Improve your Mandalorian cosplay with one easy trick!

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and once I notice a trend, it starts to bug me and becomes hard to unsee. Each week, I see scores of ‘Custom Mandalorian’ costumes, and like the diehard Disney fans who hide an obligatory ‘hidden Mickey’ in their props, whenever I see a Mando come across my feed, I like to guess how quickly this standard cockeyed, off-kilter, cracked-skull Mythosaur will show up: “Is it hiding in the first photo? Second photo? Third photo?”

A kit which turns out to be sans mythosaur, on the other hand, is always a pleasant, refreshing surprise! (One of the things I really appreciated in The Mandalorian was that—so far as I can tell—none of the non-Boba Fett character designs included this stock symbol.)

Why do so, so, so many Mando costumers continue to use the same tired old symbol we’ve been seeing since 1980? – enough already!
(Don’t even get me started on the MMCC’s similarly wearisome habit of randomly plastering this symbol on seemingly every available flat surface of their kit–I definitely have some thoughts there too, but that’s a rant for another day!)

There’s a thousand ways to depict a Bald Eagle that an American can use to decorate their gear and show they have pride in their country, so to keep using the same old mythosaur is just lazy. For a culture that’s so clannish and fractured, you would think each Mandalorian subculture would have its own spin on the classic design.

I mean, I whipped up this more symmetrical ‘custom mythosaur’ with a few minutes and MSPaint….this isn’t hard, so I don’t understand why more armor-builders don’t do the same.

To get folks started in the right direction, here’s two mythosaurs I uncovered in the Jango Fett: Open Seasons comic, and either would look great translated into reality and added to someone’s custom armor!

What do you think? Is this a case of conformity, a lack of creativity, or ignorance? Have you found other unconventional mythosaur designs out there? What other steps can Mando costumers take to boost their in-universe cred? Share them below, or come join the discussion on the SWLH facebook group!

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