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.
One of the more interesting and occasionally frustrating things about Star Wars collecting is that sometimes you run across something that is as mysterious as it is enjoyable.
A few years back, a friend of mine who buys, fixes, and sells arcade games found this sign in a warehouse and gave it to me. He didn’t know anything about the sign’s history, and neither do I.
The sign is not actually blue. I took the above picture with the sign resting on the hood of my car. It’s actually clear plexiglass. Inspection of the artwork reveals halftone dots in a few places, so I know it was printed rather than hand painted. That being said, the yellow lettering across the bottom was obviously hand-drawn. The “O” in “FORCE” doesn’t match the “O” in “YOU” for example, and there are tiny mistakes inside several of the letters.
The appearance of a TIE Interceptor (rather than a normal TIE Fighter) leads me to believe this was made after Return of the Jedi was released in 1983. Other than that, it’s tough to date.
Seven holes have been drilled through the sign. It was mounted to something — what, exactly, I have no idea. The whole thing has been cut out. There are no stress or fracture marks around any of the angled cuts. It has all the hallmarks of being mass produced, except I can’t find anyone else who has one. Or has even seen one.
After a while, the wonder of “who made this?” and “what was it for?” goes away. The sign currently hangs on a wall above one of my computers, with tacks stuck through the pre-existing holes to hold it there. Thousands and thousands of different Star Wars products have been made throughout the years, so I’m always surprised when I run across something that someone felt the need to make. I enjoy the mystery of this sign as much as I enjoy the sign itself.
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.
A few years back my dad bought me the movie posters for, at that time, all six Star Wars films. My wife framed them. I hung them in our movie room when we moved into our new house. They’re pretty awesome.
When you collect “a little bit” of something, space isn’t an issue. Everyone has room on their desk or nightstand for a couple of small items. If you’re really into something, maybe you’ll hang a shelf and fill it up with trinkets.
In my Star Wars room, which is approximately 10′ x 14′, every square inch of wall space is covered with shelves. There are shelves that stand on the floor and shelves that are mounted to the wall. Some of the shelves were purchased and some of them are simply painted planks of wood mounted to the wall. A couple of them were wobbly pieces of junk that I got from the thrift store and drove cheap nails into until they would stand up straight. Shelves cover 100% of the room’s available wall space. There’s no room left for anything else.
That’s part of the reason why the movie posters are on display in the movie room. That’s also why I don’t have a framed poster for Star Wars: Episode VII or Rogue One. I’m all out of room.
One cool thing about these posters is, and especially for the original three, the artwork brings back great memories. The art on these posters is iconic. Whenever I see these framed beauties, I smile. Whenever my kids see them, they do not smile. When I recently asked them how much they remembered of Star Wars, the answer was “nothing.” When I suggested we all sit down and watch it sometime, they made a face as if I had said, “I know I promised you all ice cream for dessert, but instead we’ll be having broccoli and gopher guts.”
(The refrigerator that used to sit on that table died. Now, Luke, Han, and Vader stand there. Spoiler: two of them died in the movies, too.)
I really enjoy my movie posters, but they definitely take up some space to display. Someday I’d like to have a more dedicated movie room. When I do, you can bet these posters will have a home in it.
I have never been a comic book guy, neither as a kid nor as an adult. I can easily count on one hand all my childhood memories involving comic books. My great Grandma Brown had a small stack of them in her living room that I used to flip through each time we visited. One time, at a garage sale, my mom bought me a stack of horror-themed comic books. My dad had a collection of Star Wars comic books that he kept in his bedroom. That’s pretty much it.
Many years ago, my dad bequeathed his collection of Star Wars comics to me — twenty-two of them in all. The first few comics retell the story of the first movie. From there, they go off in all sorts of crazy directions. Issue #17, Crucible!, promises the “untold tale of Luke Skywalker’s past.” In the opening pages we see Luke zooming across the surface of Tatooine in his landspeeder, shooting womp rats with his blaster to prevent them from chewing on vaporator cables. A few pages later he’s out flying his T-16 Skyhopper through Beggar’s Canyon. The comic books are full of things and locations that were only casually mentioned in the film, brought to life with color artwork.
They’re also filled with inconsistencies that made them non-canon pretty early on. In that same issue, Luke’s Aunt Beru explains to him that his Uncle Owen was hurt when his Owen’s brother — Luke’s father — abandoned Owen and left him to tend to the farm alone. In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back we learned that Luke’s father was Darth Vader, invalidating this story. Technically speaking, Owen Lars was Anakin’s step-brother (having married Shmi Skywalker), but I’m going to chalk that up to the writers getting lucky. Besides, I’m pretty sure the Dark Lord of the Sith was too busy slaughtering Tusken Raiders to get much farming done.
So, you know, you can get hung up on inconsistencies or you can just enjoy the yawn about the time Luke battled a big orange space cobra.
One character that was introduced in the comics was the smuggler Jaxxon, a large, green rabbit who teamed up with Han Solo for a few adventures. Jaxxon appears in three of the comics I own, and may be the first “extended universe” character ever created. According to his creators, Jaxxon was inspired by Bugs Bunny, a fact seemingly verified by the names of his two enemies in issue #16: Dafi and Fud. I don’t know if Bucky O’Hare (another large green anthropomorphic rabbit who wore a red jumpsuit and flew a spaceship) was inspired by Jaxxon, but it seems likely.
Every Star Wars comic I own is in near-mint condition and virtually worthless. If you have a copy of the first issue with a 30 cent price printed inside a white square, it could be worth $1,000. The same issue with a 35 cent price inside a white square can sell for $10,000. The ones with a 35 cent price inside of a white diamond (instead of a square) and no bar code on the front cover sell for a dollar or two on eBay.
Like many of the Star Wars items I own, their street value means nothing to me. These are the comics my dad purchased when he was ten-to-fifteen years younger than I am today. I’ll never get rid of these, nor will I ever add to them. The pile of comics I own are the only ones I’m interested in owning.
The older I get, the more I find that my vintage Star Wars items are the ones that bring me the most joy. All the other stuff, as fun as it is, or was, is just starting to feel like “stuff.”
I showed this picture to a coworker once and he replied, “That looks like your kind of store!” Then I had to tell him that this was not a store, but rather inside my house. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed by this or simply thought I was insane. Probably a little of both.
In the mid-90s, after having been dormant for over a decade, the Star Wars machinery began to turn once again. Return of the Jedi, the final film of the original trilogy, was released in 1983 just as I was wrapping up fourth grade. By 1995, when Kenner (now owned by Hasbro) introduced their new Power of the Force line of action figures and toys, I was a big boy, earning big boy money.
I goal (I assume) of the Power of the Force line was to reintroduce Star Wars to the masses. We didn’t know it at the time, but Lucasfilm had started working on special editions of the original films, which were released in theaters in 1997. In a way, I think the line succeeded — it got fans like me who grew up with Star Wars excited about the franchise again. What I’m not sure it did was introduce Star Wars to the next generation. To my son, Star Wars is just a movie that came out twenty-five years before he was born. To guys like me, walking into Walmart and digging through shelves to find the one figure I needed brought back nostalgic memories from when I was a kid. My kids didn’t have the nostalgic connection to the franchise the way I did, and didn’t get into Star Wars until they saw the newer trilogy of films.
When the first wave of Power of the Force figures were released, I drove all over town hitting every Toys R Us, Walmart, and K-Mart toy aisle trying to track them all down. By the time I had them all, I learned that there were variations in some of the figures, and I decided I had to have all of these, too. By the time I had all of those, Kenner began releasing new figures on green cards. What good is a collection of all the red carded figures if you don’t have all the green ones too, amirite? Then came the purple ones, and the deluxe ones, and… you get the picture. By the time Kenner/Hasbro began releasing figures for 1999’s The Phantom Menace, the walls in my computer room looked like this:
Two years later in 2001, something happened — my son Mason was born. Now I won’t falsely claim that having kids stopped all of my Star Wars collecting, but it definitely changed it. Suddenly I had less disposable income and less room to display all of these things. When we moved, every one of these figures came down off the wall and went into storage bins, where they lived for almost another decade.
In our current home, I’m very fortunate to have enough room to display the fruits of all of my kooky collecting habits. While brainstorming what I should do with all these Power of the Force figures I’ve picked up over the years, I decided a store-like display complete with pegs and pegboard would be a fun thing to put together.
The display is six figures wide, seven figures tall, and each peg is five figures deep, for a total of just over 200 figures. People have asked if each peg contains the same five figures — no, they’re all different. People have also asked if I rotate the figures around, and I do, but very rarely. The most I do is walk by the wall, dig through a peg I can easily reach, and move a different figure to the front.
Some people ask me about money — what all the figures cost, and what they’re worth. When they were originally released in stores, the figures were $5.99 each. I paid $10 each for some of them at local comic book stores, and paid more than that for some of the hard to find ones. I also bought a lot of them after they went on sale. Some of them have $4.99 price tags on them from Walmart and some of them have $3.99 price tags. The blue Attack of the Clones figures on the top row I bought in a large 4/$10 sale at Kay-Bee Toys. If you pluck an average of $5/figure, the wall cost me around $1,000 (over eight years). Their value today is anyone’s guess. A local Star Wars store is currently selling them for $50/each, but I haven’t seen any of them sell for anywhere near that price. I’d sell the entire collection for $5/each, not because I don’t like them, but because I don’t love them.
With my vintage toys, I also have vintage memories — memories of playing Star Wars with my friends or by myself, recreating adventures from the films or making completely new ones. These figures bring back different memories of a time when I didn’t have enough to do with my money or my free time. By the time I quit buying carded figures, I had almost come to resent them and what they stood for — not the films, but corporate greed. As I saw the same figures being released multiple times with different accessories or packaging (to lure collectors like me to buy the same figures time and time again), I started to see some of this for what it was.
The first electronic version of Chess I ever saw was Video Chess, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979. It still amazes me that the code to Video Chess program was 4 kilobytes in size — that’s less characters than this post contains, and that includes all the graphics and eight difficulty levels contained within the cartridge. On the easiest setting, the console was limited to ten seconds of thinking between moves. On the most difficult level, the Atari could spend up to ten hours between moves. You could almost smell the smoke at that point.
As computers began invading people’s homes in the 1980s, hundreds of programmers tried their hand at creating electronic versions of classic games such as checkers, backgammon, and chess. As computers gained speed and memory, chess programs also became better, as their ability to weigh moves and their outcomes (to “think” — or at least simulate it) could be processed more quickly.
Sargon, originally released in 1979 for the TRS-80 and quickly ported to the Apple II, set the new standard for computers by playing a quick and challenging game of Chess. The next groundbreaking computer-based Chess game was Chessmaster 2000, released in 1986 by Software Toolworks.
As computer graphics improved, so did the graphics of chess programs. The first major breakthrough was Battle Chess. For the first time, chess pieces came alive and actually battled one another for position. The rules of chess remained the same (unlike games like Archon, in which players took control of pieces and physically battled for position), but new animations, sound and music introduced the world to what I refer to as “animated chess.”
Battle Chess inspired many impersonators (including MicroProse’s hilarious National Lampoon’s Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1), and many companies learned that they could add updated graphics and sound to their already developed chess engine to effectively “reskin” their engine and create a new game.
All of that brings us to The Software Toolworks’ Star Wars Chess.
Under the hood, Star Wars Chess runs on the Chessmaster 3000 engine. The only difference between this game and that one is the Star Wars “skin” that has been applied.
Although the front of the box says “486 Recommended,” the minimum system requirements were a 386/33 PC with 1 Megabyte of RAM, DOS 5.0, VGA, and 40 Megabytes of hard drive space. A mouse and sound card are highly recommended. The version I purchased came with 8 installation floppy disks (later versions were released on CD). I purchased the DOS version. It was re-released for Windows 3.x, with requirements boosted to 4MB of memory and SVGA, and it also appeared on the Sega CD. The back of the box boasts that Star Wars Chess “is the largest animated chess program ever,” with “over 5,000 frames of pain stakingly [sic] hand drawn cel animation” and “72 unique capture animations, twice the competition’s.”
The game’s graphics are undeniably Star Wars. As expected, the game pits members of the Rebellion against the evil Empire. One problem Star Wars Chess shares with all other chess games with custom pieces suffers from is that once the pieces begin to move about the board, you’ll spend lots of time trying to remember which character relates to which traditional chess piece. The easiest to forget is Darth Vader, who serves as the dark side’s Queen, but others, such as Chewbacca, Boba Fett, Tusken Raiders and Yoda, are easy to confuse, too.
The game’s audio also contains digitized sound and audio tracks from the movies — a big deal back then. As different pieces move, recognizable snippets from the film’s soundtrack play and add to the overall Star Wars theme.
The charm comes in the game’s hand drawn animation. Various characters from the Star Wars universe come alive as they shuffle, roll, and march around the board. When one piece takes another (again, following the traditional rules of chess), gamers are treated to an animated sequence. Some of them become repetitive quickly. Each time a Stormtrooper (dark pawn) takes R2-D2 (light pawn), an animation lasting between 15-20 seconds is displayed, and that happens a lot. Fortunately, most of the other animations are 5-10 seconds in length and don’t happen quite so frequently. And because there are so many possible combinations due to the fact that there different pieces for each side, it’s possible it will take you several games to see them all.
My copy of Star Wars Chess still has its original price tag on the bottom of the box of $14.97. The game was originally released in 1993, and during the time I worked at Best Buy (1994-1995) I purchased a lot of discount bargain bin software titles from both there and (our competitor and neighbor) CompUSA. It’s possible I didn’t pay the full $14.97 price, although it still would have been a good bargain; the game originally retailed for $69.99.
By the early-to-mid 90s, for many Star Wars collectors, it felt like the days of buying, collecting, and displaying toys were over (if only we knew!). It was around this time that I began expanding my interests to Star Wars books and games. Unlike toys, which often remain unopened and go straight to display shelves, I opened and played Star Wars Chess many times. Again, the graphics and sounds are movie-authentic and fun, but by recycling the Chessmaster 3000 chess engine, Software Toolworks managed to deliver a competent chess-playing game, too.
I don’t own many autographed items. I have one Atari 2600 cartridge signed by the programmer (Yars’ Revenge, by Howard Scott Warshaw), a show brochure I had autographed by David Copperfield in the mid-1980s, and three books signed by their respective authors: hacker Kevin Mitnick, magicians Penn and Teller, and my writing professor, Deborah Chester.
The only other autographs that I have belong to people who appeared in Star Wars films. I have five action figures autographed by the people who played them in the films: David Prowse (Darth Vader), Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0), and Kenny Baker (R2-D2).
The one thing all of these actors have in common is that they are primarily known for playing characters that wear masks. Several of them have cameos and appear as other characters within the films without their masks on (see Anthony Daniels below as Dannl Faytonni, who appeared on screen for just a few seconds in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones).
For some, however, it was easier to find them unmasked outside the Star Wars universe. When Darth Vader was finally unmasked at the end of Return of the Jedi, it wasn’t David Prowse but rather Sebastian Shaw’s face that appeared. Shaw,not Prowse, also played Anakin Skywalker’s ghost at the end of the unedited original film. It wasn’t until I saw Clockwork Orange that I got my first glimpse of David Prowse acting without his mask and cape on (he plays the bodybuilding bodyguard that appears in the film).
When I was little I thought R2-D2 and C-3P0 were real robots, but it didn’t take long to figure out that C-3P0 — being the same shape and size as an average adult human — probably had a person inside that metal costume. But it didn’t dawn on me for years that there was a little person crouched down inside R2-D2 as well. I owned a remote controlled car as a kid and always assumed that R2-D2 was remote controlled, too. Over the years they’ve experimented with CGI versions and robotic versions of the droid, but looking back, you can see that the man inside that little blue and white astromech droid was actually performing.
It wasn’t until 1981’s Time Bandits that I got to see Kenny Baker actually perform without a silver dome covering his head. Here he is on the far left, standing proudly with a colander on his head… which, now that I think about it, looks a lot like a silver dome covering his head.
In Flash Gordon and The Elephant Man, Kenny Baker simply played characters named “Dwarf,” but in Time Bandits, he was Fidgit, one of the bandits avoiding both the Supreme Being and evil incarnate as they traveled through time, robbing the rich to feed themselves.
From the moment I saw Kenny Baker in Time Bandits, I always thought of him every time I saw R2-D2 rolling around. I have no idea if he was cramped inside the droid’s body or how much he could see through the costume, but surely rolling around in the desert and on hot sets wasn’t comfortable.
You’re not likely to run into Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher at a run-of-the-mill sci-fi convention, but that’s exactly what brought Kenny Baker to Oklahoma City back in June of 2001: the Sci-Fi Expo and Toy Show.
I think I already had my C-3P0 card signed prior to meeting Baker, so it seemed like the thing to do would be to stick with signed figures rather than 8×10 glossies or posters. I don’t recall what (if anything) the two of us said to one another as he signed my action figure. There were a lot of people in line in front of me and even more behind me. What I do remember is that he smiled, and was kind.
Kenny Baker passed away this past weekend, just a couple of weeks shy of his 82nd birthday. He is the second main cast member to pass away, following Sir Alec “Obi-Wan Kenobi” Guinness who passed away in 2000 at the age of 86.
Sometimes when watching films we see characters and sometimes we see the actors who portray them. It’s hard to watch Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon or O.J. Simpson in The Naked Gun and not think about their real life troubles. Even though we can’t see his face when R2’s dome spins or he emits an excited series of beeps and boops, I plan to make a point to think about Kenny Baker each time I see R2-D2 from now on, and I’ll keep this autographed figure hanging on the wall to remind me of him, too.
Every time the word “Commodore” appears on my local Craigslist, I receive an email alert. Sometimes the alerts link to people selling cars or boats, but most of the time, it’s the computer. I received one such alert last Friday night, informing me about a computer for sale at a garage sale. I need another Commodore 64 like I need a hole in the head, and the one pictured in the ad looked pretty sad (incomplete and with a few mismatched parts), but where there’s smoke, as they say, there’s often fire.
Sometimes literally.
I didn’t make it down to the garage sale until 10 a.m., Sunday morning. When Susan and I arrived, we were greeted by a colorful character who goes by the name Orange Rex. “I’ve worn orange every day for the past twenty years,” he informed the two of us as we began to poke around the interesting items in the man’s front yard. Susan found a box of what appeared to be teaching supplies, and asked the somewhat eccentric man if he was a professor at the nearby college.
“Actually, I’m a fire breather,” Orange Rex replied. A quick Google search confirmed this fact.
The items at Orange Rex’s garage sale seemed to be split — half of them were items targeted toward college students returning to school for the fall semester, while other items were more interesting. On one side of the garage sale sat a table and chairs, some pots and pans, silverware, and other household goods. On the other side sat a few Atari 2600 cartridges, some vintage electronics, vinyl albums, books on UFOs, and all kinds of interesting things.
As Susan continued to dig around, Rex and I talked about Tiny Houses, 3D Printing, journalism, and Rubik’s Cubes. Eventually Susan asked about the Commodore (it had sold at 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning), but as the conversation turned toward vintage video games, I soon found myself in Rex’s living room, admiring his very minty collection of boxed Atari 2600 games.
At some point while I was inside, Susan found a small plastic C-3P0 and thought that I might want it. I did, but not for the reason she thought. I left the garage sale with a couple of puzzles, a book about Rubik’s Cubes, a book about UFOs and mind control, and a plastic C-3P0 from McDonald’s 2001 Clone Wars Happy Meal collection.
“Variety is the spice of life,” Susan always says after we meet someone interesting, and Orange Rex is definitely an interesting fellow. I look forward to continuing our conversations online. Maybe someday he’ll teach me how to breathe fire in return.
The C-3P0 figure is now sitting on a shelf when you enter my Star Wars room. As far as C-3P0 toys go, it’s dreadful; caramel colored instead of chrome, with weird kung-fu hands and poor posture. I didn’t buy him for any of those reasons, of course. I bought him because each time I come upstairs, I want to look at him and remember that variety is the spice of life.
The Adventures of Rob, Susan, Mason and Morgan O'Hara
