Obsessions - Star Wars Toys

Hello there

I’ve not done an Obsessions piece for an absolute age.

I appreciate I am quite regularly like a leaf in the wind on the creative side, flitting about all over the place, but nevertheless, that’s crazy.  What’s even more crazy, is that in all the Obsessions pieces I’ve written on here, I’ve never been near Star Wars.  I perhaps thought it too obvious. Whilst simultaneously inevitable of course.

That changes today though (and for a further two future written posts I think), as I have predictably watched the Light & Magic documentary that’s recently launched on Disney Plus.  Equally predictably, I felt inclined to have a little muse on it all. As I only very recently waxed lyrical about the Obi Wan Kenobi series, I don’t think I need to be blabbering here about any obsession I have with the ‘concept’ of Star Wars, and I quite recently mentioned somewhere on here about how inspirational the unlikely forming of ILM was during the making of Star Wars.  I can’t remember where I was talking about it, may have been a Cabin Fever, but I was certainly discussing the fact that so many people were pulling in the same direction, whilst bringing previously untapped skill sets and committing to ensemble production.  I am basically saying I have covered that part of it recently, so in this Obsessions piece I shall be focussing, primarily, on my obsession with the toys.

Like all the Obsessions pieces, it’s not really about the thing.  I don’t think you’ll have to know anything about Star Wars, or even have any care for it, to understand what I’m on about.  You may not relate of course, it may baffle you, or you may absolutely empathise. It’s a tale of impulse, quest, and frankly horrendous financial management.

I truly believe that if Star Wars had never been a story, never been a film or TV series or anything like that, but had just existed as an aesthetic, I would have still been obsessed. Maybe if it was an art exhibition, or a theme park ride, my house would still have been straining at the rafters with stuff.  In fact, the theme park ride is perhaps a good example, as that’s certainly the case with the Haunted Mansion. None of my draw to the Haunted Mansion came from the film (although, as an aside, the score to that much-maligned film is absolutely stunning and I wish so much it was available on vinyl).  I adore much about it, same as Star Wars, but it is the aesthetic that seems to pique my desire.  In my office, on my desk, in the living room, in the garden.  I would always maintain that it is the design and aesthetic of Star Wars, and the desire to replicate that tangibly in ‘real life’, that has kept me on the hook the most.

I’ve told you before, in various snippets, about how I got started off on Star Wars toys, so this is a very brief recap.  It could be the tale of hundreds of thousands of little kids in the late seventies .  I was not the only five-year-old that had a spark lit in me when receiving their first little action figures .  Each new movie, was as much about a new batch of toys in the Kenner (US)/Palitoy (UK) line.  The films fed into the collecting, and the collecting fed into clues and speculation for the forthcoming films.  The figures always landed first, with no information on the character affiliation.  Admiral Ackbar could have been the new baddie for all we knew, Boba Fett a cool new hero (that was made even more confusing by the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, where he blurred the lines in his appearance). Clarification only came once the story had finally been released, and the psychological adjustment that needed to be made with toys you’d assumed were something very different, was more complicated and difficult than you’d think. Even now I have a lurking suspicion that the 2-1B medical droid might have a hidden dark side.  It really does look like it would rather torture than nurse.

But anyway, that’s the brief background story.  As I say, nothing different to many kids at that time.  It’s as we get into the teens, and the end of the original trilogy, that we find key moments.

I certainly had family pressure on me to get rid of my toys.  That was the first place, and my first experience, of toys being  “dismissed” as childish.  I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now.  I don’t like it with anything, not just toys.  It has always been my take that if something you own makes you happy, you are fine to have it, regardless of how old you are.  Objects shouldn’t have an age limit on them.  The inconsistencies and hypocrisies of this attitude are ridiculous too.  It doesn’t get applied to home games systems nearly so much, or playing football or whatever, things that “kids do”.  It was mostly toys in the firing line. I’m not sure if it’s still the same, or certainly I’d say it’s nowhere near as rampant and strict as it once was, but in my childhood it was absolutely on display.  There was pressure on me to authorise the Star Wars collection being taken down the tip.  Many of my childhood friends, under similar pressure, did just that too. I stood my ground and it caused a big issue with, particularly, my dad.  I actually think it wasn’t just being annoyed that I had what he considered a childish collection, but the space it took up and the cluttering of my bedroom.  I admittedly wasn’t great at putting stuff back in the cupboard, and it was eventually impossible to do so as the cupboard was very full.  Some of those vehicles were daft/brilliant sizes.

I think I was around about 13 or 14 years old when I came back from a school holiday to find they had been taken down the tip.  I still struggle to find a defence for it when I think back. I mean, I don’t think it was meant to be cruel as such, but it properly hurt me. The figures had survived the cull, quite by chance, as they were in a bag in a wardrobe and not with the vehicles in the cupboard.  The cupboard was cleaned out though.  Millennium Falcon , Rebel Transport, Star Destroyer Playset, X-Wings, Darth Vader’s TIE fighter, Luke’s Land Speeder, the full list, all down the tip.  Not consigned to the loft (and there was a loft available) – actually binned. I always imagine them being crushed and put in landfill, but more likely is they ended up being taken from the tip back to a more accepting household.  I prefer to think that, and will happily daydream that my childhood toys are part of somebody else’s collection to this day.

Back to a distraught teenager though.  There is a conventional argument that the desire to cling to childhood possessions is a sign of being emotionally stunted or in some sort of arrested development.  I’d even say it myself in self-deprecating, humourous, dismissals of my own obsessions and collections, but my actual, real-life, consideration is it is quite the opposite.  I think there’s a maturity to maintaining things that bring you joy, and not getting rid just because social convention dictates this.  Don’t get me wrong, if somebody doesn’t actually get any joy from them, and truly feels they have ‘grown out of it’, then I wouldn’t be barking for them to be obliged to keep their childhood toys, but my own experience was one of not actually wanting them binning.

I think, whilst it was a subconscious decision, this sparked in me a simultaneously contrary and affirmed commitment to collecting.  Partly, that stubborn streak in me to double down on anything I’m judged on, and partly a refusal to accept the path I had been hoisted onto against my own decision. There was a huge Garfield collection that came subsequent to the Star Wars toys debacle, which I honestly think was a subconscious selection of something deemed even more ‘childish’, and the Star Wars collection itself was gradually re-grown.  When I was 18 I paid my then-girlfriend’s brother £25 for a boxed Millenium Falcon and a boxed AT-AT Walker. I think he thought he was getting an excellent deal because both vehicles were missing parts.  I personally was not missing parts though.  Many of the traditionally lost vehicle parts (like the jaw guns on the AT-AT or the blue supports for the drop down door to the Millenium Falcon, had been safely in the action figure bag during the cull).

The collection has morphed and changed hugely over the decades, which is what these posts are about really – those phases.  This is phase one, but it’s been many contrary things over the years. Scattergun, curated, haphazard, crowded, sparse, immaculate and tatty.  The one constant, that has never changed, has been that it is defiant. I appreciate that of all the things to be defiant over, plastic effigies is perhaps a curious hill to die on, but here we are.  Plenty have tried to make me be so, but I have never, ever, been embarrassed about it, and never, ever, will.

Star Wars was not always as ubiquitous as it is nowadays though.  Of course, in the late seventies and early eighties, when it was in its inaugural pomp, it was pretty huge.  If you weren’t there then let me tell you, what you’ve heard is true.  All of it.  At least I think it was.  It felt huge.  In my defence, I had nothing to compare it with.  It all seemed perfectly normal to me.  I was four-years-old when Star Wars came out in the cinema.  I’d not long been cognitive, so was hardly going to think “well this is quite the fuss”. I’m always suspicious of those who claim they were blown away by it, and quote things like the opening scene being something they’d “never seen before”, or a “game-changer” when they were under ten-years-old at the time.  Come on.  You just accept everything at that age.

By the time I got to university, Star Wars had all but gone. It’s fire had gone from the universe and I felt as though I was all that remained of that religion. There was nothing to buy.  See how toy shops and novelty stores look these days with a bit of Star Wars (mostly) tat on a shelf somewhere?  That wasn’t a thing.  It was nowhere.  Notwithstanding the bedrooms I had in my three years at Bretton Hall.

I didn’t stop.  I was seemingly reluctant to relinquish that particular part of my childhood, which turned into stubbornness in my twenties, and has now grown into, as Billy Joel might drunkenly sing it, “just the way Ian is…”.  Then there would be a murmur through the crowd whilst everyone asked everyone else who on earth Ian is, and if Billy was okay.

I was definitely the only person in my year with the Star Wars films on home video.  Definitely.  My copies were in widescreen as well, which most people were loudly proclaiming to be inferior versions as “half the screen was missing” (meaning the top and bottom were black boxes to accommodate the full picture). I got sick of pointing out the irony of that comment.  I also had the posters of all three films on my wall, and the toys, figures and general memorabilia were safely displayed.  I did find it frustrating that there was nowt new on the shelves, but was also satisfied with what I had.  Well, nearly.  That collection of original toys still wasn’t back to full force (no pun intended), but that wasn’t an obsession in full flight.  It was a dormant niggle, something there would be time to put right when possible, I certainly wasn’t fixating on it.

Then one day, and coincidentally about a day after the student loan had cleared in my account, I went to Leeds.  This was pre-internet times, because I went to university in the olden days.  In fact, they weren’t even called universities then.  They were called “work houses”.  Whilst in Leeds, I bought a golden book about Star Wars toys, “From Concept To Screen To Collectible”.  As in, it was the colour of gold.  But it was also a golden find. I didn’t know it existed (no such thing as the internet), and I recall being giddy at a new Star Wars thing to buy. Have still got it, all tatty and very, very thumbed through. I genuinely think that there was a direct link between this purchase and many years later when my bank told me I wasn’t allowed a Switch card any more because I kept going into unauthorised overdraft  (Switch was a trendy debit card of the time), and so was made to have a Solo card (ironically) which you could barely use in any shops and didn’t even let you sneak over your overdraft limit accidentally-on-purpose.  That book galvanised my desire to defiantly rebuild my collection.

So it was, that every Friday morning, bright and early, I would venture to Barnsley before lessons began, where there was a market.  By market, I mean it was essentially a car boot sale but with proper stands.  It was – without fail – a gold mine.  It’s hard to even comprehend now, but there were lots of vintage Star Wars toys.  They weren’t called vintage at this point, as it was only 8 years since they had been available new in the shops. They were just called “old”. Honestly, it wasn’t even that much money that I spent there over the three years, even added up together, but it’s all relative isn’t it?  It was money I barely had, and it was meant to be for other things really.

It was only going to get worse though.  Because in my final year of university, Star Wars started to move again.  Things were popping up.  Little bits of merch here and there.  I’d love to know if I was one of many having a mood resurgence, that led to more things being made.  As I say though, I was certainly the only one at my uni running around buying Star Wars memorabilia.  It culminated with a helmet, in a games shop in Wakefield.  A vintage helmet that hadn’t been around for a long time.  Something I’d remembered, but never found again, and couldn’t look up on the internet for reasons already made clear.

It was a Don Post Darth Vader helmet from the seventies, and it was one hundred pounds…

Did I buy it?

No.  One hundred pounds is daft money for one thing.

Did I end up owning it?

Yep.

Did it change everything?

Yep, it changed Phase One into Phase Two.

Can’t tell you about Phase 2 in this post though. That’ll be the next one. I think/hope it will be shorter…thank you for reading this much.

Hope you are having an amazing week so far.  I’ll be recording and editing Loopholes today for you to get tomorrow.   You’re welcome, but I’m oh such a tired boy.

Much love to you

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx