Repairing My Kenner 'The Empire Strikes Back' Han Solo Blaster After Decades of Being Broken!
One of my most cherished childhood toys is my Star Wars Han Solo Blaster! I absolutely loved Star Wars (still do) and I luckily I still have almost all of my Star Wars toys and memorabilia from the late 70s and early 80s! In 1980 I had to have tubes put in my ears and my adenoids removed at a children’s hospital. I remember the entire experience very well with three memories standing out the most. First were the doctors telling me they were going to put me to sleep by putting a Darth Vader mask on me! I remember what seems like a black mask going over my mouth and nose… well, nighty night! The next memory is me waking up crying in recovery in some sort of baby bed. I seem to remember having some sort of tape or something around my mouth for some reason. And the third memory is getting my Han Solo blaster! My Mom and Dad got me the Kenner Star Wars laser pistol while I was in the hospital and it’s still with me today.
The blaster, called the DL-44 Heavy Blaster pistol made by BlasTech Industries in Star Wars lore, was simply called Han or Luke’s blaster back in the day. The plastic toy gun was simply called ‘Han Solo’s Laser Pistol’ when it first came out during Star Wars initial run. By the time I got mine in 1980 The Empire Strikes Back was being pushed and it was being marketed as Luke’s Laser Pistol – just like the one he used to fight the evil Stormtroopers! Mine has The Empire Strikes Back stickers on the sides rather than the simple Star Wars logo that the earlier version had. The gun ran off of two “C” alkaline batteries, which spun a small DC motor with a grooved bevel gear on the shaft. When pressing the pistol trigger and smaller button on the grip simultaneously a small think piece of Mylar or plastic ribbon would push against the gear and make a grinding… I mean a laser blasting noise? Well, it wasn’t exact but a lot of Star Wars toys weren’t ‘exact’ back then… like my YELLOW light saber!
A few weeks ago my buddy Mike told me he was going to fix his original Han Solo blaster up as it was missing some parts. I started thinking that maybe I should do mine as well? Mike bought a gun off of eBay for parts and robbed what he needed to get his going, and was nice enough to mail me the rest of the parts which happened to be exactly what I needed – a working motor and some screws. A BIG thank you to my friend Mike for inspiring me to do this project and being able to make it happen!
That brings us to this week, as the parts came in the mail and I started to bring my gun back to life. Inside my gun was in pretty good shape, but my multimeter said the motor was dead. I’m sure that is exactly what my Dad found decades ago. But this replacement motor read good, and so I swapped them out. A quick test with some “C” batteries sprung the old pistol back to life! “BUUZZZZZZ! BUZZZZZ! BUZZZZZZZ!” I have just regressed to a six year old! WONDERFUL! The screws that came from the donor gun were rusted and mine were not. So I quickly sand blasted them, shot them with some flat black paint, and then scuffed them up with some steel wool and some added nicks with a steel file. I put the gun back together and put the screws back in – all of them – the first time since Reagan was president!
My Han Solo Laser Pistol was now complete after all of these years! Please, check out the video below as I take the blaster apart and it comes back to life!
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