David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

  • oasisob1

    The very first ‘gotta catch ‘em all’.

  • http://twitter.com/mwiik Michael Wiik

    A long time ago I recall reading how Star Wars changed everything about the movie theatre industry. Prior to that film, theatre owners received a share of the ticket price. With Star Wars, the industry changed so that the movie companies wanted all the ticket proceeds and a share of the concessions. This is when popcorn changed from being dirt cheap to ridiculously expensive. iirc the same article also suggested that new Storm Trooper variations in RotJ were there purely to sell more action figures. Anyway…

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

      A little more of what may be Star Wars apocrypha: one of the bounty hunters, a robot named 4-LOM, was given that name by designers who meant it to mean “For Love Of Money”, because the more toys were marketed the more money Lucas made.

      • Mister44

         Are you sure it wasn’t just the droid’s love of money? He was a bounty hunter.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

    Every time I see one of these I think about how badly I need to clean out my attic. 

  • Lewis Baumstark

    I have the older edition, probably published in the late 90s / early ’00s.  Wore it out and would love to get the new version.

  • Bob Knetzger

    The other revolutionary idea here was how toys were marketed. Mattel and Hasbro had passed on doing the Star Wars toys as at the time SW was unknown.  By the time Bernie Loomis and the Kenner had the SW toy license, it was way too late to manufacture and ship toys to be in the store by Christmas–what to do?  Bernie dreamed up this unique promotion: give your kids this coupon for Christmas and ship the toys later.  Oddly, it worked.. BTW, Mattel passed on Star Wars, thinking that a summer space-themed move would be long forgotten by the time the next Christmas came around.  They instead picked up the license for a regular, weekly space-themed TV program, Battlestar Gallactica. You know how that turned out…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521240745 Ryan Griffin

    I had a BSG toy ship as a kid. It worked great with my GI Joes and Star Wars figures.  I also had the Millennium Falcon, but trashed it. Sadly.

  • gorfulator

    Ahhh the Star Wars action figure drought of ’77 !! Anyone remember how Micronauts swooped in and filled that void?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5db9bEOnLY

    • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

      I had a couple of those! I loved that they used clockwork instead of batteries. I had the Photon Sled as shown in the video. My neighbor had the big galactic base thing. Clockwork demolition derby!

    • franko

      yup. had and loved several micronauts. makes me sneer at those “transmformer” johnny-come-latelys.

      • Philboyd Studge

        And the aliens were dead cool – Lobros had eyestalks and a glow-in-the-dark brain *in his mouth*. Actually, Micronauts and Transformers both evolved from the Japanese Microman toy line. The Microman “Megatron” was a good guy, and fired plastic bullets.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521240745 Ryan Griffin

    my bad..it was the Eagle from Space:1999  http://space1970.blogspot.com/2009/11/coolest-toy-ever-space-1999-eagle.html

  • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

    I painted Chewbacca silver because I didn’t like how organic he looked.

    • Donald Petersen

      I hacked a few of my SW toys, but generally only after they’d already gotten broken.  Somebody dropped my X-Wing, breaking off the wings right at the fulcrum of the X.  So I removed the lower S-foils, and stuck the uppers in the hole at an angle (so that the wings pointed downward like the Imperial Shuttle), installed a much-longer nose landing skid, and painted the whole thing glossy black.  And it looked surprisingly cool.

      • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

        That sounds cool, and also like a serious amount of work – no chance of any photos?
        Chewbacca got a brick on the head later on, during one destructive summer.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Sounds like you’re covering up your attraction to daddy bears.

      • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

        he did look fabulous afterward

  • Mister44

    Around 10 + years ago -  maybe longer – there was a really good book that had all of the action figures in it. Of course now there must be hundreds more figures from Hasbro (it came out  with the green POF cards being the newest figures).

    Anyway – definitely on my want list.

  • vonbobo

    My family”didn’t get” the pre order thing, so I had to patiently wait 1 by 1 (I made damn sure I didn’t miss out on the Boba Fett pre buy though!). Also had the micronaut city, and the Space 1999 Eagle. My grandmother was an avid garage sale addict.

    Anyone else have that electronic spaceship that made ascending and descending noises depending on which way the ship was oriented? Laser blast buttons too, anyone know what that was?

    • Bob Knetzger

      Did you have a Milton Bradley Starbird?

      • Bob Knetzger

        LIke this?

        • franko

          THAT’S THE ONE!
          i had this. thank you, thank you.