by Gib van Ert
Then through the exploded portal comes a figure some seven feet high and clad entirely in black, from his menacingly-helmeted head to the cloak that covers his shoulders and trails along the floor behind him. Like the stormtroopers who stand to attention as he passes by, this figure might at first be mistaken for something mechanic. His eyes, face and body are completely covered in armour, so there is no knowing what it might conceal. Yet his movements are fluid and natural, completely unlike those of the two robots we saw moments earlier making their way improbably through the crossfire. Most tellingly, the black giant breathes, inhaling and exhaling audibly as he surveys the wreckage he has brought. In some corrupt way, this dark invader is human.
These opening moments of Star Wars imprinted themselves on my memory from the start. In a span of minutes they communicated all the film’s themes: space, adventure, oppression, evil, resistance, machinery and humanity. I was enthralled. I was not alone.
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I need hardly say that Star Wars was an astonishingly popular and profitable movie. Today it is sometimes said to have been surpassed, financially at least, by more recent blockbusters (“Shrek 2 made more money than Star Wars!”). But that is fatuous. It is only the difference between the $15 ticket prices we pay today and the $2.50 our parents paid in 1977. Nor was the film a merely local phenomenon. It was translated into every major language, from Arabic to Vietnamese, and succeeded to varying degrees everywhere it went. When worldwide inflation-adjusted figures are added to the staggering US draw, Star Wars becomes undisputedly the most commercially successful movie ever made—even before factoring in profits from the film’s countless product tie-ins, from t-shirts to toys, breakfast cereal to bubble bath.
Commercial success on an unprecedented scale was no doubt a surprise to everyone concerned with the film. Among those caught particularly flatfooted, however, was Kenner Products, the Cincinnati toy company that obtained the rights to produce Star Wars toys before the film was released and after rival Mego Corporation passed up the opportunity. While Kenner had the foresight to purchase rights Mego had declined, it must not have valued them very highly for it made no arrangements to bring Star Wars action figures to market in time for the 1977 holiday season. There was, of course, no shortage of other kinds of Star Wars merchandise available by late 1977, much of it produced by Kenner. But action figures were the pinnacle of any serious merchandising campaign directed at boys. An action figure is really just a doll, but boys supposedly do not play with dolls and so the phrase “action figure” was coined. The first action figure, G.I. Joe, was a plastic, eight-inch-high, articulated and posable doll with interchangeable outfits and accessories—a Barbie for boys. Hasbro and Mego Corporation were the leading action figure producers in the 1960s and mid ’70s. In the late 1970s a Japanese toymaker, Takara, introduced a new form factor, the 3¾ inch figurine, apparently in response to rising plastic prices. When Kenner finally brought Star Wars action figures to market in 1978, it mostly adopted this smaller format. Action figures have been this size ever since.
By the time Kenner could see how much money it was about to make from its Star Wars licence, it was too late to get figures moulded, tested, packaged and shipped to the shops in time for Christmas. Scrambling for a way to cash in on the emerging craze at the peak of the toy-buying season, Kenner devised an elaborate rain cheque which it called the Early Bird Certificate Package. The naming of this scheme was a typical bit of ad man dissembling: in the face of its potentially devastating tardiness to market, Kenner shamelessly told the public that it was not late, we were just early. The Early Bird Certificate Package consisted of a display stand (against which to display action figures that did not yet exist), a Star Wars club card (“You didn’t get any Star Wars figures for Christmas? Join the club”), a few stickers, and a certificate which the recipient could mail away in exchange for four action figures, once they were ready: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, R2-D2 and Chewbacca.
I do not remember much of the Christmas of 1977, but my mother tells me I did not receive an Early Bird Certificate Package. I did get some sort of Star-Wars-related gift—I believe it was Kenner’s Escape from Death Star board game. It was not until next Christmas, 1978, that Star Wars fully transformed itself from a movie I had enjoyed but fallen asleep watching to a prolonged, unrelenting, toy-and-other-merchandise-fuelled childhood obsession. For this my maternal grandparents were heavily responsible. We spent the holidays in Penticton that year. My grandparents were not there. In fact they did not visit Canada at all after my sister’s birth in 1975. In their place they sent presents, including two large giftwrapped boxes, one for me and one for my sister. I have a distinct recollection of these two boxes. Their size and similarity intrigued me, as did the shuffling sound they made when shaken. (My mother had put these and other presents under the tree many days before Christmas, and I had made a careful inspection of each, weighing and shaking them in an effort to guess their contents.) When finally on Christmas morning it came time to open the twin boxes, my sister and I tore into them at the same time. Both contained blister pack after blister pack of Kenner Star Wars action figures. I cannot say how many. It seemed like hundreds, but by Christmas 1978 Kenner was only making about 20 figures so it must have been no more than a dozen. In any case it was a lot. I was ecstatic. My sister was also very pleased, but looking back and considering how her interests developed in later years I think she liked these toys mainly because her big brother liked them, and she liked him.
The Christmas of 1978 was the first for me in which Star Wars was the main attraction. My every Christmas after that for the next seven years was dominated by toys and other merchandise relating to the movie and its sequels. We were not religious people in any orthodox way and so the meaning of the holiday as a spiritual or historical occasion never mattered to me. Until some time after Return of the Jedi came out, Christmas was, as far as I knew or cared, a purely secular occasion dedicated to increasing the bulk of my considerable collection of Star Wars memorabilia with the latest plastic allurements devised by Lucasfilm and Kenner.
From the perspective of the toymakers and marketing types at Kenner, my sister and I were nearly an exact fit: “Ages four and up” was how they put it on their packaging, and by Christmas 1978 that is about what we were. By this time Kenner had got its act together and filled the toy stores of the western world with Star Wars action figures. Kenner made other Star Wars toys, too, but all that ever mattered to me were the action figures and their accompanying playsets and vehicles. Kenner’s initial run consisted of twelve figures: Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Princess Leia Organa and R2-D2 (the four “early bird” figures) plus Darth Vader, Ben (Obi Wan) Kenobi, Han Solo, C-3PO, Stormtrooper, Jawa, Sand People and Death Squad Commander.
How this last figure ever made it on to toy store shelves is beyond me. The name alone was reason enough for any sensible parent to refuse to buy it. How is a Death Squad Commander a proper gift for a child of any age, never mind a four-year-old? Unless you live in the Third Reich, how do you explain to your wife that you bought the boy a couple of Stormtroopers and a Death Squad Commander for his birthday? Eventually someone must have realized that this was not a good name for a children’s toy, for Kenner rebranded the figure as Star Destroyer Commander. But changing the name did not make the figure itself any less pointless. This was surely the worst figure Kenner ever made. It was based on a few uniformed extras—you cannot call them characters as they have no lines in the film and almost no significance to the plot—shown fleetingly on a few unremarkable occasions during the Death Star sequences. The Kenner figurine is dressed in black boots (what self-respecting death squad commander would wear anything else?), a large black helmet and a grey pyjama-style uniform which is inconsistent with the film (where they were dressed in black) and, more importantly, totally stupid looking. I was mystified by this figure. What was I supposed to do with it? When I think now that it took a spot that could have gone to the rebel troopers shown in the fi
lm’s opening sequence, or to Grand Moff Tarkin—both characters for which Kenner never made figures—I am baffled.
But there were many more hits than misses in these original twelve figurines. Kenobi, Vader, Chewbacca, Threepio, Artoo, Stormtrooper, Sand People—these were all superb. Threepio must have been the most successful likeness from the film, really beautifully done. Artoo’s head clicked when you turned it—possibly the only sound Artoo did not make in the film, but still a great effect. For sheer pleasure, the Chewbacca figurine was my pick. His rifle did not much resemble the weapon Chewbacca actually carried in the movie, but it was still the best accessory Kenner made. Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi were captivating. I spent hours duelling with them. Princess Leia came with a slender blaster unlike any of the weapons the other figures sported. For every figure, it seemed, Kenner knew to add a special touch.
There were nevertheless some peculiarities in the original figurines. Han Solo, for instance, came in two versions: one with a disproportionately small head and the other with a disproportionately large one. The heads were not just different sizes but different sculpts altogether. The larger head had bangs covering Han’s forehead and lines under his eyes. The effect was of a tired boy, or a middle-aged man trying to look young. I had Big Head Han (the more common of the two) and was always unhappy with him.
I was also ambivalent about the telescoping lightsabers built into the right arms of Vader, Kenobi and Luke. “Telescoping” is the term collectors have coined. It means that the lightsaber was thick for the most part but thinner at the end. To make the figure draw his lightsaber, you pushed the handle (tucked behind the back of its right shoulder) down, ejecting the saber from the hollow arm. I disliked this arrangement even as a five-year-old. It meant that the figure’s right hand could never hold anything else, and the left hand was sculpted so that it couldn’t either—at least not well. Plus, even when the lightsaber was fully retracted its thin tip stuck out, as if the character perpetually had his weapon on butter-knife-mode. This made no sense, and usually resulted in the tip breaking off altogether. Beyond all this, Kenner’s telescoping lightsabers were inconsistent with my memories of the film—supported by images I found in books, on trading cards and elsewhere—in which lightsabers were the same thickness from top to bottom. All of this was annoying to me even as a small boy. When, in 1980, Kenner released its Luke Skywalker in Bespin Fatigues figure, it dumped the telescoping lightsaber in favour of a separate, non-telescoping weapon that could be placed in and removed from the figure’s hand. I considered this a vast improvement, and kept hoping Kenner would remake Vader and Obi-Wan the same way. They never did.
Kenner later added eight more figures to its Star Wars line-up: Death Star Droid, Greedo, Hammerhead, Snaggletooth, Walrus Man, Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot, Power Droid and R5-D4. The pick of this bunch was easily the X-Wing Pilot: Luke in his bright orange flight suit and white helmet with those curious markings which were to become the recognized insignia of the rebel forces. I also liked the colourful, alien forms of Greedo and Hammerhead. But I did not really get much play out of most of these new figures. In retrospect many of them look to me like early instances of Kenner’s practice of churning out action figures of doubtful importance to the story of the film. Perhaps the company’s experience with Death Squad Commander had taught it that a significant portion of its market would buy any action figure Kenner stuck a Star Wars label on, however ridiculous the toy itself.
From the beginning, Kenner’s figurines were sold in a form of packaging known as a blister pack. This consisted of a rectangular piece of cardboard with a small hole at the top (for hanging the item on a display rack) and a glued-on piece of transparent plastic in which the figurine was contained. This was positioned in the bottom left corner of the cardboard, leaving about two-thirds of the front of the packaging available for displaying the Star Wars logo (which, by 1978, was already iconic) and a large photograph, usually a still from the movie, of the character represented by the figurine. The other side of the blister pack was devoted to promoting Kenner’s other action figures and accessories. The contents of these promotions changed frequently but always consisted of a photographic line-up of Kenner’s action figures. This way, children like me could drool over the product line and plan our next birthday and Christmas wish lists. The back of the cardstock also invariably featured a small blue and white proof of purchase seal from (strangely) General Mills. Kenner frequently ran promotions inviting children to collect a free figurine by sending four or five proofs-of-purchase in the mail to their address in Ohio. Sometimes these mail-away orders were for figures not yet available in the shops, such as Boba Fett (the first such promotion) and Anakin Skywalker (possibly the last). The Anakin figure, of course, was the smiling white-haired gentleman of the original Return of the Jedi, not Hayden Christiansen with a ponytail.
The allure of Kenner’s packaging should not be overlooked. It was part of what made Star Wars figures so attractive. Blister packs gave children a lot to look at: the figurine itself, encased in its clear plastic shell, but also the large photograph of the character drawn from the film—a film most of us had not seen often and wanted to see again.
These Kenner action figures completely dominated that part of my childhood I actually remember, say from about four-and-a-half to twelve. I had other toys. I liked other things. But Star Wars figures obsessed me. When my mother was going through one of her endless flirtations with alternative religious beliefs—in this case Jehovah’s Witnesses—she taught my sister and me a bedtime prayer, a recitation in our young minds of all the things we had to be thankful for. My mother suggested we thank Jehovah for mummy and daddy, grandpa and grandma and Re Re (our great-grandmother), and Momma Cat and Muffy (our pet cats). I adopted this list and added to the end of it my Star Wars figures. We were not Jehovah’s Witnesses for long. Long enough for my sister and I to laugh uncontrollably one Sunday morning at Kingdom Hall when we broke Princess Leia’s head off inside a Dewback. Long enough that one of our Christmases was replaced by Family Week—an invention of my mother’s to spare us the loss of our favourite holiday by not formally celebrating Christmas (to which Jehovah’s Witnesses object) while still exchanging Star Wars toys and other presents. This might have mollified some of the parishioners but I doubt Jehovah was fooled by it. It did not matter, however, for my mother moved quickly on to Taoism, then Chinese astrology, then western astrology, then Norse runes, then numerology, all of which I found quite acceptable as they involved no attendance at church and no prohibition of occasions on which gifts were given to children. Long after our stint as Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, I kept saying that prayer in my head every night. If there was a god, I wanted him to know how grateful I was for the Kenner toy company of Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Fanaticism for a film was not easy to feed in the 1970s and early ’80s. Today if one wishes to see a movie ten times it is only a matter of calling it up on the screen and setting aside twenty hours or so of one’s life for viewing and re-viewing it. In this and other ways technology has facilitated poor judgment. Things were different in the first Star Wars era, say from 1977 to 1984. The theatres and drive-ins only showed films for a limited time. Of course there were repertory cinemas in big cities that continued showing films after they had left the first-run houses, but no such cinema existed in Penticton, and probably not within 300 kilometres of it. The free-to-air television channels were few and none secured the rights to show Star Wars until 1984, seven years after its release. Home video systems such as VHS and Betamax existed by the late 1970s but they were rare and novel, especially in small-town British Columbia. My family did not get a VCR until the late 1980s. And even if we had wanted, and could have afforded, such a device sooner it would not have given me access to Star Wars until the film’s first home video release in 1982.
The result was that in the late 1970s I was a Star Wars fan who had not seen much of Star Wars. Most of my friends were the same. We had all
seen it once or twice, rarely more, and those viewings were in 1977 or 1978. We saw nothing more of Star Wars, on film at least, until the spring of 1980, when The Empire Strikes Back came out. By that time, and well before then, what I knew of Star Wars did not come directly from George Lucas’s film. That was a faded memory, and an incomplete one at that since I had fallen asleep the first time I saw it, and I did not see it again before 1982. Instead, my knowledge of and devotion to Star Wars came from the near endless array of toys, books, soundtracks, television tie-ins, trading cards, board games and other merchandise that came into the orbit of Star Wars, like satellites of some fading sun, from 1977 onwards. For about two years, from mid-1978 until the release of Empire, Star Wars for me ceased to be a movie and became instead a mishmash of popular culture displays referring to it, often rather loosely.
The Kenner toys were what chiefly focussed my mind on Star Wars in this period, but they were not all. Everyone who could possibly cash in did. There were all sorts of books, for instance. Three in particular made an impression on me. One was a picture-book retelling the story of the movie. That story is not especially complicated: A farmboy intercepts a message from a princess imprisoned in a fortress far away. With the help of a wizard and a pirate, the farmboy rescues the princess and destroys the fortress. It is, unaided, about as childish a story as one could wish. Still this picture-book, directed at children by someone who must have had a rather low opinion of them, simplified the narrative even further. This had the no doubt intended effect of leaving lots of room for photographic stills from the film.