturing your own, which isn't as hard as you might think.)

3. Today I found one of the new Target 2-packs that is not tampered with (ARF Trooper Waxer & Battle Droid). The insert is correct, but the card backing is of the special ops trooper and Geonosian drone. Is this a common error seen before, or is this one of those unique factory mistakes? In short, would this be a good, collector's keepsake?
--Brian

I've seen a few of these over the years, and while this kind of thing did command a premium price in the early days, now nobody seems to care. It's a cool curiosity, not a common error, and more or less something you should just buy to say "Hey, look at that!" and then go put it back in cold storage.

4. I was looking on line to find out which of the 501st I might be missing. I have most of them. but there is 1 that I can not find out who he is. I found this picture on Rebelscum.com and I can't figure out who the clone is on the right between the Jet pack trooper & the airborne trooper. He looks like he has alot of white dots on the blue of his uniform. could you please shed some light on who this mystery trooper is.

--John

That would be the Titanium Series Action Figure of the 501st Clone Trooper. I think it's about $4 on eBay these days.

5. I decided about six months too late that my [animated] Clone Wars collection needs a Fordo -- is the ARC Troopers Battle Pack still shipping? It seems sold out just about everywhere, but will they restock? I don't know if this falls into your field of expertise, but thanks!
--Shaun

All evidence shows that it's still shipping, but popular. I've found new Battle Packs (and hot ones) tend to show up the most frequently at Toys "R" Us stores, of the big boxes. You may also want to preorder/order online to hedge your bets. It's a great figure (one of my faves) so if you have the means, snag it.

FIN

So the most fascinating Star Wars book I've read in years is The Sounds of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler, which is a hardcover book with what looks like some sort of cheapo MP3 player stuck to the side. In it, Ben Burtt and Matt Wood talk about making sounds for the movies and the really great thing is just how much work went into this volume. I got a copy as a gift, and am just now getting through the prequel segment. The most surprising thing I read (and maybe you knew this) was that Order 66 was originally meant for Attack of the Clones which explains a lot... like the movie's title. Just reading that one tidbit basically set me buzzing all day last week, just thinking we could have had an entire movie with the Jedi on the run from the Clone Army instead of just half a film. (Granted, I liked ROTS a lot more than I think most of you-- easily my favorite prequel.)

It seems to focus the most on sounds for the original Star Wars, including the original effects used to make the Tusken Raider and an astonishing amount of information explaining that Ben Burtt, apparently, is some sort of expert voice/character guy. I was pretty stunned about how many sounds for characters he made himself, we all knew R2-D2 and some of us knew Bossk, but also the tortured Power Droid in Return of the Jedi. Richard Marquand was listed as the voice of EV-9D9 which, to me, means it's still not a chick robot. (I don't care what you say, official collection of short stories from Jabba's Palace.)

The sounds used in the prequels aren't explained in as fine detail as the original trilogy, but there are some great tidbits about deleted concepts and unused creations. Specifically, the Battle Droids were, at one point, probably going to sound a lot more like the "Fred" voice or a pre-recorded chopped-up delivery than the final movie. Neat stuff, if you're dying to read a behind-the-scenes book that doesn't delve into "we used a lot of bluescreen" and "we used the actual facial expressions of the voice actor when modeling this digital character," this one is totally worth getting.

Got questions? I bet you do. Email me with Q&A in the subject line.