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Mr Palitoy's Cardback Guide |
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  The second set of figures released for the Empire Strikes Back were released on the 41A card. This card is almost idenitical to the Kenner 41-back on the front and back of the card. The front of the card has the Palitoy logo where the Kenner one would be and there is no square white price box in the top left hand corner. The Palitoy logo is the smallest one yet, and has a box with a black background underneath it featuring trademark information. The back of the card features the 41 figures now available and vehicles and playsets mostly from the Hoth range of toys. The manufacturers text is also changed to that of the Palitoy company. The left hand box shows the Snowspeeder, Tauntaun, Turret-Probot playset and MLC-3, PDT-8 & MTV-7 mini rigs. The right hand box shows the Imperial Attack Base and Darth Vader TIE Fighter. This card variation, and all card variations up until 45A were manufactured in Hong Kong at the Kader Industries or Smile factory by the Palitoy (Far East) Company Ltd and then shipped back assembled to the Coalville factory in the UK. You can see is says Made in Hong Kong on the back of the card above the right hand box. The letter K next to it stands for Kader Industries and is the factory code that was also shown on Kenner cards that were also manufactured in the Kader Industries factory. The second set of ESB figures had already been released on the 30B card variation which means that no figure made it's debut on this card. This tends to make them a little less popular with collectors. The first and second sets of Star Wars figures and first set of ESB figures also appeared on this card variation. 41-back cards are much more common than 30-back cards for the first and second sets of Star Wars figures. There are 2 other variations of 41-back cards, the 41B and 41C. Almost all figures appeared as either a 41A or a 41B & 41C. The only exceptions to this so far are Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot that appeared as all 3 variations and 2-1B that appeared as a 41A and 41B. This is the last card variation that the original C-3PO appeared on. This is because this figure was replaced by a new version with removable limbs that debuted on the 45A cardback.  There
is a sub variation where there is no factory code K for Kader
Industries next to the Made in Hong Kong Text which is the 41AN
variation. In this case the factory code is S for Smile Industries and
is to the left of the Greedo figure. This variation also has a
perforated punch compared to the 41A variation. All figures found
on the 41A variation can be found with the factory code K, whereas only a
subset can be found with the S factory code on 41AN. Also, the 41C card
variation which was manufactured later can only be found with the K
factory code. The 41AN variation is generally less common than the 41A,
though on some figures the 41AN is more common.       Single stemmed bubbles with a footplate were used on all figures on this card variation.  |
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