Item Number: BAN000125

Fiercely defending the cause of freedom and individualism, the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance would lay down their lives to protect Princess Leia and her starship. In the opening scene of Star Wars: A New Hope, Rebel troopers do just that wielding their blaster pistols in a desperate attempt to fight off the faceless enemy stormtroopers who overrun Leia Organa s starship. The Rebel blaster was the first Star Wars weapon to appear on-screen and was modeled after a 1950 s British submachine gun (also the model for the stormtrooper blaster). Like all blaster pistols in the Star Wars trilogy, it fired bursts of searing light-based energy called bolts. In creating the Rebel blaster, Lucasfilm made some major modifications to the original submachine gun. First, the prop designers removed the folding stock, a feature that was kept for the stormtrooper blaster. While the stormtrooper blaster had barrel vent holes that were covered with plastic T-track , the Rebel blaster had vent holes covered with a tube of ribbed, rolled metal. A cone was attached to the muzzle of the Rebel blaster and a solid metal bar was then added to the top of the barrel, and the sides were detailed with T-track for the mounting of a scope. A non-optical scope was mounted to the bar using off-the-shelf mounting rings. While the referenced submachine gun normally uses a 32-round magazine mounted on the left side of the gun to hold the ammunition, the Rebel blaster used neither a magazine nor had a magazine housing. There were also stunt versions made for Star Wars: A New Hope that looked slightly different than the standard prop. Notably, the stunt version had a thicker trigger guard. Master Replicas modeled its Rebel blaster collectible on a blank-firing hero version of the prop.