Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys Page #3

(Sansweet) The early fans

had that hunger for it.

And so, when that

hunger was met,

oh, the satisfaction!

The, "I've finally been fed."

And I think that still exists

in the minds of those of us

who grew up with "star wars."

It was that wonderful feeling

that that itch

had been scratched.

Once the "star wars" early-

redemption program was done,

I was walking down the hall,

and Bernie loomis

was walking down the hall

in the opposite direction.

He saw me and he looked at me

and he says, "good."

Behind me

is the kroger building.

This was the headquarters

when kenner toys

was making

the "star wars" license.

In this building, you would

have had the executive offices,

the sculpting

department was here,

and even a foundry to help

make early prototypes.

Even before the license

was signed in April,

the toy team was very busy

doing it's thing

and coming up with concepts

way beyond what could actually

come out in 1977

because of

the lengthy production time.

(Santaw)

We had scripts and we guessed

at what we were going to be

the most visible characters

and the most visible

vehicles and sets.

(Swearingen) The first things

we worked on were the figures.

The very first figures

were all kind of carved

out of human figures

that we found.

Like the stormtrooper,

I took those figures

and used, uh, bondo

to start roughing out

the helmet.

I was kind of playing

junior sculptor.

Some of the figures

are a little funky.

Like the tusken raider's

head is all funky lookin'.

The original

death squad commander

looks more like a stormtrooper.

Dave okada, who was head

of the design team

told me, as soon as he knew

that there was really

gonna be a contract,

he and everybody else

was so excited,

he went home,

he raided his sock drawer,

got out some brown socks,

and made a plush jawa.

(Fink)

Here, so you can see here

that this is actually

just a brown sock.

It just shows that at that time

they were probably just doing

whatever they could

to get these products made.

(Jawa chittering)

(Announcer) It's kenner's new

"star wars" action figures.

Each sold separately.

(Boy) I gotcha now, Ben Kenobi!

(Luttrull) When you're the kid with

the box full of "star wars" toys.

You are... I think "hero" might

not be the right word,

but everyone wants

to see the figures.

Maybe not you so much, but they

want to see the figures.

What makes the movie great

is the same thing that makes

the toys great.

There's all

this imagination involved.

There's all these

varied characters.

You have really strange

alien characters,

down-home looking characters,

military...

I mean, there's all this stuff

all built in to it.

(Salvatore) When the figures

finally hit the stores,

there was 12 available.

Luke Skywalker, princess Leia,

darth vader, obviously,

r2-d2, c-3po,

han solo, Chewbacca,

Obi-Wan Kenobi,

stormtrooper,

death squad commander,

the sand person, and the jawa.

(Jawa chittering)

(Perez) The first time I

saw "star wars" figures

or any other toys in the store,

I don't think my dad understood

exactly what I was

trying to say

because I was basically

just howling and whooping

and making all these noises,

pointing...

You know, like...

(Grunting excitedly)

He probably thought

I was doing an impression

of one of the sand people.

(Grunting)

(Tom berges) My first

figure was Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You know, he had the arm,

and the lightsaber

would pop out.

That was mind-blowing

to a seven-year-old kid.

The first one I got was a jawa

in the cloth cape.

Darth vader or Luke Skywalker?

Darth vader's cooler.

My mom bought me r2-d2,

and that was

my first figure

that I ever had.

Of course, the bullies that

lived around the corner from me

later soaked him in the creek

that was by my house

and he completely got ruined.

They didn't make them to last,

and if you broke them,

all you needed to do

was go to the store

and pick up another one.

(Luttrull)

I always kind of made Luke

much more of a hero

even than he was in the film.

He was pretty much

the invincible

"star wars" character.

He was, you know,

my favorite character.

This is my original

first-12 figure stand.

Um, not all of these

are my original figures

from my childhood,

several of them are.

I know the r2-d2 is,

which is of course

why he's so beat up.

I believe it was called

an action stand

because it has action levers.

(Laughing)

And you can see it's cracked

and the stickers

are coming off,

but I will never

get rid of this

because this

meant so much to me.

There were 12 action figures

and I had them all.

This figure

is sort of important to me.

When I was five

or six years old,

I lost one of my teeth,

and I told my parents

that I hoped

the tooth-fairy would bring me

a "star wars" figure.

And I remember waking up

in the middle of the night

and reaching under my pillow

and sort of felling

the bubble of the carded figure,

trying to figure out which

figure I received.

I probably should

have just pulled it out

from underneath my pillow

and held it up

to the moonlight and saw,

but I was afraid at some

five-year-old level

that the thing would

disappear or turn to dust

if I got an early peek at it.

So, I laid there

all night till the morning

and then pulled it out

and got fx-7.

My most favorite thing to do

with my "star wars"

figures as a kid

was to take han solo

and put him in a cup of water

and put him

in the freezer overnight

because then, the next morning,

you would have han solo

frozen in his block of ice.

And you could play with that

for a while

the room wasn't just a room.

It became the environment

like I saw in the movie.

So I'd pretend

the top of my desk

was the floor

of the death star,

or take one of my mom's

tan blankets,

throw it on the table,

now it's the environment

of Tatooine.

That's when I realized

I need more characters here

because I can't do the rest

of this movie on my own

without more figures around.

So I need jawas,

I need sand people.

(Lopez) Kenner, even

from the very start,

they realized that even though

they may not have had

a lot of screen time,

many of the characters were not

even pivotal to the plot,

they were different,

they were unique.

They knew that kids would

still be interested in it,

and would really have

an affinity for it.

So they made, for example,

the tusken raider character.

They do get some screen time

when they attack Luke

in the film,

but really not a central

character to the story.

(Sharp) I tended to gravitate

toward some of the characters

like walrus man and hammerhead

that really had no part of

the overall story in the movies.

They're just there.

So, I could do things

with those characters

that I thought could have

actually happened

sort of off screen somewhere.

It's possible that hammerhead

could have stolen

the falcon at some point.

(Hammerhead) Yee-haw!

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