Chewbacca bandolier strap (1983) with rotting foam - terrible!

Hey guys - I also posted this over on another SW collecting site, but wanted to also post this here. Note this is primarily as an FYI to those who collect/own SW Vintage toys (1977-1985):

I was recently visiting my folks out of town, and dug through my old Vintage SW toys (these were buried in a box in an attic). I hadn't looked through these boxes in years. And, much to my disgust & disappointment, my previously perfect Vintage Chewbacca Bandolier Strap (1983) which was used to carry figures is ruined - the foam that was used to hold the figures is rotting & falling apart. I had to throw this away because the toy was useless at this point - plus, the rotting, disintegrating foam was actually getting on my other toys. Terrible.

I did not take pics. of this, but here is a Youtube review of this, so you can see what the rotting foam looks like. Note this is not my review:



So, be wary of anyone selling this & claiming it's in perfect shape....not saying that perfect ones aren't out there, but I'm sure a lot of them also have disintegrating foam like mine & others....

 

I do see these pop up on eBay quite a bit. Fairly inexpensive typically, but I didn't know they were made of foam. It's certainly not the most durable material. The foam chunks from the Death Star trash compactor and the Dagobah swamp are notorious for completely disintegrating.

 

That's sad There wasn't any way to cut out the foam to save the rest of it?

 

Good point, and I thought of that. The problem was that the foam was really falling apart everywhere, and I didn't want to rinse it off in a sink since I was afraid the foam residue would clog up the pipes - even if I rinsed the foam residue off the toy, put this down a garbage disposal and tried to grind this up, I was afraid the residue wouldn't degrade enough & therefore cause a problem there too.

The reason I threw it out instead of recycling it (which I typically do with plastic I don't want) is because the residue was really getting all over everything & I didn't want the residue to get all over the other plastics in the recycling bin. Also, any plastic you recycle needs to be clean, which this wasn't.

I didn't want to keep the toy without the foam parts because the toy is incomplete & also useless as a device used to hold the figures without the foam aspect(s). IMHO without the foam parts it just looks like a long piece of blue plastic.

 

It's funny, yesterday one of these popped up in my eBay "Other items you might like". Naturally, I clicked it. Sure enough, it mentioned the deteriorating foam. It was only $9.99, but if it's more or less worthless without the foam, it's kinda pointless. Is there any way to use "repro" foam here so that it's at least functional and more displayable?

 

Yes, I agree with this. Without the foam, the item is just a long piece of plastic that is quite useless. You can't use it to hold figures, it's incomplete, and just sits there. I wouldn't pay $9.99 for something like this, I wouldn't pay $1.00 for something like this, and I wouldn't even take it if someone gave it to me for free. As you said, it's pointless.