Mini99 said:
I always thought that the Fett figure was different to the film character because Kenner must have been working from pre production photo's, because as mentioned the figure was out well before the film?
If so then maybe you can understand how the errors slipped in.
There may well of course be some truth in what you say. However the history / evolution of Boba Fett's costume is fairly well known. Lucas knew well in advance that he wanted the character in ESB, and hence a lot of work went into designing his costume very early on (which of course explains how something incredibly close to the final film design was present on the 1979 cardback art for the figure a full year ahead of Empire's release).
The character first of course appeared in the gloriously terrible Holiday Special in 1978 when he looked like this:
However due to the very early development of the costume, it rapidly became essentially the finished article in terms of design, if not colour, and that included the rocket Kenner had so many problems with ;-):
And here it is again, this time with Star Wars Sound Designer Ben Burtt (all pictures shamelessly stolen from Google images). This shot is from 1978:
And the colour scheme seems to have been swiftly finalised after that, with just a few tweaks left to change it into the final version for Empire. The early colour prototype helmet with the eyes is well known:
My point is, as with (let's face it!) an awful lot of our beloved vintage line, Kenner's faithfulness in reproducing the uniforms and costumes seen on screen into their 4 inch figure line was hardly perfect! Why is Luke's saber yellow for both the Farmboy and Bespin versions? Why does the Ugnaught have a blue smock? Why is Han Hoth's jacket blue? Why is Ben Kenobi all brown with a black undershirt? What the hell are the Cantina aliens wearing?, etc., etc.
I suspect that Boba's final look was more to do with the general 'stylized' look Kenner often gave their figures (Han Bespin's boots being the same brown as his legs, etc.) as a cost-cutting measure, rather than falling foul of basing the figure's paint scheme off pre-production materials. After all, the second wave of figures (Greedo, Walrus Man, etc.) wasn't even planned until after Star Wars was already out and taking box offices by storm globally, and yet even though the reference materials were right there and available, Kenner still famously cocked up not just Snaggletooth's size and colour (they eventually based him off his look in the Holiday Special, of course!), but also managed to concoct dayglow clothes for Hammerhead, Walrus Man and Greedo, none of which were even close to accurate.
Anyway, much more importantly, why was this version of Boba Fett not in any of the films?
;-)