Shooting the Starlanes with the Terran Imperium: Star Wars and Starguard!

Ron writes:

 If you've read this 2022 blog post, you know that in the process of compiling information for it, Yehuda Kleinman and I delved deep into the world of gaming miniatures. 

Research is a funny thing: You do it to answer one question, and you come away with a whole bunch more. Or at least you do if you're as easily distracted as I am. 

Which brings me to this picture.

Look familiar?

Yes, the photo depicts what appear to be several figures resembling Stormtroopers. And they're surrounding a rather hulking representation of Darth Vader. 

I mean, he may be wearing bellbottoms, but I'm pretty confident that's Darth Vader.

The photo was published in issue 18 of The Dragon, an early gaming magazine. Publication date: September 1978.

It was during my researches into Nevile Stocken and his Star Wars miniatures that I encountered this image. I think Yehuda may have alerted me to it. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued. [1]

Who were these weird little space guys? What company made them? Most importantly, were they part of a larger line of Star Wars miniatures heretofore unknown to me?

The second question wasn't hard to answer... 

...because the manufacturer's name was printed in the upper left corner of the two-page spread on which the photo appeared.

Duh. 

The figures were made by Salt Lake City outfit by the name of McEwan Miniatures. So at least I had a lead. My hope was that it would open up additional avenues of investigation.

* * * 

According to Shannon Appelcline, whose Designers & Dragons is a useful source on the early days of fantasy gaming, McEwan was one of the first companies to benefit from rising interest in games based on space adventures. So great was interest in this subgenre of fantasy gaming that its principal publication, The Space Gamer, grew from just 500 subscribers at its outset in 1975 to as many as 3,000 just two years later.

Hey, maybe it's not so surprising that Star Wars was such a success when it was released in May of 1977. If the niche world of fantasy gaming can be taken as a bellwether, there was obviously a lot of pent-up demand for this kind of thing...

McEwan's entry in the space-game bonanza was Starguard! Interstellar Infantry -- 2250 AD. Released in 1973 or '74 (accounts differ), and designed by John McEwan and Michael Kurtick, it was a tactical wargame based on ground conflict. Players chose a faction, typically a race of aliens or an army of interstellar soldiers, and used dice and printed charts to simulate military engagements against competing factions. 

I use the past tense, but perhaps I shouldn't: More than 50 years after its debut, Starguard! is still around and still has its share of fans, a fact which speaks to the the quality of the game's design.

The following text, drawn from one of the game's early iterations, provides a sense of the atmosphere that McEwan and Kurtick sought to evoke for their players:

In those glorious golden days of the 23rd Century, when the Terrian Federation was still in its infancy, long before the Peace of the Empire, when no ship traveled the Starlanes unarmed, all that stood between the fragile glassine towers of Terra the Beautiful and the ravaging hordes of Ralni, Dreenoi and other lurkers in the darkness were the men of Starfleet Command. It is to the marines of the Federation Navy, the STARGUARD, that this record is respectfully dedicated.

While "Starfleet Command" and "Federation" were redolent of Star Trek, the militarism evoked something more intense and hard-nosed -- something more aligned with Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

How did the figures factor into this? 

They were accessories to the gameplay and aids to the imagination. And where character and detail were concerned, they were top notch. Writing for The Space Gamer in 1976, Larry Bond and Mike Mornard characterized them as "the best feature of the game...They are well sculpted and match some of the best SF combat stories around."

So central were figural accessories to the gameplay of Starguard! that McEwan and Kurtick encouraged players to incorporate miniatures from other companies. As John McEwan himself said:

The original idea behind Starguard! was that it should be both fun and flexible...I always hated the idea that you had to have just the figurines and/or accessories from just one company in order to play the game. Starguard! was designed to be as flexible as possible so that you could use figures that you had available or even figures that you liked from some other manufacturer. 

Anyway, that's the source of the figures seen in the photo at the top of this article: McEwan's Starguard! series.

* * * 

But if you're an astute reader, and you've gotten this far in my narrative, a problem is bothering the hindquarters of your consciousness, like a wee troublesome tsetse fly.

You're thinking: If Starguard! debuted in '73 or '74, and The Space Gamer was raving about its figures in '76, how the heck does Star Wars play into it? Star Wars was released in '77!

I had the same question. And it seemed the answer was obvious: The Stormtrooper and Vader figures were later Starguard! releases, ones that were inspired by Star Wars, but opportunistically worked into the Starguard! universe a few years after its birth. Recall that Bond and Mornard emphasized that McEwan endeavored to make their figures "match some of the best SF combat stories around." By late 1977, Star Wars probably qualified as the most popular "SF combat story" in history. So it isn't surprising to discover that McEwan took some inspiration from it.

The date of the issue of The Dragon containing the photo of McEwan's Star Wars figures seems to confirm this thesis: It was published in 1978, suggesting the figures were fairly new at that time.

But there was a blemish in my hypothesis, or at least a rogue bit of evidence that refused to be explained by it.

You see, McEwan also published a companion to Starguard! that was focused on space exploration rather than land battle. 

It was called... 

...Star War 2250.

And if that wasn't confounding enough, Star War 2250 was released in 1975.

So we have a gaming company that released figures that looked just like Star Wars characters. Which also released a module with the title Star War. What's more, the latter product was released two years before Star Wars hit theaters.

Well, if that doesn't demand further investigation, I don't know what does. What exactly was going on here? How did the story of a little gaming company come to be so intertwined with the biggest blockbuster movie of its era? And how did the Stormtrooper and Vader figures relate to Star War 2250?

I began my attempt to clear up the matter by searching internet forums devoted to gaming. As I quickly discovered, I wasn't alone in my confusion: gamers and miniature collectors tended to share it. It wasn't uncommon to see references to law suits and legal agreements alongside expressions of uncertainty regarding the chronology of McEwan's releases. 

Some even held that McEwan, not George Lucas, originally owned the rights to the name "Star Wars." And that the company was forced to discontinue its Star Wars figures, and possibly even change its name, as part of a settlement with Fox or Lucasfilm. This seemed pretty unlikely to me, but it further piqued my curiosity. 

So I decided to ask John McEwan about it. 

McEwan, fortunately, is still with us, and he sometimes posts on internet forums. In one such post he provided his email address and encouraged fans to reach out to him. I did just that.

He couldn't have been nicer, and he answered all of my questions.

Hi Ron:

Thanks for your interest in old timey games like Starguard! As for your questions about what happened when Star Wars first came out: Star War 2250 was published a good year or so before the movie came out. The Terran Troopers [i.e., the Stormtroopers -- Ed.] came out after the movie had been released and were definitely influenced by the Stormtroopers of the movie. 

Since that time there have been several people who have commented on the similarities, but in all these years I have never contacted Lucasfilm or they contacted me. In other words nothing happened.

So my guess regarding the figures was correct: They were produced a few years after the introduction of Starguard! and were indeed influenced by Star Wars. Though I didn't ask Mr. McEwan about the Vader figure specifically, it's pictured alongside the Stormtroopers in the photo from The Dragon, so I think it's fair to assume they debuted together in late '77 or early '78. 

But, according to McEwan, the rumors regarding lawsuits and legal deals are untrue. Unlike Archive Miniatures, McEwan was never threatened by Fox or Lucasfilm.

As for Star War 2250, McEwan's adoption of the name in 1975 appears to have been fortuitous. The company designed a game and called it Star War because, well, those words adequately described the gameplay. And then just two years later everyone and his uncle was talking about the hit sci-fi movie Star Wars. 

What a stroke of luck! Or maybe it was a step in sh*t? I guess it depends on how you look at it...

* * * 

As you're no doubt aware, this is a blog devoted to Star Wars collecting. And I'm sure by now you're wondering when I'm going to provide more information concerning the McEwan figures that were influenced by Star Wars -- the ones whose photo served as the introduction to this article.

Before I owned any of the figures, I acquired a McEwan catalog that showed the Stormtroopers. Based on the expiration dates noted in the catalog, it was issued in 1978. So it was vaguely contemporary with the issue of The Dragon containing our oft-referenced photo. 

As the above email from Mr. McEwan makes clear, in the world of Starguard!, the Stormtroopers were known as Terrans.

The catalog actually lists five different Stormtroo...I mean Terrans, each sculpted in a different pose:

FF-40 (standing with separate rifle)

FF-40a (running with rifle)

FF-40b (holding rifle and looking to the side)

FF-40c (holding rifle and looking forward)

FF-40d (holding double-barreled rifle)

Though the figures in the photo from The Dragon aren't numbered, their poses match what's shown in the catalog.

When I later acquired several sets of the figures, I realized that my FF-40c corresponded to the catalog's FF-40d. So either the catalog is wrong or the labeling on my figures is. [2]

Though I'm missing what the catalog refers to as FF-40c, the Stormtrooper holding a rifle and looking forward, I own a set not listed in the catalog: a FF-40e that includes a Terran and a lizard mount that resembles a dinosaur. 

Like, it's way more Flinstones than Dewback. 

As it's not in the catalog, and isn't in the photo from The Dragon, it may have been released after the other five sets.

I'm also aware of versions of FF-40 and FF-40a that contain one rather than five figures.

Based on the catalog copy, which advertises lots of 10 figures for 30 cents each, it's possible the single-figure packages were the norm, and my five-figure versions the exception. Note that the example of FF-40 pictured above bears a price of 35 cents, suggesting that the 10-for-$3.00 price noted in the catalog entailed a bulk discount of 50 cents. 

But what about the Vader? Bellbottoms aside, he is kind of the coolest figure, right?

Sadly, I don't own an example. 

Fortunately, the excellent website devoted to gaming miniatures, Lost Minis Wiki, has a couple of photos. They refer to the figure as the 1st Series Necromorph Officer. 

As a Necromorph, or a "reanimated corpse soldier," the figure wasn't even on the same side as the Terrans, i.e. the Stormtroopers, which makes its inclusion with them in the photo from The Dragon seem all the more meaningful. I think it's likely that, when McEwan submitted the photo to The Dragon, the intention was to group together the figures derived from Star Wars, and thereby notify the public that, yes, McEwan had introduced figures based on the hit movie.

If you peruse Lost Minis Wiki -- and please do; it's a wonderful site -- you'll note the existence of several additional Terrans, including some not depicted in our catalog. There were kneeling Terrans, Terrans holding missiles, and Terrans holding gonzo-sized weaponry. I have not been able to track down any of these. And since they're not in the catalog, my assumption is that they represent later releases.

Lost Minis Wiki also reveals that, at some point in time, the design of the Terrans changed, and their helmets ceased to resemble those worn by Stormtroopers. Though Mr. McEwan made it clear that he was never contacted by representatives of Lucasfilm, it remains a possibility that, after a few years of production, someone at McEwan thought it better to avoid poking the bear, and revised the figures away from the Star Wars aesthetic.

That said, McEwan's products remain in production today, under the manufacturer name of Reviresco, and it certainly appears that figures resembling Stormtroopers are available, particularly as pilots of various vehicle accessories. [3]

As for the Vader figure, i.e. the Necromorph Officer, it seems to have been modified to resemble Marvel's Dr. Doom. [4]

* * * 

Well, that wraps up our look at this now hopefully not so mysterious corner of early unofficial merchandising. 

Star Wars has had a lot of official licensees over the years, but I often think that the unlicensed products offer greater testament to the popularity of the property, especially during its early years, than all the Kenner figures sold by major outlets like Sears and JC Penney. This is particularly true when the unlicensed products appeared in a niche market like wargaming, because they demonstrate how quickly the influence of Star Wars was felt even in the remotest crannies of the culture.

In addition to positioning McEwan's figures as Star Wars collectibles, I hope this article has served as a tribute to John McEwan and Starguard!, two fixtures of space gaming that have been going strong for over half a century, regardless of how "old timey" they may seem in the digital age. 

May the fragile glassine towers of Terra the Beautiful stand forever!

---

Thanks to Jim Jones for providing a photo of a single-figure Terran pack. Extra special thanks to Yehuda Kleinman for providing several photos, including those of the Star War 2250 game. Extra extra special thanks to John McEwan for so kindly responding to my email and setting the record straight regarding his creations' overlaps with Star Wars.

Notes:

[1] The McEwan figures inspired by Star Wars (namely, the Stormtroopers/Terrans) also appeared in issue numbers 14 and 17 of The Dragon. Unfortunately, I don't have good scans of the pages containing their photos, and early copies of the publication tend to be quite pricey.

[2] The catalog also shows a figure that appears to combine the uniform of an Imperial officer and the helmet of a Rebel trooper. It's possible this was also inspired by Star Wars.

[3] Writing this has caused me to remember that I intended to buy a couple of these. Maybe I will now . . . 

[4] Curiously, Archive Miniatures' second Vader-inspired figure, called Dr. Cyborg, also seems inspired by Dr. Doom. See here.