Star Wars Halloween Costumes Getting a Little More Sinister as Lucasfilm Trademarks “Death Trooper”

Death Trooper Why do we love Star Wars? Well there isn’t really an answer to that question, not a definitive one anyway. Some love it for the films, some the TV Shows, the comics, the books, the toys and much more. But it’s those toys that really helped put Star Wars at the top of the food chain. Back in 1977 when there was only one film there were only three ways to see it again; the first was to go to your local theatre and buy another ticket, the second was to dream about it every single night and the third was to re-enact it with your action figures. Ever since then Star Wars had lead the way with its dynamic merchandising choices, singlehandedly changing the game for every film released in the future and that hasn’t changed even now in 2016 almost 40 years later.

 

 

According to reports from TMZ, Lucasfilm has filed documents in Europe to secure rights to produce sellable merchandise relating to the title “Death Troopers”. That means kids everywhere will soon be dressed head to toe in Death Trooper gear and if their mum or dad is a fan of the ‘Star Wars Legends’ novel then they’ll be proud, otherwise they might just be a little concerned.

 

swgdeath1

 

What’s that? You don’t think it’s very apt for children (and adults) to be parading around as Death Troopers? Well, let me remind you a little something about the beloved Stormtroopers from both the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy. That name comes from Sturmtruppen, a type of specialist soldier from World War I in the German Army. So effectively by naming the foot soldiers of the Original Trilogy ‘Stormtroopers’ Lucas ensured that when teachers overheard conversations of you drawing the short straw on the playground so your best friend gets to be Luke Skywalker and you have to be a Stormtrooper, that they thought you were pretending to be an elite class of trench infiltrator in the Imperial German Army. So it’s not too dissimilar, although in the grand scheme of thing I think I would much prefer to hear of children pretending to be troopers of the storm than troopers of death, but they do seem to be growing up a lot sooner these days.

 

Death Trooper

 

So whilst the big question of “who are those awesome dark troopers from the Rogue One trailer” was answered in EW recently, it seems our second question of “can I get one of those on my shelf” has been answered in the filling of these documents. Though the question I still have is; will this trend of more sinister troopers continue? You may remember the Shadow Troopers experiencing the same thing happening earlier this year. Perhaps Cold Assault Stormtrooper, Scout Trooper, and Snowtrooper weren’t inflicting enough fear upon the galaxy so the Emperor had a little sit down with his publicist and together they devised ‘Shadow Trooper’ and now ‘Death Troopers’. Between now and the films December 16 th release we could hear of untold numbers of new, more evil sounding soldiers of the Empire. Dark Troopers. Doom Troopers. Gloom Troopers. Murder Death Kill Troopers. Who knows?

 

Given the scale of canon and the connected universe as a whole there is also the possibility that the Shadow Trooper will appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story alongside the Death Troopers and both could show up in another property later on, like Rebels, because nothing says The Home of Death Troopers like Disney XD! But with EA Games still holding exclusive rights to Star Wars game production (which can all be canon), they could even show up there, and Death Trooper sounds like it would be a great class in the next Battlefront and with Star Wars Celebration Europe just around the corner, we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Source: TMZ

 

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21 thoughts on “Star Wars Halloween Costumes Getting a Little More Sinister as Lucasfilm Trademarks “Death Trooper”

  • June 30, 2016 at 7:28 pm
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    What is that death troopers novel graphic???? AHAHAHAHA so bad!

    • June 30, 2016 at 7:39 pm
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      It’s a novel which came out a few years ago.

    • June 30, 2016 at 8:13 pm
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      It is a zombie-horror story set in the time frame between Ep. III and IV. They subsequently did a prequel called Red Harvest set during the Old Republic Days at a Sith Academy. The whole idea was to do something weird like Stephen King’s “The Shining” but in the Star Wars Universe. I haven’t got through Death Troopers yet but Red Harvest was interesting.

      • June 30, 2016 at 9:08 pm
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        Oh man I’m glad I wasnt aware of it and I’m glad that kind of stuff isnt coming out now.

      • June 30, 2016 at 11:38 pm
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        They’re both pretty fun reads honestly. Not too serious but enough horror to set them apart from the average SW:EU crap that was bubbling to the surface at the time.

  • June 30, 2016 at 8:28 pm
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    I did find it confusing that the author chose to connect the Death Troopers in Rogue One to the horror novel. They have nothing to do with one another. But this is kind of a silly editorial all together.

    • June 30, 2016 at 11:45 pm
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      It’s relevant to the discussion as it’s quite literally the first use of the term in-universe and in from our perspective as possible customers. Seeing as how the mobile games (which technically are canon, story wise) have had these (from the novel not R1) death troopers as Halloween themed content, it becomes doubly relevant as it places them within canon. Hence the need to bring it up in the article. I will admit it gets a bit muddled.

      • July 1, 2016 at 8:47 pm
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        I agree the history of the term “Death Troopers” and the fact that it was first used in the novel would be a relevant addition to the article. However, the article did not explain that nor did it explain the mobile games use of the novel-version of Death Troopers. Instead there was just a suggestion that kids dressed as the R1 version would make their parents’ proud because the parents are fans of the novel version. And I’m sorry, I know this article was more comedic in nature so I shouldn’t take it so seriously, but that just doesn’t make any sense.

  • July 1, 2016 at 12:08 am
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    Death Troopers, Shadow Troopers, and Dark Troopers, Oh my!
    I am actually happy that they called these new troopers death troopers though. I think there’s a lot of variations of other types of troopers under other names in legends and I want to see at least one of them pop up like they were before, this way they’re not crushing any of those. I know that “death troopers” were totally just those zombie stormtroopers, but that’s less of an official title and more of “Oh no what do we call that monster?”

  • July 1, 2016 at 2:33 am
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    Death Troopers was an unusual book.

  • July 1, 2016 at 2:56 am
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    Kind of sad when a book about zombie stormtrooper and Sith Lords is better written than anything that’s been released in novel format for SW this year.

    • July 1, 2016 at 3:30 am
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      It would be sad if that were the case. But it’s not. While Star Wars novels in the new canon have been overall rather lackluster, I found Dark Disciple, Lost Stars, and Bloodline to be quite good.

      • July 1, 2016 at 4:32 am
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        Bloodline was terrific. I haven’t yet read anymore. The guy with the identity crisis on here doesn’t like much of anything, though.

        • July 1, 2016 at 4:52 pm
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          If you’re a fan of the Clone Wars series (I enjoyed Clone Wars much more than the Prequels) then you might like Dark Disciple. I didn’t go into it expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. If you didn’t care for the show, then it’s probably not for you.

          Tarkin, A New Dawn, and Heir to the Jedi were okay. Just okay. Heir to the Jedi gets quite a bit of heat for not being very good, but from what I understand the book was originally slated to be part of the old EU but was bumped into the new canon because it was already so close to publication.

          Aftermath was not very good. The story wasn’t very interesting and Wendig integrated a lot of immediately recognizable elements from our world into the Star Wars galaxy which repeatedly took me out of the story. The remnants of the Imperial leadership that Wendig presents seem more a motley crew of misfits and comic book goofballs rather than serious-minded military and political leaders. I had a few other issues with it. That being said, some of the stuff other folks have complained about regarding this book didn’t really bother me.

          I liked Lost Stars quite a bit. It’s a young adult novel so it reads a bit different from other Star Wars books, but I went into the novel knowing that the target audience wasn’t a 40-year-old man. It’s a cool story.

          But honestly, if you’ve read Bloodline, you’ve read the best entry into the new novel canon.

      • July 1, 2016 at 7:14 pm
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        Lords Of The Sith was also excellent

        • July 1, 2016 at 10:24 pm
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          Ah. Yeah. I forgot about that one. Not a bad read.

  • July 1, 2016 at 4:03 am
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    And still hardly anyone mentions what the Death Trooper is holding and speculation on it.

    • July 1, 2016 at 7:00 pm
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      Looks like a Stormtrooper doll to me

  • July 1, 2016 at 8:32 am
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    So what’s the difference between death troopers and shadow troopers? Can someone so a side by side pic? Google searches show the same picture for both.

  • July 2, 2016 at 7:27 pm
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    Helltrooper

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