This is a thread about what I learned about buying a Stormtrooper helmet. It seems really simple to just buy a Stormtrooper helmet but it isn’t. If you have no interest in what I learned about buying a Stormtrooper helmet (WHY WOULD YOU) then please feel free to mute this thread

Still here? NERD! This is gonna be loooong. There’s two categories of ‘lids’. The licensed mass produced high-quality products like eFX and Anovos and the not so good Rubies and Don Post helmets.

Then there’s the Wild-West of unlicensed lids. There’s A LOT of places to buy them but there’s only two places I’d buy from and they are Shepperton Design Studios or RS Prop Masters. Which of these you buy from comes down to personal preference and what you believe.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about how the helmets are produced. They are vac-formed (you basically melt a sheet of plastic around a single mold) and that mold has been ‘pulled’ from an original screen-used Stormtrooper helmet. Both SDS and RS Prop say that this is the case.

These copies of the original mold have been copied, then people copy that copy and like a video tape, the more generations made of the mold the less detail the mold picks up. Things eventually become smoothed out and you start losing detail.

That’s why there’s SO many people making these helmets. They have a vac-machine and access to a mold of a mold of a mold etc.
But there’s a really easy way to spot a screen lineage mold and that’s a bump on the right eye socket. They all have this.

When Star Wars was produced it was a relatively low-budget affair and when they wanted the helmets produced they went to a Twickenham-based vac-former called, Andrew Ainsworth who up until that point had used his machine to make fish ponds and kayaks.

Making the helmets was a bit experimental and through trial and error the mold became less symmetrical & you had things like the bump on the right eye. The place owned by Andrew Ainsworth was called, Shepperton Design Studios and they are the makers of the ORIGINAL Stormtrooper.

AH-HA! If Shepperton made the original Trooper then that MUST be the place to buy an original Trooper! Well, kinda.

You see, RS Prop Masters got hold of an original helmet from A New Hope and they pulled a mold directly from that and it is quite different to the SDS version.

This is my RS Prop Master version. It looks REALLY rough. The helmet has a texture, it’s asymmetrical and it has a lump on the left-hand side. But you know what? You can actually see that lump on-screen in the original Star Wars.

The SDS version retains the right-eye bump but everything has been smoothed out and made more symmetrical. A little bit more sanitized. It’s a beautiful looking ‘lid’ but it lacks all the imperfections of the RS Prop Masters one. Which you prefer is up to you.

Regardless which you buy there’s two types of helmet. There’s the one you see all over Star Wars and these are known as ‘stunt helmets’ (1st pic) Then there are the ones you seen in close-ups (when Luke and Han disguise themselves as Troopers) these are Hero helmets (2nd pic)

There’s quite a few differences between stunt and hero. The stunt has a green acetate sheet across the eye sockets, the hero has hard bubble lenses. The stunt has five teeth from the middle tooth and the hero has three. I must admit I prefer the look of the stunt helmet.

There is one more sub-set of Trooper helmet and that’s the ‘move along’ Sandtrooper. It’s basically a stunt helmet but the rubber brow is glued further above the eye sockets.

Finally. It’s what you’d like your helmet made from. There are two options, PVC or ABS. ABS is what the originals were eventually made from but has a slightly dull look whereas PVC has a bright white glossy sheen that I think most people associate with Stormtroopers.

RS Prop Masters have gone EVEN further and they have released a range of stunt helmets that uses the same green material that the originals were made from and sprayed white. This leads to chipping through use just like the screen helmets.

Unexpected things you’ll see on a Trooper helmet. Decals like the tube stripes and other details are all hand painted. The actual helmet is in two parts and is held together by two Earth screws (painted white) by the ‘ear’ pieces. The brow and rim are just clipped-on rubber.

So, in conclusion, if you want a high-quality Stormtrooper helmet but don’t give a shit about screen accuracy, buy Anovos or eFX. If you want an idealised version of a screen helmet, buy Shepperton Design Studios. If you want a 100% accurate screen version buy @RSPropMasters

This has become a bit of an obsession for me during lockdown. I find myself watching Star Wars and obsessing over paint chips, cracks and screws I now notice on Troopers that I never noticed before. So that’s another thing I’ve ruined for myself.