Star Wars fans love their collecting, and four items coming in March might be holy grails of Star Wars Funko Pop hunting. Amazon.com over in the UK recently listed four new Pop figures available for preorder. They will release in March 2021. The links are fresh enough they lack pictures, but their descriptions speak volumes! The four listed are Yoda, R2, Alternative Vader and C-3PO.
These four figures have been done before, so why would they rise to the level of holy grail quality? Simply put, one word in each description places these four in a unique class – CONCEPT! That’s right, we are not talking movie versions. While this is speculation since we do not possess actual pictures, concept sculpts heavily suggest these new figure will be designed after the late Ralph McQuarrie‘s original concept designs of these characters. Lets break these down one at a time.
March Funko Pops – McQuarrie’s Original Vision
McQuarrie’s designs pioneered the way for the look Star Wars would later achieve. Many years later, artists would go back to these originals to inspire new characters. The best example of this is Zeb from Rebels. His design is an almost exact copy of what McQuarrie thought Chewbacca might look like. Here are the four Pops in question as they originally looked.
Yoda – As you can see the original concept of Yoda looked more gnomish than his eventual movie puppet, but the basics are all there. If this March Funko Pop is indeed this concept version of the hermit Master, expect a skinnier body than normal, but we have to assume the head will be the large Pop style regardless. This figure could look really cute and may be one hot sell.
R2-D2 – R2 made it through design largely intact, but designers simplified all the appendages by pulling them into little compartments. McQuarrie may have meant for this to happen as well and drew the arms to express what the little droid can do, but this design did not go unused all together. Many aspects of the original design went into constructing Chopper, also from Rebels.
C-3PO – C-3PO also stayed fairly close to form, but McQuarrie’s original design looks like it walked right off the pages of an Isaac Asimov cover. This Pop could look cool for any number of purposes. Although how he will look with the giant Pop head is beyond me.
Darth Vader – The final March Funko Pops we have Darth Vader. The original face and design of Vader’s helmet looked longer and more curved than its final product. Seeing this design on a large Funko heaad will either be completely bad ass or the funniest thing since carnival mirrors.
Since we lack pictures, these are complete guesses as to what the designs will actually look like, but given the descriptions, we will call it an educated guess. These pops are available for pre-order now from the UK Amazon website. Their delivery date is tagged for March, but there is no indication if any of these will be store exclusives or not. (Educated guess again says a couple will be).
