Tommy and Yehuda write:
Welcome to the latest issue of Star Wars Community Digest,
your place to get
summaries about what's going on in the Star Wars collecting community
across all of the forums and Facebook groups. We will present the news
and current events each week, so that you don't miss anything. Please be
aware that
many of these are closed Facebook groups though, which
means you will need to join them in order to read the conversations. But don't worry, it's free and almost instantaneous.
Participating Groups and Forums:
Star Wars Displays and Advertising
Star Wars Records and Tapes
Star Wars 12 Backs and Early Vintage Collectors Group (A New Hope 1977-79)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Vintage Collecting Group 1980-1982
Star Wars: Return of The Jedi Vintage Collecting Group 1983 - 1985
Star Wars: POTF (Last 17) Vintage Collecting Group 1985
Star Wars: The "Dark Times" Collecting Group (1985-95, Droids & Ewoks, etc)
Jabba's Court - Vintage Star Wars Collectors Group 1977 - 1988
The Imperial Commissary - 1977-1985 Vintage Star Wars Toys, Buy Sell Trade
Power Of The Force Coins
Star Wars bootleg and knockoff collectors
Star Wars Micro Machines and Action Fleet Collecting Group
vintage star wars action figures
The RebelScum vintage forum
Jawa's Outpost (UK and EIRE Star Wars trading group)
Echo Base Vintage Star Wars Trade/Sell/Buy
The Prototype Exchange
The Star Wars Traveler: filming locations and road trips for Star Wars fans
La Guerre des Etoiles Collectors (vintage Star Wars items with French language on them)
If you are an administrator or moderator and would like your community to be a part of this feature, please
let us know. We are always happy to include additional groups/forums in
our summaries, but be aware that not every group can be featured every
week.
In any case, lets get right down to it and get everyone caught up to date on what they may have missed last week...
Disco Ben and Vader
Star
Wars vintage bootleg ceramics continue to intrigue with their
unintended satirical sculpting of Star Wars characters. Richard Rich
reaches out to the community for information on what appears to be a
fist bumping disco themed maquette lamp. Join the conversation in the
Star Wars Bootleg and Knock Off Collectors Group.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
Simpler Store Displays
Store
displays are designed to have eye-catching appeal and are frequently highlighted in collections due to their dramatic appearance. Collectors discuss the simpler store displays, their collectibility, and
their ability to enhance a collection in this thread in the
Star Wars Displays and Advertising Group.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
Snap!!
A
collector accidentally breaks off the peg from a figure stand which
remains jammed in the figure's foot-hole. The community at
Jabba's Court offers several
possible methods to remove the peg from the figure without causing
damage to the figure.
The full thread can be found here:
While the
Star Wars Community Digest is geared mostly to text-based threads and sources of information, we do suggest that all collectors become familiar with collecting podcasts as well. There are a number of really good vintage-themed podcasts which can help both newer and long-time collectors learn more about collecting and stay up to date on the current events in the hobby. In this thread from the
12 Back Group, the community discusses the topic and identifies their favorite podcasts.
The full thread can be found here:
Good Vintage Podcasts?
A U.S. Kenner ESB45 C-3PO with Removable Limbs Finally Turns Up!
For many years, the community (and especially C-3PO aficionado Bill Cable) has been under the assumption that no Removable Limbs 3POs were released on ESB45-back cards. Despite
years of searching, no examples had ever turned up and the figure was thought to have been unreleased on that cardback...but then Bill randomly found one on eBay, of all places! He details the whole story in this thread from the Empire Strikes Back Group (and on his own site, CreatureCantina.com).
The full thread can be found here:
One Display to Ruler Them All!
There are few things as beloved in this hobby as the line of Star Wars-themed stationary and school supplies released by Helix in the UK. As areas of collecting go, it's one of the hottest right now, to say nothing of how difficult many of those products are to track down. Which makes this store display for Helix rulers which was limelighted in the Displays and Advertising Group all the most awesome to see!
The full thread can be found here:
Helix Ruler Display
A Fourth Headman
After
many years of searching, collector Paul Chu unearths the 4th known
carded UZAY Headman. Paul shares the international journey on his
discovery of one of rarest and most coveted Star Wars Bootleg figures.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
Behind the Scenes Swag
Lucasfilm
crew as well as Kenner employees often received exclusive gifts for
work on particular projects or for years of service. Collectors discuss
this chapter of Star Wars collecting and limelight many exclusive behind
the scenes swag in this thread from the Empire Strikes Back group.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
A Limelight Worth a Look: Carded Boba Fetts
Chris
Eddleman shares a picture of his complete run of carded Empire Strikes
Back Boba Fett figures with different mail-away offers, in this thread from the Empire Strikes Back group.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
It's All Greek to ESB Read Alongs
Sometimes, the coolest items around are the foreign (to the US, at least) releases of vintage items. They're usually MUCH harder to find, since they were often released in significantly smaller quantities, and it's also really cool to see familiar logos in different languages. Such is the case here in this thread from the Star Wars Records and Tapes group. While the standard English language version of the ESB Read Along isn't likely to excite too many people, here we see a super rare Greek language version turn up!
The full thread can be found here:
ESB Greek Read Along
Further reading on the Archive:
From the Furthest Reaches of the Galaxy: Meiji Seika Display
Meiji
Seika, a Japanese food company, produced Star Wars themed candies
accompanied with small flexible plastic figures and collectors cards.
Similar types of small figures were produced in Japan by other companies
as well. Collectively they are referred to as Keshigomu or Keshi
figures. In this thread in the Displays and Advertising Group, Gus Lopez shares pictures of a very rare vintage store display
which illustrates the candy and toys and is accompanied with classic
Star Wars imagery.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading:
A
collector shares his concerns about what appears to be glue on the
wrists of his large size Boba-Fett action figure.
The Imperial Commissary group discusses
the reason for the gluey appearance, which turns out to be a form of
plastic degradation common with large size action figures.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading:
A Limelight Worth a Look: General Mills Card Set and Mailer Wallet
Paul
Morrison shares pictures to the 12 Back Group of his General Mills Cereal Star Wars 18 card
set accompanied by a Star Wars-emblazoned wallet designed to hold and
display the cards. The rarely seen wallet was only available as a mail away offer from General Mills.
Further reading on the Archive:
Another Case of Customs Being Sold as Prototypes
An administrator of the Empire Strikes Back group warns the community about an eBay seller offering multiple
custom pieces as pre-production pieces accompanied with false
provenance.
The full thread can be found here:
An Original Toys R Us/Early Bird Store Receipt is Found
Rob Wallace recently bought an original Early Bird envelope which was accompanied by the original Store receipt. Rob
shares pictures of this rare piece of ephemera with the Star Wars 12 Back Group, complete with an image
of Geoffrey the Giraffe.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
Pine Sol Display
Whenever the topic of odd licensed Star Wars products is raised, my personal favorite to mention is the vintage promotion from Pine Sol. While one doesn't typically associate floor cleaner with a galaxy far, far away, the company did offer a mail-away for Star Wars flying disks. While the frisbees are hard enough to find, and unopened bottles of the cleaner which featured the promotion are even tougher, I don't think I've
ever seen one of the store displays!
The full thread can be found in the Star Wars Displays and Advertising group here:
Pine Sol Shelftalker Display
Revenge of the Jedi Proof Cards Mislabeled as Cardbacks in Recent Auctions
It
appears as if several lucky collectors in the Return of the Jedi Group were able to buy proof cards way
below market value due to the poor labeling on several recent eBay
auctions. Hopefully they arrive safely and can be authenticated.
The full thread can be found here:
Further reading on the Archive:
Record Number of Porgs
As part of this year's Record Store Day (a promotion to encourage people to visit local record retailers), a special album was released featuring music from
The Last Jedi (two tracks), but the record itself was in the shape of a Porg. The promotion was limited to 3,500 copies and was only available at certain record stores. In this thread from the Star Wars Records and Tapes group, collectors spread news about the exclusive.
The full thread can be found here:
Porg Records
Further reading:
Who Else Found the Porg LP?
Our Star Wars Community Digest Time Capsule Thread for this Issue:
"I'd say that debasing themselves this way is a fair indication that Lucas' interest in
the Star Wars saga is low."
While some fans have accused LFL/Disney of destroying their childhoods with
The Last Jedi, it is perhaps interesting to remember that Lucas has a long history of destroying childhoods, originally in real-time, rather than retroactively 40 years later.
In 1985, Star Wars was still beloved but obviously on the way out. Fans could feel it.
Power of the Force figures were appearing at retail and weren't exactly flying off the shelves.
Return of the Jedi had been in theaters for two years, and at that point, if you hadn't seen it, you weren't going to. And even if you
had seen it, there was a good chance you didn't like it overly much (or if you did, you weren't posting about it online). Star Wars conversation finally had its own home on ARPANET, in the dedicated
net.movies.sw newsgroup, but even that would only last until July of 1985 (the group was eliminated because, according to their reasoning at the time: "
There seems little reason to
support this group until a new Star Wars epic comes out (years), and we can
recreate the group at that time, should the net last so long.") Yes, Star Wars was on its last legs, walking off into the sunset like every space western hero should.
More importantly to some people though, the franchise hadn't "sold out." Yes, there had been the Holiday Special, but since this was the days before bootleg tapes of that were accessible to fans (in fact, this era pre-dates most home video, period), people generally ignored that. Star Wars was still pure. Commercialized more extensively than anything since Mickey Mouse, but nobody paid attention to that either. Star Wars was something truly special...except for the Ewoks. People posting online in the 80s generally hated them beyond all reason, because THEY RUINED RETURN OF THE JEDI!
*ahem*
Nerd rage in the fandom was at one of its highest points ever. Star Wars fans were being ostracized by the other sci-fi newsgroups, because Star Wars wasn't *real* science fiction. It was too childish. As evidenced by the Ewoks, which RUINED CHILDHOODS AND THE FRANCHISE! (or so the thinking seems to have been at the time).
Which is why it should probably come as no surprise that news of the Droids and Ewoks cartoons wasn't exactly greeted with enthusiasm from the online world. Most of the people posting in newsgroups in the 80s were older fans, who considered ROTJ for children. These were fans posting from universities and military bases, installations which had access to the very expensive computer equipment required to access the internet during that era. These were fans who liked ANH and ESB, but ROTJ was seen as something ridiculous which would probably never catch on. To many of the fans online in the 80s, it was probably for the best that the Trilogy was over and Lucas was taking a break from the saga. And as such, they weren't immediately sold on the idea of the galaxy far, far away coming to Saturday morning cartoon lineups on TVs closer to home. In fact, they were basically never sold on the idea at all. It seems to have been taken as either a horrifying joke, proof that Star Wars was done, or that Star Wars had never been anything special to begin with. Star Wars was for adults, not children!
This would be the first of many times that LFL ruined these people's childhoods.
Still, if you had signed onto ARPANET (or that young upstart Usenet) in Spring and Summer of 1985, these are examples of the kinds of conversations you could have taken part in. Spending your days cracking jokes about how nothing could be worse than Star Wars cartoon shows.
Star Wars Cartoon Series
Ewoks and Nutrasweet
