A long time ago, in a home, far, far away, I once played, yes played with my Star Wars figures. Can you blame me, they looked soooooo cool, came with all sorts of radical weaponry and ships. How can I not play with them? Besides I was only 9 years old! At that young age, the collectibility of vintage Kenner Star Wars figures did not concern me, only the play-ability did. When my friend Cal gave me a bunch of his old Star Wars toys they included a decapitated Bossk figure. What was I to do, here I have an action figure already to go to work, but he can't perform any action without a head! So we came up with an idea of placing a helmet from the G.I. Joe figure Shockwave (whose head was much later used for my first custom of Corran Horn) on top of the figure where the head should have been. Hot glue was used to keep the helmet permanently sealed to the figure. A rifle from the Starcom toy line was given to the figure for weaponry, later the backpack and belt from an ESB Survival Kit was added.
Now that the figure was ready to play with, it needed a character. Bossk was out of the question, who had ever seen the big lizard wear a helmet? Looking back on my old Marvel SW comics, I recalled a species called the Iskalon, an aquatic species who used breathing helmets to exist out of water. So for years this figure was a nameless Iskalonian helping in the fight over the evil Empire. Over time I grew out of actually playing with my toys (ok I haven't totally grown out of it :) ) and I moved into collecting the toys and keeping them in good shape. As my diorama page mentions, I display my collection in diorama form. After viewing A New Hope for the trillionth time, I noticed there was a Cantina patron who wore an outfit similar to Bossk's but with a difference, he had a helmet on. So now my custom had a new place, he would sit in my Cantina diorama made from the original Kenner Cantina playset. For years he stood in the background just enjoying the scenery until one day I watched ANH again and saw that the Cantina patron wearing Bossk's clothes didn't have arms anywhere like the figure's, they weren't lizard-like, they were more like human limbs. So now the character's existness was thrown into upheaval, what to do, what to do? Well I liked having the guy in my cantina, so I decided to leave him there as an extra not seen in the movie, this time giving him a new title, the Unknown Lizard Dude
Now some eleven years after first cobbling him together, the Unknown Lizard Dude stands idly by, while listening to the tunes of the Mos Eisley Cantina band, watching passerbys, and reflecting on the days when a little 9 year old kid led him on adventures all over the galaxy.