So I thought I would get one of the obvious bits of my childhood out of the way for this post. I think any kid, a boy especially born in the late seventies must have had at least a few star wars figures to play with. Its odd in my late teens my mother and I sold all of my transformers, and I think I knew straight after the guy had left that I had made a massive mistake, (although I think my mum was just glad to see the end of a box full of toys that was cluttering up her house), in the years that followed I was just very thankful that we never felt the need to banish my treasured star wars toys in the same way. However I do remember thinking that I had so many more. I think the reality was that I had these figures that were pictured above, maybe a couple more (I do remember that Chewbacca used to carry a broken C3PO on his back and that C3PO could have his legs and arms pulled off (as you can see that has happened over the years), where Chewbacca has gone I have no idea). I still do have the important ones as you can see from the photos above, some hold particular memories for me. I remember the ice pilot storm trooper that is on the the first picture on the left hand side bottom row, was one of the first figures I had, and I distinctly remember dipping him in tomato sauce in the first house my family lived at, I think I must have been old enough to know that that wasn’t something I wanted to do, and now as an adult I can see that this marked the start of my obsessive compulsive need to keep things tidy as I franticly tried to scrub the storm trooper to stop him from getting dried sauce stuck in the little crevices that littered the front of this figure.
I remember thinking that the Darth Vader figure was a real let down because although the model looked very good, his cape was made out of the cheapest, crappiest plastic that didn’t really bend or flow or really do anything like the things Darth’s cape did in the films. Speaking of Darth Vader, there was a time when he came to my tiny little primary school when I was about 7 or 8 years old. As you probably know the man in the suit was a body builder by the name of David Prowse, whilst the voice was that of the actor James Earl Jones. Well David Prowse also happened to be the ‘Green Cross Code Man’, who was visting many different schools in Britain teaching us youngsters the dangers of crossing the road. I distinctly remember him towering over us, I was sat in one of the front rows, with my legs crossed, on this wooden gym floor. I remember him telling us (and bare in mind this must have been about 1985) that George Lucas the maker of Star Wars (obviously at the time I thought this was another name for ‘God’, not the best thing for a young catholic kid to be thinking especially when he is attending a catholic taught school), wanted to make more Star Wars films and that his plan was to make three more set after the three that we had already seen, so they would be 7, 8 and 9 and that he wanted to tell the story of what happened before the first film we had seen therefore 1, 2 and 3. I remember thinking how awesome they would be, that finding out how Darth Vader became Vader would be even better that finding out that he was Luke’s father. At that age I guess you will believe anything is good, how else can we explain Jar Jar Binks.
I know it is a cliche but the first three Star Wars films are still some of my favorite films and contrary to my earlier comments I do quite like the prequels, and to still have these toys here with me to look and play with them takes me back to a time in my life when I wasn’t worried about anything, I had no issues or problems it was all just about watching the next star wars film and enjoying everything life had to offer, oh to be a kid again.
I do have some of the Star Wars vehicles waiting to be uncovered but I thought they would be better in another post, I have a special place in my heart for the X-Wing and the AT -AT, so I will share that with you in a full post at another time. For this post thanks for reading and if you would like to look at more of the old style star wars figures then check out this site. Bye for now
Now that I am 30... 