Per the Star Wars Databank:

Thermal detonators are grenade-like weapons that pack tremendous explosive power into a small sphere, and are used by bounty hunters and military forces such as the Empire’s stormtroopers.

So I’ve gotten into Movie and TV prop replicas lately.  I just think they’re fun to display, but I also think I’ve run out of room to display them.  Yet, somehow, that doesn’t stop me from collecting more of them (within reason, of course).

So this latest one is the Thermal Detonator used by the Leia ‘disguised’ bounty hunter Boushh in “Return of the Jedi.”  Well, okay, it wasn’t actually ‘used’ by her or it would have been a very short movie with a grim ending.  But on to the replica.

This particular replica is about the same size as the one in the movie and has the same flashing lights.  It doesn’t have sound, though.  I purchased this one from Etsy, and even though there were replicas being sold on there that did have sound, they seemed bigger in size and I wanted one that was more movie accurate.  Plus, if you’re on a replica budget, the ones with sound were a lot more expensive.

Anyhow, I made a video so if you’d like to see a demonstration, check it out below.  And if you’re interested in purchasing one of these things, there’s many to choose from on Etsy.

Oh, I also noticed that the thermal detonator sound effect was hard to come by.  I wanted to use a small snippet for my video, but couldn’t find a clean version anywhere.  So with the help of the book “The Sounds of Star Wars” written by the late, great J. W. Rinzler, I was able to capture a version of this sound effect.  And with some fancy audio editing, I managed to make a clean version of it.  I’ll post that video as well, just below the prop replica video.