The Joy of Sithmas: The Collector’s Meetup That Became an Annual Holiday Tradition

David writes:

 It takes two elements to form a tradition: resonance and consistent repetition. Striking a chord, and then returning regularly to play those familiar, desirable notes with everyone involved.

The result equates to a song with history. One that establishes itself on the calendar, over a period of time. As it materializes and develops into something recognizable, we anticipate its arrival. We plan for it. We take part in it. We embrace it as a part of our lives. The clock then resets, and we begin the countdown for its return.  

And for Star Wars fans and collectors, an annual December gathering at a fellow collector’s home has become a meaningful holiday tradition that grows and evolves with each passing year.

For some, it’s a chance to connect with friends and collectors one final time before the new year begins. For others, it’s their holiday celebration -- with the family they chose, and with those who are still here with us. And for all of us, it’s a way to merge our love of Star Wars with the holidays in a unique way.  

In this wonderful community, it’s another example of when a meetup becomes more than a meetup. And we wouldn’t expect anything less from the epic weekend known as Sithmas.

*****

Sithmas is the Pennsylvania Star Wars Collecting Society’s holiday event, hosted and attended by members of a collecting club that will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2025.  

The winter get-together originated in the western region of the state in January of 2016. Scott and Nikki Fetzick hosted the first Sithmas, naming it as a Star Wars-themed play on the word Christmas. 

After seeing how positively the western members reacted toward the gathering, Pennsylvanian collector Mike De Stefano decided to host his own Sithmas event on the eastern side of Pennsylvania in December of 2017, which would run concurrently with the western event. A video chat would link both parties, allowing members from both sides of the Pennsylvania group to celebrate together.  

Preparing for the first eastern Sithmas, Mike planned to welcome fifteen to twenty guests. However, a snowstorm hit the Lancaster area, and as a result, only four people braved the conditions to trek to Mike’s home that year.  

Mike recalled shoveling the driveway in the hours before his company arrived, to create parking spaces for his guests. And while he considered canceling it due to the storm, the worst of the weather swept beyond his town and headed east, allowing those in the central region to make the trip.  

But the size of the meetup proved to be beneficial, as it provided a more intimate affair, and helped Mike to work out the kinks of the inaugural function and to lay the foundation for future Sithmas celebrations.

*****

The holiday season of 2018 brought better weather, and with it, a larger crowd. Approximately twenty collectors attended. Mike introduced the White Bantha, a gift exchange game based on the White Elephant activity played at family parties and at work functions. And the White Bantha was so popular that it became a staple of every successive Sithmas meetup.

After hosting the first two eastern Sithmases, Mike began to see the same aspects that made the western winter meetups so enticing and connective occur within the rooms of his own home. The eastern Sithmas was still small enough to be manageable, but showed the promise of what a holiday-themed collectors event could be someday. 

And through attending other clubs’ events, Mike was able to see the potential of that promise. That same year, Mike was invited to take part in his first International Collectors Event, held in New York. Known as ICE, these private gatherings brought together more than one hundred collectors, and were usually held over a long weekend in a specific region of the country. And collectors from other states and other countries participated.

The magnitude of that first ICE trip proved that larger local meetups were possible, and he began to understand the logistics of both planning and producing one on a grander scale.

The 2019 event solidified the annual tradition, bringing back a group of twenty collectors and establishing a consistency. In addition to the White Bantha gift exchange, attendees also competed  in a contest assembling Star Wars puzzles.

*****

Although the pandemic cancelled plans for a 2020 Sithmas event, the online gatherings held during the quarantine, like the Georgia Alliance of Star Wars Collectors’ Virtual Summer Social,  demonstrated the value in potentially including collectors who lived beyond Pennsylvania’s borders.  

During the summer social, the Georgia Club offered a series of Star Wars-themed panels featuring collectors from various regions of the U.S. and Canada. And members from multiple clubs participated to make that weekend connective and memorable, and a worthwhile substitute at a time when in-person meetups were not possible.  

In the summer of 2021, as the pandemic subsided, collectors planned in-person meetups again. Pennsylvania was chosen as the destination for the 2021 ICE event, and Mike hosted a day at his home. More than 60 collectors attended, giving Mike a clearer vision of producing a potential multi-club Sithmas party later that year. He contacted Erik Janniche from the Washington DC Area Star Wars Collectors Club and Tom Quinn from the Empire State Star Wars Collectors Club to extend invitations to members from the two regional groups.  

Mike was both touched and inspired by the response from the DC and Empire clubs that year. The number of attendees doubled for the 2021 affair, as fifty members traveled to central Pennsylvania that December. 

Sithmas was no longer strictly a Pennsylvania collectors’ meetup. It became a multi-club holiday event. And it was due to Mike challenging of the notion of what a local meetup could be, as well as to the excitement our fellow collectors shared in celebrating the holidays together.

And there was power in the name Sithmas. Like Ron Salvatore’s Hudson Valley meetup RonCon, or Empire State Club member Fonz Napolitano's Syracuse gathering FonzCon, Sithmas became more than a day at a friend’s house. It had earned a title. It was an official event. And we were honored to be a part of it.

When discussing the purpose of Sithmas, Mike described hosting as a way to pay forward the kindness and hospitality that other collectors have shown to him and to those within our community. And he wanted a day at his home to serve as a way to link people together who might not be able to attend the massive international conventions, like Star Wars Celebration.

*****

In 2022, members from the Ontario Star Wars Collectors Alliance traveled from Canada to attend their their first Pennsylvania Sithmas event. And they’ve not only returned to Sithmas in the following years, but have brought more members with them for each trip. 

2022 also marked the year that Northeast Star Wars Collectors Club member Vincent Tricomi created the first official swag memorabilia for Sithmas. To honor the holidays, Vinny produced a patch featuring a gingerbread version of Chewbacca wearing a Santa hat, and with the slogan “It’s beginning to look a lot like Sithmas.” The patch also featured the names of three of the  clubs represented at the gathering.  

In the following years, Vinny continued the cookie theme, designing a Vader patch in 2023 and adding the Ontario Star Wars Collectors Alliance and the Northeast Club. And a C-3PO cookie marked the 2024 event, along with the additions of the Ohio Star Wars Collectors Club and the Indiana Star Wars Collecting Community. 

For Vinny, creating a souvenir of the weekend for attendees and friends has been rewarding in a surprising number of ways. The reception toward each reveal has been nothing but positive. And this year, Vinny was especially touched by the words of encouragement and enthusiasm shared by his friends, who were excited to add another cookie patch to their respective collections.  

In the past, I’ve described the Star Wars collectibles as tangible souvenirs of intangible moments and experiences. And the cookie patches encapsulate the joy and laughter shared together at Sithmas, along with the bonds of friendship that form throughout the weekend.

*****

In 2023, the guest list jumped to sixty-five members, across six Star Wars collectors clubs. Members from the Empire State, the Northeast region, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Canada joined in the festivities. And in 2024, eighty Star Wars fans and collectors attended the largest Sithmas yet.  

And Sithmas has morphed beyond Saturday’s main event, and now includes activities for those who arrive the day before and stay the following morning.  

The weekend kicks off with a Friday night dinner at a local restaurant or brewery. This year, thirty collectors assembled at TJ Rockwell’s, a bar and grill in Elizabethtown that specializes in pub fare.  

After dinner, Mike invited the group back to his house to continue the party into Saturday morning.

*****

Saturday’s meetup began in the early afternoon. The first activity was the White Bantha gift exchange, which was run by Erik Janniche and Pennsylvania member Steve Rensi.  

The game lasted for an hour or longer, and served as an opportunity to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and to obtain a new Star Wars item to bring home.  

At the conclusion of the White Bantha, everyone headed outside to Mike’s backyard for the annual group photo.

As the sun began to set, Mike served a catered dinner, consisting of pizza, pasta, meatballs chicken cutlets and salad from a local Italian restaurant. Guests sat in different rooms of the house, eating and conversing with friends.

At that point, the structured segment of the event concluded, and the rest of the evening was entirely open to collectors to carve their own paths into the party.  

Some played in pool tournaments, and in table hockey competitions.

Others toured Mike’s vintage collection room, featuring a wall of carded Kenner figures, a series of displays showcasing the vintage action figures, vehicles and playsets.  

But the true centerpiece of the collection is the arrangement of nine Death Star Space Station playsets to form a spherical Death Star.

Throughout the day, collectors frequented Mike’s garage, which had been converted into a room sales space to buy, sell and trade Star Wars collectibles. 

The offerings have spanned the entirety of the franchise, from the Kenner action figures to the modern Hasbro toys. And each Sithmas has delivered its share of rare items, like a 41-back Kenner store display bell, modern hardcopies and first shot prototypes, and proof cards and posters. 

And while photos may capture a fraction of the moments spent at Sithmas, most of the day was spent floating through the different areas of the house, joining impromptu group conversations, or having one-on-one chats with friends who are like family to us, and with ones we met for the first time that day.

This year’s gathering lasted into the early hours of Sunday morning, with the remaining guests leaving and heading to their cars shortly before 3:00 a.m. 

*****

After sleeping for a few hours, attendees who stayed in the central Pennsylvania area reunited for one final time that weekend, for breakfast at Gus’s Diner.

There’s something special about seeing friends the next day after an event. Spending a few hours together feels like a bonus and a blessing, and those early morning conversations at Gus’s are always some of my personal favorites from the trips.

*****

So, what is the next phase of evolution for this epic holiday gathering? What will next year’s Sithmas bring?

That’s something that Mike considers constantly. The meetup has turned into a destination event, and with the Friday and Sunday activities, has become a trip worthy of a full weekend. And that might entice club members from farther regions of the country, like the Seattle and Georgia clubs, to put Pennsylvania on their Christmas calendars for 2025.

But no matter what changes Sithmas undergoes to accommodate the rising interest and energetic reception, the heart of the Star Wars-themed festivity remains as pure as Mike’s original intentions for it.  

Reflecting on why Sithmas resonates with him, Mike said:

“What I think I love best about it is…it’s a full weekend to immerse yourself in the friendships and in the community that we’ve built, and it creates an opportunity for all of us to reconnect, right before things get crazy, right before the new year turns, and reconnect on those friendships and bonds, and strengthen them year after year.”

If you'd like to learn more about Sithmas, you can listen to a recap of the 2022 event in episode 116, titled "A Sithmas Story," and episode 155 features a conversation with Mike De Stefano, titled "Hosting Sithmas." Only on the Star Wars: Prototypes and Production podcast!

Standards vs. Interpretations: Kenner and Repro Art

Ron writes:

 This article was written for It Came From the Loft, the fanzine of our friends at the Vintage Rebellion podcast. Check out their publications for more great content focused on vintage Star Wars collecting.

Part I: Corrupted Transmission

Above you see an ad for Kenner action figures and related toys. It ran on behalf of the retailer Mervyn's. Year: 1981.

If you're wondering why it depicts a character who has a suppository for a head, fear not: you surely aren't the first. Thousands of kids likely saw the ad and wondered something similar. I mean, it's not like Kenner shied away from releasing figures of characters scarcely seen in the movies. Maybe this guy represented some powerful yet obscure alien race, one unashamed of the stigma attached to carrying a murse?

But of course it was no such thing: it was actually everyone's favorite killer robot, IG-88.

Obviously, the artist who drew the ad translated the figure into a simplified form that belied its hard mechanical details. That's what happens when human vagary intrudes upon an otherwise mechanical process. You get interpretations, translations, inventions. 

Are you familiar with the history of botanical prints? Before it was possible to reliably reproduce a diagram of a plant, via engraving or woodcut, the pictures in botanical books were drawn by hand. Meaning that the images generated for new or updated editions required an artist to copy an earlier image, also drawn by hand. And though this sounds pretty straightforward, after a few publishing generations, the plants seen in books didn't resemble anything seen in the wild. Their resemblance to life had been. . .lost in translation.

It's kind of like the Telephone Game: One kid whispers a message to the next kid, and the message moves on down the line, until, by the time it gets to the last kid it's just a lot of nonsense, like the plot of Ahsoka.

By the way, did you know that in the UK the Telephone Game is known as Chinese Whispers? I mean, it sounds more poetic than "Careless Whisper." George Michael should have gone with that instead.

In summary, humans have a tendency to corrupt information through the process of transmission. It's just one of those things we do.

It was partially to counteract this tendency that Kenner issued press photos like the one seen above, which shows IG-88 in all his photo-accurate glory. These photos could be reproduced in print media, thereby ensuring that Kenner's products looked exactly as the company intended. 

Alas, though the technology to reproduce photos in newspapers existed in the '70s and '80s, it was infrequently done in advertising. Expense was likely one factor limiting the use of photography; another was surely the difficulty of rendering detail in small halftone images. Remember, most newspaper ads were quite small; even if they took up an entire page, the products depicted in them often measured less than an inch in length.

This 1979 ad from JC Penney is a good example of a photographic ad that just didn't work out. The images are so washed out that, when prepping them for reproduction, someone went over them with black marker to ensure they'd be legible when printed in the paper.

So, when it came to newspaper advertising, photos were problematic. If you were a retailer advertising toys, it was best to avoid photos.

Line drawings were a much better starting point for newspaper images. A crisp line rendering is easy to reproduce; it's also capable of effectively communicating the idea of even the smallest of details.

By the way, keep the above two ads in mind. We'll return to them later.

Part II: Accuracy Through Standardization

Earlier I mentioned that Kenner provided photos to retailers and publishers who desired to feature the company's products in print, whether for the purpose of advertising or news reporting. Well, they did something similar in the realm of line art. Not via single sheets, but rather via entire honking compendiums filled with line-art reproductions.

Above you see the covers of Kenner's line-art compendiums spanning the years of the company's involvement with the Star Wars license, 1978 to 1986. As you've no doubt gleaned from the photo, they were called Repro Art Books, because they provided art that users of the book could reproduce. 

Repro. . . Art. Get it?

These days, finding an intact Kenner Repro Art Book is pretty difficult, and obtaining the entire set of nine is just about impossible. But if you do decide to head down that road, be advised that the books corresponding to 1983 and 1984 are significantly smaller than their counterparts, as is illustrated by the above photo.

Inside the covers of the Repro Art Books were page upon page of line renderings, all approved by Kenner, and printed on a single side to enable easy clipping. Retailers wishing to assemble an ad could clip out the graphical and textual elements, assemble them to their liking on a sheet of paper using paste or some other adhesive, and submit their handiwork to the local newspaper for reproduction.

With the repro art page available as a reference, I think the source of the figures in our Children's Palace ad becomes pretty obvious.

Ditto the Jedi figures in our other ad (which is from the retailer Harts).

In fact, all of the images of Kenner products featured in the Children's Palace and Harts ads derive from repro art -- the X-Wing, Land Speeder, Falcon, etc. The non-Kenner products, like the lunchbox, surely derive from repro art provided by the producers of those products -- in the case of the lunchbox, King Seeley.

Star Wars first appeared in a Repro Art Book in 1978, the year in which the first 12 action figures debuted.

But the earliest pieces of Star Wars repro art released by Kenner are surely the individual sheets, or "slicks," that you see above. 

Corresponding to the first official catalog of Star Wars product that Kenner made available to retailers in 1977, the slicks represented the following products: the Early Bird Certificate Package, Escape from Death Star Game, Playnts, Dip Dots, and the first series of puzzles. As discussed here, these were the only Star Wars products released by Kenner in 1977.

You can see the influence of these slicks in the above ad, from Copps. The Kenner and Star Wars logos, product title, and imagery are all drawn directly from the slick representing the Certificate Package. 

The descriptive text, however, must have been interpolated by someone at Copps, as it differs from the text on the slick. And of course it contains an error. Specifically, the ad copy refers to the four figures as "possible" rather than "posable," thereby implying that you might actually not get four figures. 

Like, maybe you'd get just one figure plus that crummy sticker sheet. 

Now maybe you understand why Kenner wanted to take this sh*t out of the hands of retailers!

By the way, I wrote about the Early Bird repro art slick, and speculated about its inclusion in an introductory packet tied to the Certificate Package, here. Check it out if you're interested in learning more.

I'm not going to delve into the contents of each Repro Art Book. This article is merely an overview of the topic. But I think the 1978 issue deserves special mention.

For one thing, it's the only Repro Art Book containing Star Wars content to feature photographic as well as line-art reproductions of Kenner products. It's due to this that the '78 book contains considerably more pages than its successors. 

This resulted in some great content, like the page you see above, which shows the original conceptual models for the Chewbacca and Darth Vader large-size action figures. Famously, the Chewbacca was a modified example of the Bionic Bigfoot figure from Kenner's line based on the Six Million Dollar Man.

As you'd expect, the line art representing these products also depicted the conceptual models.

Another interesting inclusion in the '78 Repro Art Book is this page, which contains what is likely one of the earliest group photos of the first 12 action figures (the original plan was to launch the line with a mere nine figures). Note that the description of the Jawa mentions that it came with a "molded cape and hood," whereas all of the other figures featuring vinyl capes are advertised as including a "removable cape." It's likely that the confusing language concerning the Jawa is a relic of the figure's original design, which included no cape at all, vinyl or cloth. The character's robe and hood were intended to be represented by the molded parts of the figure itself.

And, yes, those are proof cards you see lying below the Stormtrooper 12-back in the photo on the right side of the page.

Speaking of interesting inclusions, the 1979 Repro Art Book contained line art based on the early conceptual model of the Boba Fett large-size action figure. At the time the model was created, the product was planned to incorporate a host of features, including electronics. 

The depiction of prototypes in Repro Art Books mostly ceased in later years, though occasionally an interesting item made an appearance. For example, see the unproduced coloring book mentioned here. Additionally, line-art representations of several never-released Droids and Ewoks products appeared in the 1985 Repro Art Book, but, then, they also appeared in Kenner's retailer catalog of that year. So that's not really surprising.

As we close out this section, it should be noted that Kenner sources of repro art weren't limited to the Repro Art Books: As Kenner did in 1977, they occasionally issued collections of repro art pages, or "ad slicks," to retailers in combination with specialized promotions. 

For example, see the rebate promotion that I wrote about here.

Above you see an additional example. As the envelope makes clear, these unbound slicks were provided to retailers in the spring of 1983. As far as I can tell, updated assortment numbers aside, they're identical to those in the 1983 Repro Art Book.

Also apparently authorized by Kenner were compendiums like this. Published by Kwikee Systems, the volume includes Star Wars repro art that is identical to that included in Kenner's 1985 Repro Art Book, along with repro art representing the products of several other companies. It's unknown how many of these Kwikee volumes contain Kenner repro art. 

By the way, Kwikee appears to continue to operate as a third-party supplier of "up-to-date, manufacturer-approved product images and data." Now, of course, you download the images rather than clip them out of a book.

How does it feel to be living in the future?

Part III: Fringe Benefits

We've mostly focused on newspaper advertising, because, well, that was the whole point of repro art: It was art specifically designed to read well when printed in a newspaper.

But repro art was used on other items during the vintage era, and this wouldn't be a comprehensive review of the topic unless we covered some of them.

One such item is the above shopping bag. It was issued by Circus World, a toy store that was typically located in malls. Clearly, someone at the store made good use of Kenner's 1980 Repro Art Book when designing the Empire Strikes Back side of the bag. Circus World seems to have used repro art to produce a series of these bags in the early '80s. I own another example that focuses on the Atari 2600 gaming system.

You may ask yourself: What is a more unlikely platform for toy advertising than a shopping bag?

Do paper movie-theater cups qualify?

As friend and Archive blogger Jonathan McElwain reminded me, Coca-Cola's 1985 theater promotion, which had a Kenner tie-in, utilized repro art in its depictions of Power of the Force action figures, then newly released. The figures were visible in the upper reaches of the cups, right below their rims. The depiction of a space battle occupying the central portion of the cups, however, wasn't drawn from repro art; rather, it appears to have been rudely reworked from of one of Kenner's 1984 store displays.

Repro art even turned up on a few pieces of vintage packaging, as the above box, for Kenner's Jabba the Hutt Action Playset, demonstrates. Often described as a catalog mailer, the actual use of these boxes remains somewhat obscure. I don't think I've ever seen one with a number indicating that it came from the catalog division of Sears, JC Penney, or a similar retailer.

One item that was definitely available through catalog retailer was the above action figure multi-pack. Three different catalog mailers bearing line art are known to have been produced, all by Sears in 1980. (See here for another example.) Let's face it: the boxes of the catalog mailer packs tended to pretty bland. So the repro art decorating these Sears mailer packs, rudimentary though it is, comes off as pretty sexy when considered in context!

And of course there were the blister cards that Kenner's Mexican sublicensee Lili Ledy used to package Return of the Jedi action figures. As a sublicensee, Lili Ledy surely had access to official Kenner photography. But the use of repro art allowed them to cut costs by eschewing photographic reproductions on the reverse of their cards.

Finally, there's this item. I'd always considered it an unauthorized store display made using Kenner repro art. But as I examined it while prepping this article, I realized that neither the Vader nor the R2-D2 derive directly from Kenner-authorized line art. So I guess I was wrong. It's pretty obvious, though, that the Vader was at least copied from repro art: The figure's pose is identical to the one Kenner used for Vader repro art during the entire run of the line.

So we've come full circle, with evidence that art intended to prevent artistic interpretation was used as the basis for artistic interpretation!

Part IV: Nonstandardization and its Advantages

The intent of repro art was standardization. By standardizing the imagery used by advertisers, Kenner hoped to eliminate inaccuracies and thereby ensure a consistent idea of their products in the great collective mind of the public.

But standardization is inherently limiting. It's meant to be limiting. And as someone who enjoys the infinite wonkiness of human expression, I can't help but find the limits imposed by repro art a little depressing. After all, prefabrication often isn't very aesthetically or culturally inspiring. 

With that sentiment in mind, I've assembled the above collage of ads with the intent of demonstrating the joys of nonstandardization. The images in these ads, drawn by people unbeholden to Kenner or any other authority other than perhaps the retailer who paid for them, are to my mind more interesting, and more redolent of the era to which they belong, than their more official-looking counterparts. 

But, then, collectors aren't concerned with selling a commercial product. We don't necessarily care about accuracy. Our interests are naturally more sympathetic to the novelty the Repro Art Books were intended to thwart.

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Thanks to Chris Georgoulias for providing photos of a couple of Repro Art Books, to Mike Press for providing the scans of the 1977 ad slicks, and to Jonathan McElwain for providing the photo of the Coca-Cola cups (and for reminding me that they utilized repro art).