I told myself I wasn’t going to buy any Star Wars collectibles in 2017 and for the most part I haven’t. Then, last week, I saw this for sale at Dollar General and caved.

This R2 unit is, in fact, a ceramic piggy bank. It’s all one piece, so there’s no articulation. His legs don’t move and his head doesn’t swivel. He just stands there at attention, waiting to accept your spare change.

In the 1970s pottery and ceramics were all the rage, which led to a lot of bootleg Star Wars items. Garage sales were full of misshapen Vaders, Chewbaccas, and R2D2s. At the time people considered them to be weird bootlegs; today they’re collectible curiosities. Few of them have any real monetary value. Personally, I just think it’s interesting to see what kinds of tributes to Star Wars people were making back then, especially before toy stores were bursting with officially licensed toys.

This R2D2 unit, however, is officially licensed. On the bottom there’s a sticker identifying it as made in China by Zak! back in 2015. Zak.com has the bank listed for $12.99, although I can tell you that I found this one being liquidated at Dollar General for $3, and it was far from the last one there. Maybe kids don’t use piggy banks anymore.

One thing that interests me about Star Wars collecting is all the different ways collections can be organized. Some of my playsets are sorted by movie and location. (All my Hoth playsets are together, for example.) In other areas it makes more sense to sort things by toy line, like displaying all my vintage 12″ Star Wars figures together in one place. But there are two characters, Darth Vader and Yoda, who each have a 4′ shelf dedicated to them. Each shelf contains figures Pez dispensers, plush dolls, and other items, all in the character’s likeness. As I made room for this latest R2-D2, I’m thinking that all my R2s may need to be placed together on their own shelf.

The Biker Scout is arguably my favorite Star Wars action figure. Introduced in Return of the Jedi, the Biker Scouts (at least at first) came off as more elite than the typical bumbling Stormtrooper. Everything about these guys, from their helmets and armor to their unique pistols, was simply cool. To top it off they had super fast Speeder Bikes, on which they raced at break-neck speeds (sometimes literally) through the forest moon of Endor. Unfortunately, the Biker Scouts (along with the rest of the Empire) were overtaken by a small group of Rebel Commandos with help from an army of Ewoks. That doesn’t say much for their elite status.

Due to their popularity, certain figures are easy to collect. Every Star Wars collector has an abundance of R2-D2 and Yoda items and figures simply because so many of them were made. If you find yourself attracted to a slightly less popular character, you may have to dig a little deeper at garage sales to find the figures you’re looking for.

In the mid-to-late 90s, right after the special edition of the Star Wars trilogy hit theaters (but before Episode One: The Phantom Menace was released), Star Wars Merchandise once again began filling store shelves. The Power of the Force action figures, released in the mid-90s, were just the beginning. By the time the special editions were released, it was as if Star Wars had never left. Not only were there Star Wars action figures and playsets on shelves, but also drinking glasses, mouse pads, bouncy balls… and, among a thousand other things, Star Wars LEGO sets.

I got my first LEGO set when I was five years old. For a while I kept my LEGO bricks in a zip lock bag before graduating to a shoe box and eventually a Tupperware tub. Today my LEGO bricks fill a 22-gallon plastic tub. I’ve enjoyed LEGO playsets for a long, long time, and when they began releasing Star Wars-themed sets, naturally, I decided I had to own them.

The “7128 Speeder Bikes” LEGO playset came with two Speeder Bikes, a tree with a base, and three action figures (two Biker Scouts and one Luke). The set sold for $9.99 back in 1999, which would be a good deal today for the figures alone.

I own fifteen LEGO playsets from that same era, including two of this one. I have tried very, very hard over the years not to fall into the trap of buying two of the same thing (one to open, one to store), but in this case it appears I did. I probably realized at the time that I would be too tempted not to eventually open a Star Wars-themed LEGO playset, especially one containing Biker Scouts!

Both of the boxes I have for this playset contain $4.98 price tags from KB Toys. There used to be a KB Toys liquidation store I occasionally visited in Texas, which explains the bargain price. Based on that, it seems like I got a good deal — unopened versions of this playset are selling for $40-$50 on eBay today.

“Ha ha ha,” he said, when talking about selling Star Wars things.

When it comes to my Star Wars displays, there are big items, and there’s filler. These small Speeder Bikes make good filler, and can easily be placed in between or around other larger items on my shelves. Currently they’re on the shelf right next to my cable modem and wireless router, so every time I need to reboot one or both of those items, I find myself looking at these guys.

It’s becoming difficult to remember a time when we weren’t constantly being bombarded with electric advertisements. The websites we visit, the applications we use, the television shows we watch, and the digital billboards on every corner display images and pitch products 24 hours a day. These printed Star Wars catalogs from Kenner seem old-fashioned in comparison.

Kenner included one of these catalogs inside every Star Wars vehicle and playset sold. The catalogs were updated to reflect new toys in Kenner’s toy line, and the covers were updated with scenes from the most recent movie.

If you wanted to know my inspiration for photographing my “Star Wednesday” items on solid-colored backdrops, now you know where I got the idea from.

I don’t know if the catalogs included pictures of every single toy available in the Kenner line, but it sure contained a lot of them — not just the ships and playsets, but everythign from electronic board games to the miniature diecast vehicles. Each catalog also contained an application for the Star Wars Fan Club which could be cut out and mailed in (along with $5).

I don’t know how many different catalogs were produced — maybe a dozen or so — but I still own three of the ones I had as a kid. Like so many other things, they weren’t considered to be collectible or, to some kids, even worth saving. Me? I loved looking through these mini-catalogs. They were the pictures that held you over until the Christmas edition of the Sears Catalog arrived in the fall. If you’re interested in revisiting these catalogs, they can be purchased on eBay for $10-$20 each, depending on condition.

By the time Return of the Jedi left theaters, Kenner saw its cash cow begin to fade. Ostensibly to squeeze every last cent out of the trilogy’s fan base, Kenner began releasing action figures for any character who appeared on screen for more than a second, including this one: Sy Snoodles.

Sy Snoodles was the lead singer of Max Rebo’s band, the house band in Jabba the Hutt’s palace. The band’s performance lasts just over a minute in the film, with Ms. Snoodles appearing on screen for approximately 20 seconds.

As a kid who loved both Star Wars and movie special effects, I found Sy Snoodles fascinating. Most of the creatures that appeared in Jabba’s palace were either people in costumes or hand puppets, but the body shape of Sy Snoodles obviously prevented this solution. Bringing the character to life involved connecting rods from Sy’s legs to a dancer’s legs beneath the stage, with a second puppeteer above on a catwalk pulling wires and a third that controlled Sy’s lips.

The end result was an alien-looking character that seemed alive without the use of CGI.

George Lucas has publicly stated that he was “never satisfied” with Sy Snoodles, and in the revised special edition of Return of the Jedi he took advantage of (then) modern technology to replace the original version of Sy with a new, CGI version — sans the feather on her head.

The original Sy Snoodles action figure was not available in a normal single-figure blister pack, and was only available in a three-figure multi-pack that also included Max Rebo and Droopy McCool. The pack was released in 1984 (a full year after Return of the Jedi hit theaters), and by then my interest in new Star Wars toys had begun to fade. I picked up a loose Droopy McCool years ago at Vintage Stock, and found this Sy Snoodles figure at a retro toy store in Denver. Based on that, I just ordered Max Rebo and his electronic organ off of eBay. Finally guys, we’re putting the band back together.

When Carrie Fisher suffered a heart attack two days before Christmas, I decided that I would honor her by writing about a Princess Leia toy for this week’s “Star Wednesday” entry. What a shock it was to read on Tuesday that she had passed away. Rest in Peace, Carrie Fisher. What a doo doo year this has been.

As I combed through my shelves in search of the perfect tribute, I found a definite absence of Princess Leia toys. I have a few action figures, but not much more. I have entire shelves in my Star Wars room dedicated to Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and R2-D2, but not our favorite princess. I did, however, run across the Epic Force version of Princess Leia, which I decided would be a great toy to feature this week.

Only a handful of “Epic Force” figures were released, including Luke, Leia, C-3P0, Boba Fett, Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, and a couple of prequel figures. Each one has limited articulation and is mounted to a base that can be manually rotated. Less articulation, a slightly larger scale, and a higher price point allowed for more detailed sculpts. As you can see from the picture above, the Epic Force version of Leia is very screen accurate.

In 2005, a friend of mine and I stumbled upon an estate sale that we later dubbed the “Sale of the Freakin’ Century.” When we entered the house, the very first thing I saw was a stack of boxed Atari 2600 games for $1 each. I bought them all. I bought three working Nintendo systems, a couple of lunchboxes, some glasses, a Pac-Man board game, and lots and lots of Star Wars stuff. I don’t remember how much I spent, but it was every cent I had with me. If they had taken credit cards, I might have got us into bad financial trouble that day.

That’s the day I bought the Epic Force Leia figure. My favorite thing about it is the scene they chose to capture. It would have been easy to pick the go-to “gold bikini” or “white dress” outfits, but they didn’t. Instead they picked Leia from Bespin, with a blaster in her hands. Sometimes people forget that, whether or not she was carrying a blaster, Princess Leia was usually in charge (whether Han Solo was willing to admit it or not.)

Five minutes after being rescued from her holding cell, Leia had already taken over her own escape, blasted a hole in a wall, and ordered her rescuers to dive through the hole into a murky trash compactor. (It may not have seemed like the best plan at the time, but things worked out.)

Time and time again, Princess Leia taught little girls all over the world (and galaxy) that they didn’t need a man to rescue them. She wasn’t a “somebody save me” Disney princess; she was a proactive bad ass. Princess Leia — General Leia, in Episode Seven — was a role model to many women, and the first costume my daughter wore for Halloween.