Question #6: from May 7, 2005:

Does anyone know if hasbro plans on releasing a Darth Sidious electronic lightsaber?
--KSweenmom7

My answer from 2005 With commentary from 2025:

I don't believe so. As you've stated, different actors say different names different ways, and as such, such a guide would probably be pretty useless.

Despite the insane popularity of Hasbro's electronic lightsabers, there are no known plans for Darth Sidious at this time.

We still get electronic kid lightabers 20 years later, and they're pretty popular - but Darth Sidious only got a release as an adult collectible (below right) and a cheap, off-model kid toy (below left). Hasbro made an FX Elite Lightsaber, but we have never seen one in the $20-$30 range. Most lightsabers come directly from current streaming stuff, so I don't expect we'll see one given that it has been 20 years since this was asked.



Thanks to the high starting price, Amazon still has the FX model for about $360. That's a lot of money, but only about $100 over its original price. It's not cheap enough for a kid, though, and back in 2005 the idea of an FX Lightsaber for children seemed absurd despite the price tag being significantly lower before Hasbro started to manufacture them.

But if you want The Acolyte lightsabers, boy howdy, do you have options.

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FIN

I'm more than a little surprised Sidious didn't get a kid lightsaber given we got a weird gold High Republic-ish one, and a number of lightsaber hilts modeled after characters and not props.

As we wade deeper into the post-Lucas era of Star Wars we're seeing a change in attitude about what gets made as a toy. The high-end collector stuff seems to be very interested in digging deep and going obscure, but kid lightsabers are mostly hero characters who are highlighted as toyetic from the style guides. It's kind of funny to think The Clone Wars came and went without a toy Sidious electronic lightsaber, but the line came and went with Sidious himself being an incredibly hard-to-find short packed figure.

--Adam Pawlus

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