I have lots and lots of books in my Star Wars collection, both fiction and non-fiction for young and adult readers alike.

Star Wars: The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot was published by Random House in 1979. I remember checking his book out from our school’s library. This copy also came from a school library, although not my school.

Unsurprisingly the story begins with Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca and R2-D2 playing Planetary Poker, and C-3P0 running around like a maniac.

First it’s R2-D2 that begins acting rebellious, although soon many of the droids, robots and machines down on Tatooine begin malfunctioning as well. We learn that Luke Skywalker is working with a crew of scientists and engineers to build a super-vaporator because Tatooine was suffering from a severe drought. I hate to break it to them, but George Lucas only builds planets with one climate. Tatooine’s going to be a desert for a long, long time.

After our heroes safely land on Tatooine, they attend a meeting to discuss the rebellious droids. The meeting is led by Captain Egoreg, leader of the vaporator project. (“Egoreg” is suspiciously similar to “George” spelled backwards.) During the meeting, the conference room explodes. Everyone was unharmed except for C-3PO, who was wheeled out on a dolly for repairs.

Ultimately the source of the robot rebellion turns out to be tainted oil, provided by Jawas who were hoping the malfunctioning droids would be donated to them. Instead, Chewbacca scooped up all the Jawas and bonked them on the head.

On the final page of the book, Princess Leia awards Chewbacca with a reward while the others look on and C-3P0 photobombs the picture.

Star Wars: The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot was ghost-written by Eleanor Ehrhardt and illustrated by Mark Corcoran. A great interview with Mark about his memories of the book on its 30th anniversary can be found here.

When this book came out, I’m not sure if I was aware that The Empire Strikes Back was coming out the following year or not. As a kid, these books were a great way to peer into the daily lives of those Star Wars characters. The events captured in the Star Wars films were just a small part of what these characters went through during their lives. Books like these reminded us that there was lots of adventures and stories to be told.

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone — May the Fourth Be With You!

I’m pretty sure I stated that my 1977 Bradley Watch was the first Star Wars thing I ever owned. If it was, this was a close second. The Star Wars Storybook was a Scholastic Book that I purchased through my school’s book club when I was in kindergarten. The school didn’t traditionally bring the Scholastic handouts to kindergartners because most of them couldn’t read, but I could, and someone must have provided me with one.

On the first page, readers are treated to a “who’s who” of the Star Wars universe. Some of the pictures are from the movie while others, like Luke and Vader, are promo pictures. I have no idea what Mark Hamill is wearing in his picture — a black t-shirt? I remember being temped as a kid to cut these out and start my own trading card collection. As an adult, I’m sure glad I didn’t.

The book was compiled before the movie was released, and as such a few deleted scenes (like this one with Luke talking to his buddy Biggs about joining the academy) never ended up in the film. I read this book so many times that my mind played tricks with me and I swore that I had watched this scene in the movie theater, even when I hadn’t.

Back before the internet and DVDs and even VCRs, this is what we had — record albums and picture books. This is the only picture in the book where something (Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter) flies out of the picture frame. It really conveyed a sense of speed and action to me as a kid and I remember loving this page specifically. Even though I only saw the original movie once or twice in theaters as a kid, I must have read this book a thousand times.

The back of the book features this picture of Vader that also appears on the picture disc. I also had it as a poster (probably also from Scholastic). I like this picture now because it looks like Vader is standing in front of one of those generic family photography backdrops. “Show me angry, Dark Lord!”

I own probably a hundred Star Wars books including hardbacks, paperbacks, picture books, comic books, and all kinds of things, but this was the first one that started it all.

During the late 70s, there was no such thing as “rarity” when it came to Kenner action figures on the shelves. By 1978, Kenner was manufacturing 3 3/4″ action figures just as quickly as they could. If Walmart didn’t have the figure you were looking for, chances were Service Merchandise, TG&Y, or some other local retailer did.

Despite that, there were rarities, or at least figures that not everybody had. Most of these were figures that came bundled with playsets. The Blue Snaggletooth (included in the early Cantina playset) is the most well-known early rarity, but another one that few people think about is the Dianoga.

The Dianoga, sometimes referred to as the “garbage monster” or “tick monster,” apparently lived (or at least had access to) the garbage disposal system on board the Death Star. The monster appears in the original Star Wars film when our heroes (Han, Chewbacca, Luke and Leia) find themselves trapped inside one of the battle station’s many trash compactors. Taking a cue from Jaws, we only get a couple of brief looks at the monster’s tentacles before a single red eyeball stalk shoots up for only a moment from the murky water. The monster wraps his tentacles around Luke and pulls him under the water. Luke struggles, and just when we think he might be gone forever, the creature lets him go. The creature knows what our heroes are about to find out — that the walls are about to crush them.

The Dianoga “figure” was not sold separately. It was included with the Death Star playset, which retailed for $20 in 1978 (adjusted for inflation, that’s about $75). The Death Star had multiple platforms and floors that allowed kids to recreate different scenes from the movie. In the basement was the orange trash compactor. On one end was a big plastic corkscrew that allowed kids to “crush” action figures. It came with bits of foam (“garbage”) and a green Dianoga.

As far as figures go, the Dianoga isn’t very exciting. His rounded belly prevents him from sitting level on a flat surface, and his tentacles don’t seem to be nearly as long as they were in the film. Where his neck meets his belly he has an open mouth full of teeth. He also has fins that look like wings, something that must have been underwater during the film.

Other than stick him inside the trash compactor, there’s not a lot the Dianoga can do. He can’t stand up or fit inside any ships, so you can forget about him flying away in an X-Wing Fighter. Still, he was cool to own. If you had the Dianoga, you didn’t need to drag your entire Death Star playset (which was large) to school to prove ownership to the other kids. All you had to do was slide the Dianoga in your pocket and watch the other nerds drool.

Dianoga doesn’t get a lot of love. As far as I know there aren’t any fan-fiction novels dedicated to his garbage-eating and hero-drowning adventures. His closest claim to fame that I’m aware of is his cameo in the 1995 video game Dark Forces, in which Dianoga pops his head up as you wander through the sewers of the Death Star.

Truth be told, I have two Dianogas. The one above is my original one from when I was a kid, but I picked up a complete Death Star several years ago which I have out on display in the hallway.

What better way to publicly pledge your allegiance to the Empire as a kid in the 1980s than by carrying a Star Wars brand lunchbox to and from school every day? Sure, other kids might have Star Wars toys at home, but with a Star Wars lunchbox, you could represent Star Wars all day!

The lunchbox you see above is the one I carried to school for a couple of years in the early 1980s. The picture shows our four heroes (Chewbacca, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker) standing on Hoth with their guns drawn and pointed toward the camera. This isn’t a scene from the film — in fact, I’m 90% sure it’s multiple pictures spliced together.

The first lunchbox designed for children was the Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox, released by Aladdin in 1950. The trend caught on, and for many decades, an important part of back to school shopping was picking out exactly which lunchbox you wanted to carry and to and from school all year long. This was no light decision; make the wrong choice and you could be a cafeteria pariah!

Like most kids (and collectors) I prefer the metal lunchboxes of the 50s-80s to the plastic ones (like this one from The Empire Strikes Back) that began to replace them in the early 1980s. A popular theory is that the lunchbox industry switched from metal to plastic because kids were using metal lunchboxes as weapons, but the reality is the plastic ones were cheaper and quicker to develop and manufacture. That’s a shame, because the metal ones, with their embossed graphics and artwork that wrapped around all six sides, were truly awesome. The plastic ones were essentially all the same, save for a single sticker affixed to one side.

Here are a couple more Star Wars lunchboxes I’ve picked up over the years. Neither of these were ones I carried my lunches in, but I remember seeing other kids with them. There are two or three other vintage Star Wars lunchboxes I would like to add to my collection, but the ones I consider to be affordable (~$30) are all dented and rusted, and I can’t bring myself to pay the $75-$100 price for average looking ones. I’ll keep searching.

Interestingly (or perhaps not), these all reside with my “lunchbox” collection, rather than my Star Wars collection. The force is strong, but the smell of old milk in a Thermos is stronger!

This is approximately 1/4th of my Star Wars collection. Although my collection is pretty big, some of my favorite pieces are actually quite small, like this one:

In 1998, having just moved back to Oklahoma from Spokane, I threw a big birthday party — a really big birthday party, with kegs of beer and gobs of food and dozens and dozens of people. One of the party attendees walked through my front door, came right up to me, and handed me this tiny Yoda.

“I brought you this Yoda.”

“Where did it come from?”

“I stole it from Walmart.”

And that was that. A bit of digging revealed that this was one of several miniature PVC figures released by Applause in the mid-to-late 90s. Again, like many things in my collection, it’s the story behind it that I enjoy as much as the item itself. It’s a small Yoda, with a big, fun story. Off the top of my head, out of the hundreds and hundreds of Star Wars items in my collection, this may be the only one I know of that was stolen. If Walmart ever contacts me about it, “return him to the store, I will.”