gino

I think $699 for this helmet is a fantastic price. Especially when you consider that it is the only helmet in fandom that has ever been offered that was made directly from using the original production molds that made the original helmets for ROTJ. In addition to that, this helmet is incredibly complex and difficult to produce and manufacture. One of the reasons I believe it was never produced back in the day when Don Post had the deluxe line of helmets. I don't think it ever made it past the prototype stage. And if you recall, back in 1995, the Don Post Deluxe Vader helmet retailed at $1200 and it had very poor pedigree and questionable execution. And a much simpler helmet to produce. So here we are almost 20 years later doing it for much cheaper then they were able to then. And soooooo much better.

A lot of things have been addressed in this thread. http://forum.bikerscout.net/index.php?showtopic=8977&st=0 It would be great if a mod could move this into the helmet section so people could more easily find it.

How can we get this thread moved to the helmet section? Lots of good info in this thread but it took me forever to find it.

Any of you guys coming to SDCC have to come by and see me at the efx booth and l' ll let you get up close and personal with it. Maybe even show you some behind the scenes stuff that I can't post publicly.

Nope the shapes are correct.

All fiberglass.

Hey guys, just thought I'd pop in here and give a small update on the EFX Scout Trooper helmet. Things are moving forward, albeit slowly but picking up steam. We've just got our first sample back from China which I'll be looking over later in the week. From what I've seen in pics it looks pretty good but once I have it in hand I'll be going over it thoroughly. We are entering the stage where we have to go back and forth with the factory until they are able to produce a prototype that is up to our quality standards. Still no definitive release date or price. I always tell people that whenever there is a significant update that I'll be sure to post it to the forums. So here you go. Here's a quick pic. Pay no mind to the bolts in the visor. Also we're still going to work on getting the visor interior smoothed out and not raw fiberglass showing. .

Not sure I understand all your questions, but I'll try to answer. Yes the rear main helmet will be laid up as one singular piece. Same as the visor. Helmet would consist of 4 fiberglass pieces (rear helmet, face plate, visor, chin cup) that get assembled into a final helmet. As far as I know, it's going to be a gel coat with CSM (chopped strand mat) fiberglass. You have to remember that these are Chinese factory workers we're talking about here and it takes time to get things on track with them. That being said, we don't approve the product until we get a sample that we feel meets the criteria we put forth. Also you have to remember that these are collectibles that are meant to be displayed. Just like any film prop not made of rubber, if you put them through rough treatment it is going to show. No different than anything fan made as well whether it be ABS or fiberglass. .

Thanks guys! And Trevor that pic of you wearing the helmet looks awesome. Well the factories in China have their own way of doing things. We just try to get them to match OUR way as close as we can. Should be a straight up polyester resin with fiberglass mat. No specific thickness or number of layers, but the thickness of the fiberglass has to very closely match the uniformed thickness of a vac formed sheet in order for the parts to properly register with each other. Sounds like no big deal but I promise it is very difficult to do with consistency. As of right now, the plan is to make all the individual pieces in fiberglass (helmet, faceplate, visor, chin cup) then assemble them post lay up. .

Hey guys, I think this may be my first time posting over here so sorry I just now got around to it. I see a lot of speculation floating around so hopefully I can give some info to help clear up some of the uncertainties. If you guys have any questions concerning the efx scout lid, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. Still no definitive pricing or release dates yet, so just thought I'd get that out of the way first. The biggest complaint I've heard from people about the lid is the weathering job. I've handled all the helmets in the archives, as well as the one now owned by propstore (previously owned by Sansweet). I can tell you that the weathering on all the originals still around have a LOT of variance to them. Some had more intense weathering, some had less, but they were all done in the same manner. When I weathered the prototype legend, I modeled it directly off the original we used from the archives. If you don't prefer the styling of the weathering of the prototype, then that means you don't prefer the look of the original helmet we used, because the weathering was a very close match. If you closely examine the weathering on the original helmets, they appear to be a bit on the random sloppy side. But that's how they were done for the film. On film they look great, but sitting on a shelf, in my opinion the weathering just sort of becomes more 'noticeable'. But rather than perform an idealized weathering job, we chose to match the weathering as it was done for the originals. And since we had fantastic in-hand reference of an original helmet, that was the one I used to match the weathering to. Hopefully at some point we'll be able to post pics of that particular original so you can see the weathering and how it compares to the prototype. At this point in time as far as I know, we haven't decided what will distinguish the limited from the legend. I don't think we will be using a mixture of ABS and fiberglass, only fiberglass as far as I know. ABS is just out of the question for mass production. Having a factory try to replicate the difficult process of joining, filling, sanding/blending the halves together would be VERY time consuming with inconsistent results which translates into costing a lot more to produce, not to mention significantly more vulnerable to damage. It would be a quality control nightmare. For one example, collectors would be wanting replacements at the first sign of a paint crack (which could easily be caused with just a bit of flexing the helmet) where all the halves are joined. All it takes is once slight squeeze or spreading open when trying to get your big melon head in it and boom, paint crack. Most of the originals show paint cracking in the seams and if we made them in the exact same manner we'd have the same high risk. It's fine for a film prop where it won't show up on screen, but not okay for a high priced collectible. As a prop collectible company, you have to take those kinds of things into consideration. And it's a different world when managing the production of a 1000 pieces vs making a few out of your garage. And yes, in case there was any uncertainty, all the original scout helmets are painted white and not bare ABS. For the efx prototypes, we used the original production molds for everything except for the faceplate, chin cup, and eye lens. For those pieces, we took molds from the interior of a screen-used helmet. All these molds were vac-formed and assembled into a 1st gen helmet of the production molds, and then molded from the outside to produce fiberglass pieces. Hope that helps. Like I said if you guys have any other questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. .