What is a "customized Star Wars action figure?"

"Customizing" is a little known but intensely devoted hobby revolving around the process of taking an existing action figure (say, Luke Skywalker), and through the use of sanding, painting, sculpting, and slicing, turning him into a different action figure (say, a Non-Enlightened Human B'Omarr Monk) from the Star Wars universe.

I customized Star Wars figures regularly between 1997 and 2001, during which time I turned out approximately fifty creations. This was in the early years of the neo-Hasbro Star Wars line - back when arcane characters such as Dream Vision Darth Vader were beyond the scope of what the toy companies were making. Since 2001, though, the growing collector market (and a little bit of end-of-movie-cycle "desperation") has driven Hasbro to begin courting the stranger and more marginal characters from the Star Wars universe. Presto: customizing Star Wars action figures became redundant.