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For its time this Leia Organa figure is a fair likeness to the Leia from A New Hope, especially with the hallmark buns and you can easily imagine her saying to Tarkin 'I recognised your foul stench when I was brought on board'

With the absence of any other contemporary Tantive IV action figures, aside from Vader, the droids and Stormtroopers, this Leia Organa action figure really is all about the Death Star escape. That in itself never diminished it's play value too much since this is when the main action in A New Hope is at it's most heightened. Plus, there is a good concentration of early figures which you can place on the first Death Star alongside Leia.

Find Vintage Princess Leia Organa action figure on eBay

One of the most striking things about Princess Leia in A New Hope is perhaps not the buns (which almost every commentator mentions) but the ankle-length white dress. It's perhaps the most virginal outfit ever seen in a Sci Fi film up to 1977 with such films usually preferring to represent exotic women wearing barely any clothing and often either quite sexually agressive or vulnerably available in fulfilment of an adolscent male fantasy. Notably, in the fantasy movies of the 1960s and 1970s when we do see virginal women in long white dresses this tends to be in horror movies where the dresses are very likely to get spattered with blood.

In A New Hope the portrayal of Princess Leia turns this trend on it's head. Whilst making Leia look rather virginal in the pristine white dress, she is also imperious, impregnable, unstained (or blood spattered) and inaccessibly posh. This makes Leia a very strong female lead character. She might need rescuing, but she plays as big a part in the rescue action itself as anyone else.

In the earlier parts of he movie Leia's accent is very prim RP English (something which is toned down considerably by the middle of the movie and in the subsequent two movies with Leias's accent becoming much more American and her vocabulary much more colloquial).

In A New Hope then, Leia is represented as very inaccessible, very proper and almost doll-like and her dress, being perfectly white and pristine, is almost like a wedding dress. Leia's dress represents absolute purity in its whiteness in direct contrast to the blackness of Darth Vader's outfit which represents the polar opposite. A New Hope is a movie about polarities, good and evil, black and white, right and wrong; precisely the lines that have become blurred during the Prequel Trilogy movies The Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith. Leia's outfit represents the clarity of A New Hope and also its sparseness - there is no middle ground, no moral doubt and nor are there any grey areas in this movie.

Princess Leia Organa 1978 Action Figure Examples

The best copy of this figure that I own is a 1978 Hong Kong black belt and hair version with a pink face. She's absolutely lovely. She's photographed here with a repro weapon and original cape.

The brown belt and haired iteration of the 1978 Princess Leia photographed here is rather pristine (albeit lacking cape and blaster). Thanks to Scotty for the loan of this item.

The 1978 Princess Leia Organa action figure has a very brittle torso which was prone to cracking unfortunately as you can see from this photograph. With Princess Leia being predominantly white many copies have become very dirty over the years and this example is no exception.

Princess Leia Organa 1978 Blaster

One of my main quibbles with the 1978 Kenner Princess Leia Organa figures is that (like almost all the later Leia figures) she had hands that could not keep hold of their blaster for very long. This (combined with their small size) meant that many of the Leia blasters got lost very quickly and they are quite hard to find these days. To date I don't own an original.

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All Star Wars action figures, vehicles, collectibles and Star Wars toys shown on this website are the 3.75 inch scale and from my own private Star Wars collection unless otherwise stated. Where possible original vintage accessories have been used but in some instances I have placed Kenner Star Wars figures with either reproduction weapons and accessories or for Hasbro figures close approximations have been used. This is mostly the case for modern Star Wars lightsabers where the correct item can be very difficult to identify on some ocassions. Vintage Star Wars action figures are shown with their original weapon or accessory when I have them. When a vintage Kenner action figure is shown with an accessory which is not original I have tried to point this out where possible.

All of the Star Wars action figures shown were purchased second hand, usually incomplete, and in bulk. They have been reunited with their original weapons and accessories where we could get hold of them.

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