Like most kids obsessed with Star Wars in 1978, Jason Fry could hardly wait for his Boba Fett action figure to arrive in the mail. Following toy catalog instructions, he’d collected his four proof-of-purchase box seals, sent them to Kenner Products, and waited by the front door for nearly two months, anticipating his replica of the newest character scheduled to join the burgeoning movie franchise.

The only thing he knew about the intergalactic bounty hunter, which made its brief debut in the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, was that he looked incredibly cool. With his identity hidden underneath a Stormtrooper-type mask, Boba Fett wore blue and yellow armor, a red cape, carried a jet pack and handgun, and roamed the galaxy without any affiliation. “He was the only good thing about it,” Fry remembers of the infamous cartoon. Once the 10-year-old had unboxed the mysterious mercenary, a year before the character’s official debut in The Empire Strikes Back, his imagination took over. “I probably thought up a hundred little Boba Fett stories using Kenner figures before I ever got to see Empire,” says Fry, who has since made a career writing dozens of Star Wars extended universe novels. “Everything about that figure was just so exciting.”

Andrew Ervin, an author and Star Wars enthusiast, recalls similar feelings as a kid. Despite Kenner’s canceling the action figure’s missile-launching gadget over safety concerns, Ervin was taken by its design. “He looked almost medieval in a way,” he remembers, referencing its purple and green metal plates with orange accents. “The color palette on the toy is pretty mellow—it kind of gives him a menace in a way.” Like Fry, Ervin crafted his own adventures with Boba Fett, projecting motivations onto a dangerous figure with a cloudy moral compass, navigating the cosmos of his decorated basement.