well stated robocop. you captured my feeling exactly. the Arc AAA was my first "serious" 'light and lead to hundreds of wonderful hours here on CPF. oh, the good old days... i guess one needs to be "old" to get it.
while the old Arc had a terrible beam compared to today's LEDs, it was ground-breaking and still has the finest head/body ever, bar none.
we now have endless models of high-power lights to chose from, but few come even close to the quality, toughness, reliability and design sense of the Arc. i've tried hundreds of AAA lights, and to date only a handful are worth 5-stars.
my favs? i have a custom MillerMods build on a sterile Arc body/head which is absolutely magnificent in every way (shown in my avatar and below). its the perfect blend of classic and hi-tech (2-stage: 6 lumen and 145 lumen in a snow white R2 Cree XR-E WC tint). that and my mako HO are the finest AAA i've seen.
so for you "kids": you're right, that purple/greem beam sucked, but that's only in relation to your options today. and don't think for a moment your fancypants chinese knock-offs come close to what peter did with his design, nor will many of the asian marvels be in CPF collections 10 years from now...
MillerMods, Mako, Fenix E05 R2, Tiny