I’ve talked about this before, but as I get older it’s kind of weird and interesting to step out of my own mind for a second and watch as my collecting habits morph and change. Though I’m still heavily leaning into nostalgic items when I add to the collection, I’ve found myself veering away from the more obvious choices when it comes to the treasures I seek out. A perfect example of this is my Star Wars-centric collecting. Star Wars, having been a part of my life literally since the day I was born, has always been a cornerstone in my collecting. It was the first big toy line that I actively remember collecting as a kid, it was the first brand that was exploding into every aspect of my life when Return of the Jedi was mass merchandised in 1983, and it was the first thing that I was nostalgic for around the time I turned 23 (and began searching wildly on the internet for copies of the theme songs to the Droids and Ewoks cartoons.)
I had my fair share of Star Wars toys as a kid. Just check out this card-back marking all of the figures I remember owning…
This isn’t even mentioning all of the vehicles, play sets and creatures I also had, like the X-Wing, Snowspeeder, Y-Wing, AT-AT Walker, Wampa, Taun Taun, Dagobah, and Speeder Bike. Here’s just a few of the pictures of me and my Star Wars love as a kid (for the record, that was a friend’s Falcon that I’m holding, but those are my knock-off Adidas shoes…)
When the nostalgia really started kicking into high gear, right around the time I started this site back in 2005-06, my mind immediately drifted to rebuilding my childhood collection of Star Wars toys. But I wasn’t the only one hankering for a hunk of intergalactic plastic, and the prices for figures and stuff skyrocketed. I’d treat myself every once in a while to a really special figure, ones that really spoke to me as an adult like the Gamorrean Guard, Admiral Ackbar, the AT-AT Driver, Greedo and the B-Wing Pilot, but as much as I wanted to get these figures back, the prices were too high and my heart was just never in it. What’s weird, is that in recent years the prices have been inching back down and you can snag most figures between $10-15 if you’re patient. I mean, modern 3.75″ figures run about $15, so that’s really not that bad. But even with the price drops, the urge to reacquire these figures has been waning heavily.
I’m not sure exactly why this is, whether it’s that the distance between when I originally had them and now is dulling the compulsion to own them, or maybe I’m just too inundated with seeing other folk’s collections so often online that the need to own these is dissipating. It doesn’t help that I’ve made room on my bookshelf for the really nice visual collector’s guides that have been published over the last decade, the Mark Bellomo Star Wars volume being a key purchase, so I can flip through that book whenever the urge strikes.
This waning interest in collecting the toys though, is not an accurate reflection of my urge to still surround myself with a Star Wars collection though. In fact, I’ve been slowly building a collection that is way more interesting to me personally now that I’m in my 40s. So what is the focus of the collection now? Effectively it’s Star Wars trash. The things that have really been drawing my eye lately are the items that shouldn’t exist anymore. All of the miscellaneous branded merchandise that was designed to be used and discarded, but somehow managed to stay intact for the last 30 to 40 years. This stuff, the detritus of the 78-85 Star Wars boom in merchandising, is what keeps me excited about my fandom for the brand. My collection isn’t massive, but it’s a healthy assortment of odds and ends that hold particular significance for me personally. All of these items I’m about to share are examples of things that I used, consumed, or had in my life as a kid, and now they’re in a small shrine in my home office to remind me daily of what it was like to be a Star Wars kid.
This list has to start with a couple of pieces that I’ve shared before, but form the cornerstone of the collection for sure, the two 1983 boxes of Pepperidge Farm Star Wars Cookies that I stumbled on a few years ago from a toy seller on Instagram. Here’s an ad from one of my Mom magazines that comes with the worst connect-the-dots activities ever (it’s already 85% complete for crying out loud!)
These cookies hit grocery store shelves in tandem with the release of The Return of the Jedi in the summer of 1983 and this probably sealed my fate for becoming the fat-kid I’d be through the 80s and 90s. There were three flavors of cookies, Vanilla (Rebel Alliance I), Peanut Butter (Rebel Alliance II), and Chocolate (The Imperial Forces), and each variety had it’s own set of included character molds for the cookies (with at least 5 per flavor, though there may have been more, my memories of the specific cookie styles are vague.)
So if you were looking for characters like Luke, Han, Leia, Yoda and Wicket the Ewok, you’d have to pick up a box of the Vanilla cookies, like this one from my collection. The cookies cam packaged in a foil bag that nestled inside the box, and though I’m scraping the last bits of my usable memory on this, I believe these had the consistency and similar taste very to your standard Nabisco animal crackers. The peanut butter ones were my favorites as a kid, flavor-wise (and I loved the Admiral Ackbar cookies in particular for some reason), but visually I was always drawn to the dark side cookies. Those were the worst tasting, very heavy on the cocoa flavoring, but not as sweet as the other two varieties.
When I found the boxes on Instagram for sale, I immediately scooped them up even though it was only two of the three varieties. I snagged both Rebel Alliance boxes, both were saved very carefully from the 80s, flattened and ready for putting in some acid free bags and boards, but I decided recently that this box needs to be displayed the way it was intended in stores. So I took some time to re-glue the flaps. But I did keep the peanut butter variety flat for the time being. Here’s a scan of that box. Notice that you get Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3P0, Admiral Ackbar and Max Rebo cookies in this box. Nice to know that Max Rebo was a good guy. I mean these cookies are canon right?
Similarly to the vanilla box, both of these feature mail-away ads on the back for a set of Star Wars tumbler cups.
For the record, the chocolate variety featured cookies in the shape of Darth Vader (who also adorned the front of the box), Jabba the Hut, Bib Fortuna, a Gamorrean Guard, and an Emperor’s Royal Guard. I’m still on the hunt for a decent-priced version of that box, but honestly these two are tiding me over for the time being.
Next up we have another item that’s been in my collection for a bit and it’s one that I’ve talked about before. Another part of the Return of the Jedi marketing blitz came in the form of good tooth care with the release of the line of Oral-B toothbrushes in ’83.
There were six different brushes available in the line featuring all of your favorite main Star Wars characters from ROTJ (including those cuddly Ewoks, Leia, R2-D2 & C-3P0, Han & Chewie, Darth Vader, and of course Jedi Master Luke Skywalker.) I distinctly remember begging my mother for one in an Eckerd Drugs or a Drug Emporium store and snagging the Luke brush.
Again, though I understand that the Star Wars flicks were so big that there were people saving all kinds of merch that was released over the years, it still seems weird to me that folks took the time to save and collect toothbrushes (let alone keeping them for 30 years.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did, but man it’s weird. Here’s some of the ephemera surrounding the release of these Oral-B brushes. For a branded toothbrush, there was a hell of a ad campaign behind them. Not only were there posters you could get in store, but there were also activity books and an official Oral-B Star Wars club that you could join!
Image courtesy of Star Wars Aficionado
The next weird piece in my collection is a bar of Luke Skywalker Star Wars soap produced by Omni Cosmetics Corporation back in 1983. OCC produced a line of soaps, shampoos and bubble baths along with the release of the Empire Strikes Back and continued on for a number of years with new products based on Return of the Jedi in 1983.
I haven’t done an extensive amount of research into the soap, but back in 1981-82 there were at least 8 different bars available including Luke, Chewbacca (brown), Princess Leia (white), C-3P0 (yellow), R2-D2 (white), Darth Vader (black), Yoda (green) and Lando Calrissian (blue). Then a lot of these were re-released for Jedi, but there were also new bars for characters like Wicket and the Gamorrean Guard. There were also a lot of figural shampoo and bubble bath bottles for characters like Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Yoda and Jabba the Hutt.
I have some very distinct memories of washing up with the Luke Skywalker bar. In fact, it was so orange at the time and I think I much have been like four or five and I tried to nibble a piece off of it because I thought it might taste like Tang. Boy was I wrong. For those that are curious, this bar is still has a very strong floral scent and it is almost like new, 37 years after it was made.
Moving on from soap to another fun, yet odd, molded collectible in this meager collection is a couple of Wilton brand Cake Candle busts. These were released in 1980 to coincide with the Empire Strikes Back release and the couple that I have feature Chewbacca and Darth Vader busts. There was at least one additional candle made for this set featuring R2-D2, and he was available in either grey or white wax. Somewhere in my stacks of family photos there’s a picture of a cake with the Chewbacca candle on it. I’m guessing it was for my 4th birthday in 1981, but it could have been later knowing my mom and her propensity to have a vast collection of birthday materials in the kitchen junk drawer so we’d never be without what we needed to celebrate. I love that the back of the packaging has little punch out pieces of cardboard where you change out the face-plate of the candle to feature a specific age (1-6) or a different birthday message. How these two candles survived for 40 years intact is beyond me.
The next odd piece in my collection is this Admiral Ackbar figural eraser from 1983. I talked about this (and similar) eraser(s) way back in 2006 when I started Branded. Figural erasers were such an important part of my grade school years as it was a way of sneaking toys into school and not having them confiscated (avoiding experiences like the one I had in the 1st grade.) For the record, this is the third Admiral Ackbar eraser I’ve owned during my lifetime. The first was as a kid in the second grade and it was lost or thrown away, probably in that same school year. The second was purchased 14 years ago when I started this site and I talked about it in a slightly more in-depth eraser article at the time. That one was mounted in an eraser shadowbox that I put together and was sadly destroyed in a move a few years ago. I promise that I didn’t cry, but I’ll fully admit to being more than bummed out at losing my tiny vintage eraser collection. This is my third one, purchased over the past year and hopefully it’ll be my last.
I love the detail and paint applications on this little guy. He makes a horrible eraser (the paint on the head gets in the way and the legs are too wobbly for the firm pressure you need), but he is still aces in my book.
This last piece isn’t super odd in and of itself. This 1983 Return of the Jedi Craft Master 70 piece puzzle is some pretty standard Star Wars fare, and I totally understand why something like this would be kept for almost 40 years. But what I find odd and alluring about it is the subject matter. I had this puzzle as a kid and it fascinated me to no end. It’s so weird that the company chose to utilize this behind the scenes photo of a bunch of Jabba’s Palace aliens posing for a picture that almost looks like the Breakfast Club movie poster. This image was taken years before the Breakfast Club would hit theaters, so it’s just a coincidence, but man, I love how kooky it is. There are literally no main characters or arguably iconic imagery in this piece outside of the fact that it includes the rare visage of Yak Face. Bib Fortuna is the most notable character here, but Squid Head (honest to goodness, that’s his official name) and Ree-Yees did get action figures, so there’s that.
I remember laying on the floor of our house in Tampa, FL, sprawled out on the tile area by out front door, putting this together during the Christmas season of 1983. In my memory it felt like the puzzle took me hours to complete, though a lot of that was me taking in every little detail of each character as I completed them. I can’t wait to slather this with puzzle glue and then framing it so I can hang it in the office.
So there you have it, Weird Star Wars collecting is so much more gratifying than just buying the vintage toys.
