So in a discussion about Mandalorian action figures on Rebelscum, after another user posted a behind the scenes image from AOTC suggesting a possible cut scene where Jango’s helmet takes (and survives) a direct blow from Obi-wan’s lightsaber, user BlasTech posted this neat little tidbit. I’d never heard of this cut scene. Sounds really cool!
[BlasTech said:]
It might be the other way around, actually. Mandalorian Iron (later named “beskar” in the Mandalorian language that Karen Traviss created for the Republic Commando game and books) was first mentioned in the Tales of the Jedi comics in 1994, meaning it predates Jango Fett and Attack of the Clones in the SW universe by almost a decade (also, I think Jango and Boba’s armours were identified as being composed of durasteel and duraplast, respectively, in various official guides, with Boba only upgrading to beskar in the Legacy of the Force novels, which were set about 40 years after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope).
Then again, there’s also some indication that Lucas may have intended for Mandalorian armour to be lightsaber-resistant as early as Return of the Jedi, as a deleted sequence from that film had Luke hacking partway through Boba’s rocketpack with his lightsaber, with the blade apparently being stopped by the armoured backing plate that the rocket machinery is mounted against. Though dropped from the final cut of the film, the damaged rocketpack can still be seen onscreen, and the prop built for the sequence is still known to exist (it apparently even appeared in the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi in the scene where Boba is flirting with Rystall and Lyn Me):
