By Pete Vilmur
Vintage Star Wars toy collectors may have spotted something vaguely familiar in the Y-wing starfighters seen streaking across the Geonosian sky in this week's episode of The Clone Wars, "Landing at Point Rain" -- yup, that red striping is not the first time we've seen the stalwart bomber-fighters shed their traditional gold deco for red.
Back in 1979, Kenner released their Y-wing fighter as part of the second wave of vehicles in their popular die-cast line. Savvy fans probably guessed the red stripes were a mistake -- after all, the X-wings were designated "Red Squadron", and the Y-wings "Gold".
It turns out the Y-wings were released red in 1979 because Kenner designers had based their color scheme on the original Y-wing colors, depicted in the early ILM model photos below. See, Y-wings were originally classified as "Red" squadron in the A New Hope script, while the X-wings were, believe it or not, "Blue" squadron.
Why the change from blue and red to red and gold? Simple -- the special effects technology of the day did not allow for the color blue to be used on models or objects that required them to be inserted onto a separate background -- star-filled space or the Death Star trench, in this case. Because of this limitation, the blue stripes for the X-wings were changed to red, and the red Y-wings became gold.
Probably worked out for the best in the end -- "Cut the chatter Blue Two" just doesn't carry the same edge, does it?
UPDATE:
Star Wars Twitter follower Adam16bit reminds us that Galoob released a red-striped Y-wing as part of their Action Fleet series, and Hasbro also gave Toys "R" Us a red Y-wing as an exclusive a few years ago. Good catch!
