adam savage at prop store of london and i don't even know if i need to give much of
an intro because holy hell look it's a rocketeer backpack brandon alger tell me about this backpack
yeah so this is you know we've talked in the past about research and how so much of the interest in
props and collecting props involves research and trying to understand why things are made
the way they are this was a really interesting case study because it's basically
a casting which i assume is fiberglass of the rocketeer pack and then inside is it from
productivity from production from that area yes and there's a heavy steel frame in it oh really
down at the bottom so yeah if you pick it up or here i'll show you all right you see in there
and you and you've seen other rocket packs in the past i have seen some other rocket packs
okay so i don't think that pipe's a standard feature no there's actually that's clearly some
part for some specific rig they've knocked a big hole in it so this originated with a guy who was
part of the special effects team it passed through a couple of hands and then it's wound up here and
oh yeah what we understood is they were trying to figure out a way that they could maybe
mount a guy in costume like on the front of a plane and get real flying pov shots
of you know over the shoulder so i guess as part of that they would mount him through
the rocket pack and they'd build a pack for the full framework and we should actually um
we should pop it open because yeah i looked in the flashlight i could see some big chunks of
steel on the side here that were wow look at how crunchy it is up close i love it it's yeah it's
rough and probably never fully finished i mean it was probably a concept something they were working
on and just abandoned for one reason or another i thought it was interesting that the flaps were not
consistent this one's got those lines on it and this one doesn't it's funny because i've even have
reference material where the flaps are negative oh really but i i don't remember the correct one
also i'm noticing that it looks like it looks like the engine cells are a little more squeezed here
than here like they have a directionality but it may be wrong do you think those were found
parts or do you think they welded those up i think it's a good question yeah i have no idea
yeah this piece is so iconic and it is so um its form factor is so perfect
this is one of those few props that i just love every last thing about it uh you know
that i loved it in the film i loved every still of it i have one i work on it about every couple
of years just to make it a little better yeah amazing design yeah so here let's see how we can
zip it open
come on in there
oh yeah look at all that structure yeah cow so there's a lot going on in there right they were
expecting yeah and why else would you put a rig like that in if not to be some kind of mount for
an actor i mean i don't know unless you have any other theories on it well i mean it's it's clearly
a test rig right so they're not thinking if you're going to hang an actor you're always going to want
to strap around the body of the actor so actually i would say if this was truly meant for an actor
there would probably be some attachment points for this between this and the actor because you
wouldn't just want to count on the strapping sure right but it could also be part of a
pyro like this moving through frame on a thing that went up that pipe and the steel is to keep
it from melting but i don't know oh i don't know is there any possibility that it would relate to
launching the pack off of like an air absolutely maybe it could be because isn't there a thing
where it kind of goes flying off i think there's a shot in the film where it goes
that might be exactly what that's for that would be exactly what this rig would be perfect at
maybe we're revising the theory on the fly you can put a charge in there and then you could fire this
thing right and just shoot it at a couple hundred flying through the frame yeah doing that yeah well
that's interesting maybe and i mean the these uh these the rocket castings inside i mean i even
see the details on the top that i recognize right yeah so like all of this is and they went to the
trouble of fiberglassing it i mean it's just yes it's a real story it's very solid yeah man
this is just the most fun archaeology now we have to go look at the film and see what it looks like
in the shot where it actually flies off exactly there could be a logic to that although i would
think if you really shot this thing a few hundred yards it'd be pretty cracked up at the end of it
again which means that if you were prepping for a shop like shot like that you'd make five of these
yeah identical really quick and dirty so that you could fire them through the air and you wouldn't
break and then you'd use the next one exactly so maybe that's what it is maybe it was prepped
for that and probably also why you wouldn't need perfectly consistent detailing there because it's
just gonna be a wide shot right you're just grabbing everything from the shelf yeah this
really is my favorite kind of archaeology film archaeology yeah just like trying to imagine
what it was like on set when they were doing it but it's also like i mean having made my own
rocket pack and obsessed over little details and then seeing where details are not being sweated
over on this is really cool yeah like up here at the top of the fins where it all just sort
of goes to a muddy i'm not sure what's going on there yeah uh brandon i i never really thought
i'd get to see a genuine rocket pack up close and personal i really appreciate it hey i'm glad that
we found something of interest familiar something of interest in here i'm gonna go climb the aisles