At best, bootleg and knock-off action figures can usually be classified as a novelty item, lacking real value. But there are a select few bootleg figures that have attained the status of coveted collectors’ items, with their scattershot distribution, poor quality, and lack of manufacturing information making them seriously rare. In some cases, these bootlegs can even exceed the value of the real thing, like the infamous “Mister Rock” doll from the seventies. But while “Mister Rock” only looks like a Mego Star Trek figure, other bootleg lines make use of the actual molds and tooling from the official line for their unauthorized copies. Of this category, there are no figures more beloved, infamous, or weird than Turkey’s “Uzay Savascilari” Star Wars action figures.
Translated literally as “Space Wars,” the Uzay figures were made by Turkish toy company SB Product using Kenner Star Wars molds of questionable provenance. Sources vary on when exactly the figures were available; Hakes lists them as manufactured in 1988. They were discovered in the early internet era by non-Turkish fans, and were embraced by the collecting community for their charmingly silly card art and inventive reuse of existing molds to make bizarre new characters. They have since become “the most expensive line of SW items to collect, licensed or unlicensed,” evidenced by this Hakes listing for a mint-on-card “Blue Stars,” the most iconic figure in the Uzay line.
The Uzay Star Wars figures are far from the only bootleg Kenner Star Wars line. Similar lines were made in Hungary and Poland during the same era, but neither has the notoriety or collectibility of Uzay. Two factors help Uzay stand out: the card-back photography and the invention of new characters made with existing Kenner Star Wars parts.
The Hungarian and Polish lines use existing still images or poster art from the films, and the character selection is limited to characters who appeared in those films.
Fourteen Uzay figures and two vehicles were produced. Inexplicably, the figures’ cardbacks advertise four characters that have never been verified to exist ( Klaatu, AT-AT Commander, Imperial Commander, B-Wing Pilot), while leaving off nearly half of the characters that have been found. Also advertised are three mini-rigs and an X-Wing fighter that have never surfaced, and are generally accepted to have never been manufactured.
Of the fourteen figures known to exist, twelve are (more or less) straight copies of their Kenner counterparts, though with worse-quality and fewer paint applications and more brittle plastic. R2-D2, built off of Kenner’s Power of the Force pop-up lightsaber R2 figure, features an abnormal color scheme for the droid. His usual blue paneling is mixed with red, as well as touches of green. The use of a Power of the Force mold is one of the best indiciations of when these figures were on shelves, as this R2-D2 was not released until 1985.
It is also of note that official Kenner figures were also sold in Turkey. One bootleg Star Wars collecting site explains that “the SB Products Uzay figures were sold in small stores, bodegas, and markets throughout Turkey, as opposed to the larger department stores, where you could find Kenner figures for about 3 to 4x the price of their Turkish made counterparts.”
The card art for each figure consists of a still photograph of the toy in action, set against a diorama or background. The random exception is the TIE Fighter Pilot, who has a painted image of a ship flying through space. A couple of the cardback photographs have gained notoriety for their use of recognizable real-world items as props. The Death Star Gunner is using a giant calculator, while Chewbacca walks among gourds and other vegetables. These have a real effect on the figures’ value, with “Gourd Card” Chewbacca much more sought-after than a later variant with a simple photograph of the figure against a plain background.
This brings us to “Blue Stars,” and his companion figure “Head-Man.” Two of the molds SB Products had access to were the Kenner Snowtrooper and the Imperial Guard. While they produced standard-color designs of both (as well as a variant of the Guard sans-robe), these two characters are also where artistic license took over.
Head-Man is a robe-less Imperial Guard figure, body cast in black plastic and head cast in silver or gold vacuumized metal. A sword and shield are included as weapons, the origin of these sculpts are unknown, as they are not based on any tooling from the Kenner Star Wars line. This is the only example of new tooling in the entire Uzay range.
Blue Stars is a Snowtrooper molded in blue plastic, with a yellow visor and some yellow highlights on the chestplate for contrast. It makes for a striking figure, and Blue Stars is generally held as both the emblematic and most collectible character in the line. The cardback depicts a squadron of Blue Stars troopers on patrol in what some fans have identified as orange sherbert.
Hakes details that they have only ever sold one other Blue Stars figure at auction, in September of 2020. That auction’s final price was $19,211, for a carded sample in the same condition as the one for sale this week. Together with the one sold in 2020, the figure on auction with Hakes now is the highest-grade sample known to exist – and given the rarity of the line, it’s exceedingly unlikely one in higher grade will be discovered. With Hakes’ other recent Kenner Star Wars auctions shattering records, Hakes’ high-end estimate of a $25k final price is entirely possible, especially given that it will likely be years before another of these figures appears at auction.
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