Hasbro turned down the holy grail of lightsaber toys, and it won\u2019t say why. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Star Wars<\/em> toymaker spent two years secretly working on a kids lightsaber that can automatically extend and<\/em> retract its blade \u2014 the very first of its kind. Hasbro acquired all rights to the idea from a previously unknown Israeli inventor and patented it around the world. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But instead of finishing the product, Hasbro walked away without explanation. It let the inventor claw back the rights. Today, with the help of a different manufacturer, you can finally buy it at Target<\/a> and Walmart<\/a> \u2014 as the Goliath Power Saber.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The $60 toy doesn\u2019t have official Star Wars <\/em>sounds or authentic Jedi or Sith hilts. The blade isn\u2019t as long as the movie sabers, and it doesn\u2019t have the build quality or sophistication of pricier props.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But a simple yet ingenious mechanism means we finally have a lightsaber toy that can actually retract its own blade. <\/em>Slide the golden switch, and a noisy motor sends each of its glowing blade segments smoothly in and out of the handle. Poke someone with the saber, and its blade will safely collapse without damage. You can even safely point it at your own face \u2014 see that in my video below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Three years after Disney jazzed the world with a self-retracting lightsaber prop<\/a> that you\u2019ll never get to touch<\/a>, one that was exclusively used by a paid actor<\/a> in its shuttered $6,000-per-stay Star Wars<\/em> hotel, you can now buy a toy that captures some of the same magic. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n And its Israeli inventor claims that the Power Saber is just the start. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yair Shilo tells The Verge<\/em> it took five years just to figure out the right formula for a safely collapsing automatic blade, starting with prototypes made of paper and tin foil. He says he sold newspapers, trimmed lawns, and cleaned swimming pools while he worked on his Star Wars<\/em> childhood dream, <\/em>eventually rallying a cousin and an investment group<\/a> behind a provisional patent in 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fundamentally, the new Power Saber isn\u2019t that complicated inside. Just like the kiddie saber I proudly carried to the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I <\/em>in 1999, the blade consists of telescoping tubes that stick together when fully extended. With those kiddie sabers, you flick your arm to propel the whole set of tubes; with the Power Saber, each segment is pushed upward and pulled downward by a long screw. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that\u2019s not the clever part. The simple genius of Shilo\u2019s patent<\/a> is that each blade segment isn\u2019t<\/em> married to that screw, so you can safely collapse them without sticking a screw into your hand. As the saber extends, each segment lifts up off<\/em> the screw, carried into the air by the segment behind it. Once the tip of the saber extends far enough, it pulls the next blade segment up into the air, and the next, and the next, until they\u2019re all fully extended, held together by friction alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And, each blade segment has flexible tabs where they meet the smooth screw, letting them slip down their track when you apply pressure. Even if you roughly shove the whole blade back into its casing \u2014 which I\u2019ve done plenty of times in tests \u2014 it doesn\u2019t hurt or damage the internal mechanism, claims Shilo. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s something its inventor says other designs never cracked. \u201c99 percent of them, something needs to push the smallest segment from inside,\u201d he says. \u201cWith this mechanism, nothing pushes it.\u201d Hasbro tried for years, says Nextoy<\/a> founder Robert Fuhrer, and it did create spring-loaded auto-extending blades<\/a>, but there were always potential safety issues when auto-retracting a toy lightsaber\u2019s blade. Shilo ran into some of them himself with an earlier model that relied on traditional gears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The \u201cbiggest toy ever\u201d? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n