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Post by ritt on Mar 9, 2016 13:40:45 GMT -6
How about a "Kennerverse" for toys by Kenner that weren't in the movies? For pre-Empire Strikes Back, there's the Kenner Droid Factory (1979). This was the first Star Wars set that I owned, probably because my parents thought it was more educational than the others. I had the Droid Factory as a kid and very fondly remember it. It was a great toy with lots of "Play value".
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Post by Malcadon on Mar 10, 2016 0:18:07 GMT -6
Very cool. For non-movie stuff, the pre-Empire Kenner toy line also had the Imperial Troop Transport, which also came with its own little illustrated storybook with lots of Kenner toy product placements ( link here, scroll down to 'KENNER TOYS: IMPERIAL TROOP TRANSPORT COMIC'). The storybook has a pretty good description of the vehicle, except for their literal interpretation of the silly 'troops strapped to the outside' thing. Speaking of which, the toy also showed up in the Marvel comics in the Way of the Wookiee and Return to Tatooine issues, obviously used to market the toy's release: It's funny how depictions of the toy slavishly copied it's actual toy appearance, right down to carrying the stormtroopers in those silly buckets on the outside. They even tried explaining it away for continuity (their stormtrooper armor makes it almost impossible to sit, so this is the only way they can board a transport). As a kid I just assumed that the transport 'seats' were just figurative; I mean, every toy line between 75-98 had some themed way of carrying your toys around, and they all looked goofy. I figured that the 'real' transporter would obviously have the stormtroopers on the inside. For what it's worth, the vehicle also has non-Kenner precedence: a conspicuously similar transporter is written into Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and even before that several of the movie's draft scripts featured scenes with 'hover tanks' that were also very close in description (the Endor scenes later rehashed some of that material without hovertanks, and the Naboo scenes rehashed other scenes and kept them). I have seen them more recently in Star Wars Rebels. The funny thing was that the open side compartments, besides holding Stormtroopers and cargo, were also used to transport prisoners in a way that look (comically) like they can easily slip out. The people behind Rebels like to slip in a lot of old, obscure references (mostly Ralph McQuarrie concept art) that only uber-fans would get. I personally believe the production staff put that in as a joke as reference to how strange the design of the Imperial Troop Transport toy was. (Ezra Bridger is trying to free the prisoners, while trying not to bump into one of those red sound-effect buttons. )
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Post by Falconer on Apr 11, 2016 15:05:13 GMT -6
Commander [Tagge] (not General Tagge)
“Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander; not to this battle station” —spoken to him
Clearly he is not an Army General.
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Post by Falconer on Jun 14, 2022 14:51:03 GMT -6
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Post by geoffrey on Jun 14, 2022 19:22:44 GMT -6
That's the only real Jabba. That slug thing in Return of the Jedi belongs on the toy store shelf next to the blue elephant.
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bobjester0e
Level 4 Theurgist
DDO, DCC, or more Lost City map work? Oh, the hardship of making adult decisions! ;)
Posts: 182
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Post by bobjester0e on Jun 15, 2022 15:15:33 GMT -6
My favorite version of Jabba was the unaltered but edited out scene in Star Wars (not A New Hope version) with the large human wearing furs.
But I read Marvel comics Star Wars before I saw the deleted scene, so the Marvel version of Jabba is also great, and a close second in my head-canon.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2022 16:18:09 GMT -6
I'll never forget being a little kid and watching all the movies one by one. I asked my mother (God rest her soul) what a "Hutt" was, and she said "He's an @$$hole." She wasn't wrong.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 15, 2022 16:30:06 GMT -6
I'll never forget being a little kid and watching all the movies one by one. I asked my mother (God rest her soul) what a "Hutt" was, and she said "He's an @$$hole." She wasn't wrong.
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Post by jeffb on Jun 15, 2022 16:58:23 GMT -6
Commander [Tagge] (not General Tagge) “Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander; not to this battle station” —spoken to him Clearly he is not an Army General. I realize this is an ancient thread but I rarely have visited this forum so I missed it. All the nomenclature makes sense if you consider everything as "Naval" when it's dealing with starships..a "fleet". i.e. Commanders, Captains, and Admirals- not Generals, Colonels, and Majors. Here is something I always put in my SW games- Veers (from Empire) is a General in the Imperial Marines, as would be the rest of the (storm)troop(er)s on the ground for Hoth (delivered by the Imperial Navy). Of course throughout history Army troops are also delivered to combat zones by the Navy, and per canon the General/Army/Stormtrooper thing fits the implied nod to Germany circa late WWI- WWII. That said, I've used Imperial Marines for many antagonists and my players loved it as it fits well with the Imperial Naval Fleet theme AND for me as GM I have leeway in making them better than stormtroopers with better/different equipment, vehicles, weapons, etc. that they don't know about. I'm not up on EU canon, so maybe there are already Imperial Marines? IDK. But I found it's a great way to introduce a more capable Imperial threat than we generally see in the movies, and it's quite plausible when considering original movie (or even the whole Trilogy) era gaming.
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Post by geoffrey on Jun 15, 2022 18:09:42 GMT -6
My favorite version of Jabba was the unaltered but edited out scene in Star Wars (not A New Hope version) with the large human wearing furs. But I read Marvel comics Star Wars before I saw the deleted scene, so the Marvel version of Jabba is also great, and a close second in my head-canon. Yeah, I like the Irishman Jabba a lot more than the slug: 1. My favorite: The yellow alien Jabba from the comic. Make Mine Marvel! 2. Declan Mulholland, who I find not as cool as the Marvel alien, but still makes a fine Jabba. 3. That...thing in Return of the Jedi. I think it is ridiculous.
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Post by Starbeard on Jun 18, 2022 12:47:44 GMT -6
I'm an equal opportunity Jabbist. They all make neat villains in their own way. I also have a shameful soft spot for Jabba's family, from the invention of Zorba the Hutt for the wacky Glove of Darth Vader kids books. Zorba fits in the same headspace as Itchy, Mala and Lumpy — which, by the way, I've sometimes wondered that if Chewbacca becomes "Chewie," then instead of what we ended up with for his family's full names, maybe they are Itchbacca, Malbacca and Lumpbacca? I'm not actually sure when their official "real" names were introduced.
The only thing I place below the three Jabbas is the eventual idea that the entirety of the Hutt race is a syndicate of crime lords. Hutts are best as a title, but acceptable as a species; but in either case Jabba and his kin should be menacing for their own merits, not because any old Hutt slug would do.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2022 13:21:05 GMT -6
I brought this up in another thread already recently, but it also fits here.
The idea that the first movie is an entirely self contained story is a strong trope in and of itself.
We learn in the movie that the Emperor dissolved the Senate because he intended to use his battle station to bully and coerce the Imperial systems.
He basically put all his eggs in one basket and lost the gamble. Since nothing in the first movie indicates the Emperor or any of his agents besides Vader can use the Force, then Luke pretty much struck a fatal blow to the Empire.
Any additional stories or adventures than follow could deal more with how the rebels deal with that power vacuum than what GL went with.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 28, 2024 20:33:11 GMT -6
Updating this post to mention that I've come across a SW77 era toy catalog that does actually identify the outside figure holders as prisoner cells, with a brainwashing unit on top of the vehicle. The description reads like something copied from press materials, but I don't think I recall any of this in the toy's packaging at all. In fact both the packaging description and all the marketing photography suggests that's where the stormtroopers go. Interesting! www.rpgpub.com/threads/the-big-generation-x-nostalgia-thread.4374/page-94#post-485874Very cool. For non-movie stuff, the pre-Empire Kenner toy line also had the Imperial Troop Transport, which also came with its own little illustrated storybook with lots of Kenner toy product placements ( link here, scroll down to 'KENNER TOYS: IMPERIAL TROOP TRANSPORT COMIC'). The storybook has a pretty good description of the vehicle, except for their literal interpretation of the silly 'troops strapped to the outside' thing. Speaking of which, the toy also showed up in the Marvel comics in the Way of the Wookiee and Return to Tatooine issues, obviously used to market the toy's release: View Attachment View AttachmentIt's funny how depictions of the toy slavishly copied it's actual toy appearance, right down to carrying the stormtroopers in those silly buckets on the outside. They even tried explaining it away for continuity (their stormtrooper armor makes it almost impossible to sit, so this is the only way they can board a transport). As a kid I just assumed that the transport 'seats' were just figurative; I mean, every toy line between 75-98 had some themed way of carrying your toys around, and they all looked goofy. I figured that the 'real' transporter would obviously have the stormtroopers on the inside. For what it's worth, the vehicle also has non-Kenner precedence: a conspicuously similar transporter is written into Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and even before that several of the movie's draft scripts featured scenes with 'hover tanks' that were also very close in description (the Endor scenes later rehashed some of that material without hovertanks, and the Naboo scenes rehashed other scenes and kept them).
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Post by Falconer on Apr 3, 2024 11:55:29 GMT -6
Super random observation but Gamorrean sounds a lot like Morian.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 3, 2024 14:22:58 GMT -6
It recently occurred to me that the name "Tatooine" is not mentioned in the 1977 Star Wars film.
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Post by Starbeard on Apr 3, 2024 18:58:33 GMT -6
It recently occurred to me that the name "Tatooine" is not mentioned in the 1977 Star Wars film. Now that I think about it, are the only two screen references at the end of Empire ("Meet you at the rendezvous on Tatooine") and when Threepio randomly says "Tatooine" while pantomiming their adventures to the ewoks?
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Post by Falconer on Apr 4, 2024 18:16:14 GMT -6
Good catch! On the Death Star, someone says, “We’ve captured a freighter entering the remains of the Alderaan system. Its markings match those of a ship that blasted its way out of Mos Eisley.” I always thought that was weird, but it probably would have been weirder (to the audience) to introduce the name Tatooine at that point. One of the planet names in the earlier scripts was Sullust. Now I’m going to dig into something a bit. The idea of the duel on a volcano planet (as eventually seen in RotS) goes back at least as an August 1977 Rolling Stone interview, in which GL says, “Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being. That’s why he has to wear the suit with a mask, because it’s a breathing mask. It’s like a walking iron lung. His face is all horrible inside.” The idea of Darth Vader’s Castle (as eventually seen in R1) goes back to Leigh Brackett’s ESB script, where it’s described as “A grim castle of black iron that squats on a rock in the midst of a crimson sea.” Apparently, the volcano duel planet was assigned the name Sullust at some point, and this stuck throughout the 90s. I’ll have to track down those references. Of course “Reports of a Rebel fleet massing near Sullust” appears in RotJ. I’m also not sure at what point Alien #9 was decided to be a Sullustan. I’m not sure at the crimson sea location of Darth Vader’s Castle was identified with the volcano duel planet (RotS’s Mufasta/Mustafar), but probably not than the TFA writing process. It’s a cool idea. Not sure combining both those ideas AND Sullust AND #9’s species all mesh, but it’s worth chewing over. Presumably it would have to have been liberated before RotJ. That could be a cool mission, though.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Apr 5, 2024 5:01:49 GMT -6
It recently occurred to me that the name "Tatooine" is not mentioned in the 1977 Star Wars film. There is a decent theory that "Dantooine", which Leia says is the location of the rebel base to Gov Tarkin, was just a mispronounciation of Tatooine. And then just cleaned up in the following years by Lucas.
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mouser
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 17
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Post by mouser on Apr 5, 2024 8:37:52 GMT -6
How about a "Kennerverse" for toys by Kenner that weren't in the movies? For pre-Empire Strikes Back, there's the Kenner Droid Factory (1979). This was the first Star Wars set that I owned, probably because my parents thought it was more educational than the others. I had the Droid Factory as a kid and very fondly remember it. It was a great toy with lots of "Play value". I too had the Droid Factory, and I played the hell out of it. I am interested in how the nomenclature works, especially the toy world vs. the film world. Like, an AT-AT. When I was a kid, my brother had an AT-AT, and we called it an AT-AT, but it's not referred to that at all in ESB, right? It's very cool to have "All-Terrain Armored Transport" on the box, and that appeals to kids who like military toys. Which brings up another thought that was triggered by this discussion, and related to the AT-AT: The Imperial walker would not be called an AT-AT in-movie because the SW universe does not rely on the English alphabet. Which begs the question, what are X-wings and Y-wings really referring to in the movie, because those letters don't exist in the SW alphabet. (I'm sure someone has explained this somewhere, but it's something I've always thought about, even as a kid.) UPDATE: holy crap. I was today years old when I learned that the original version of the film had English in them, and this was altered by the Lucas in the later releases: My...whole...life...has...been...a...lie... But seriously, I'm getting a World on a Wire feeling at this point LOL, or at least Mandela effect, or reverse-Mandela effect, or perhaps a rare strain of deja-vu? (In actuality, I was certain I had seen English in New Hope when I was a kid and this find is actually very satisfying.)
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Post by Falconer on Apr 5, 2024 9:04:04 GMT -6
Yeah, I’m not sure if they’re indeed speaking English or if we are meant to understand everything is in translation (Tolkienesque). If it’s really English but they really don’t use the Latin alphabet, then the X and Y could still refer to shapes. Them not speaking AT-AT / AT-ST aloud would certainly help since those are abbreviations and you have to take a few more leaps of logic to explain that.
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Post by Falconer on Apr 5, 2024 9:17:25 GMT -6
In the George Lucas years there was a pretense (half-diegetic?) that the movies were all a dramatization of a novel that George Lucas had written—either a massive novel or a series of novels called The Adventures of Luke Skywalker—which was in turn taken from the Journal of the Whills. I always took that as indication that the “on-screen canon” which fans swear by is actually not meant to be such.
Of course it turns out that there is no such novel, and whenever GL referred to it, what he really meant was the early draft scripts of the original movie. That was the well he kept going back to.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 5, 2024 11:59:25 GMT -6
It recently occurred to me that the name "Tatooine" is not mentioned in the 1977 Star Wars film. There is a decent theory that "Dantooine", which Leia says is the location of the rebel base to Gov Tarkin, was just a mispronounciation of Tatooine. And then just cleaned up in the following years by Lucas. I don't know... Wouldn't that be a major error on Leia's part? "Yeah, I'll tell them to blow-up the planet that just yesterday I sent the R2 unit with the Death Star plans to. Not only will the Empire blow-up the secret plans, but they'll also blow-up the guy I asked to help me (General Obi-wan Kenobi)."
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
Posts: 347
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Post by Parzival on Apr 13, 2024 10:14:07 GMT -6
Great thread. Glad to see it revived, or I’d have missed it.
It wasn’t clear to me that the “Imperial cruisers” and the “Star Destroyers” were the same ships. After all, in the real Navy a destroyer is not a cruiser, not by a long shot. The one is a smaller craft designed for escort duty and action against smaller enemy ships and submarines, while the other is a massive ship, often the central ship in a battle group, and intended not only for ship-on-ship action but also shelling of land-based targets and other functions— it is a battleship. In some parlance, the difference between a battleship and a cruiser (or battlecruiser) is one of armament size vs. speed. Battleships are slower, but carry heavier weaponry; a battlecruiser is faster, but with lighter armament. And in Star Trek (TOS), the Enterprise is a cruiser, and notably operates independently of other vessels in most circumstances— it is expected to fight and win on its own. So what Han is referring to by the term “Imperial cruiser, not those bulk jobs” isn’t readily evident. Dramatically, it seems that the term refers to the Star Destroyer they encounter at Tatooine after blasting off from Mos Eisley, but it could be something else (and the Star Destroyer could even be something worse than whatever Han has run from in the past).
On Jabba the Hutt, when I saw Return of the Jedi, I was seriously disappointed with the giant slug look (not to mention his collection of personal muppets). It made no sense to me on any level. It’s a slug— a mollusk— a moisture based creature living on a desert world. It’s not a mammal, nor apparently from a dimorphism species (indeed, appearances suggest it might even be asexual). Why does it surround itself with humanoid mammalian women and dress them in provocative attire, when its attraction should be to other giant slugs? Why would it dress Leia that way? It’s certainly not a “turn on,” as she is most definitely not a slug. On top of that, it’s clearly barely mobile. One little boy with a slingshot and a salt shaker should be able to take this thing out in short order. And this is what Han Solo is afraid of? Pfft. I wasn’t familiar with the Marvel comics. I knew the Jabba scene had been dropped from the original film, but even so assumed Jabba was most likely human, or very close. The whole introduction of Jabba and its stupid-looking muppet menagerie was a huge disappointment, and set up even worse to come. Blech.
Ah… got that off my chest.
As for the X-Wing/Y-wing in the film it was clear to me that the X-wing were the fast escort fighters included to protect the bulkier bombers (the Y-wings) while the latter made the trench run, but were equipped with torpedoes themselves in case the bombers (Y-wings) didn’t succeed. Which, if you know the origin of the trench run— the old film The Dam Busters, based on the actual heroic attacks of RAF Lancaster bombers against German hydro-electric power dams— makes the whole thing make sense. In that attack, the bombers had to come in low and fast over the dam so as to literally skip specially designed bombs, just like a boy skipping stones across a pond. The bombs had to skip to get over anti-torpedo nets, afterwhich they would hit the dam, sink, and blow up at the base of the dam. Hence the whole idea of the trench, the “ray shielded” port, and the apparent necessity for absolute precision shooting. Lucas was trying to mimic the film of his youth, which he loved.
And yes, it’s clear that Dantooine is not Luke’s planet, nor where Leia sent the droids. Leia’s not that stupid, and neither is the Empire.
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Post by Falconer on Apr 13, 2024 13:56:37 GMT -6
The Art of Star Wars (1979) includes a doctored version of the script. It says this: “Jabba the Hut and a half-dozen grisly alien pirates and purple creatures stand in the middle of the docking bay. Jabba is the grossest of the slavering hulks and his scarred face is a grim testimonial to his prowess as a vicious killer. He is a fat, slug-like creature with eyes on extended feelers and a huge ugly mouth.” That last sentence is not present in the actual shooting script or in any earlier script. And it’s obviously at odds with the rest of the way he’s described. But it’s interesting that the “slug” idea was present by 1979.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 13, 2024 14:37:03 GMT -6
On Jabba the Hutt, when I saw Return of the Jedi, I was seriously disappointed with the giant slug look (not to mention his collection of personal muppets). It made no sense to me on any level. It’s a slug— a mollusk— a moisture based creature living on a desert world. It’s not a mammal, nor apparently from a dimorphism species (indeed, appearances suggest it might even be asexual). Why does it surround itself with humanoid mammalian women and dress them in provocative attire, when its attraction should be to other giant slugs? Why would it dress Leia that way? It’s certainly not a “turn on,” as she is most definitely not a slug. On top of that, it’s clearly barely mobile. One little boy with a slingshot and a salt shaker should be able to take this thing out in short order. And this is what Han Solo is afraid of? Pfft. I wasn’t familiar with the Marvel comics. I knew the Jabba scene had been dropped from the original film, but even so assumed Jabba was most likely human, or very close. The whole introduction of Jabba and its stupid-looking muppet menagerie was a huge disappointment, and set up even worse to come. Blech. Quoted for truth.
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Post by doublejig2 on Apr 13, 2024 15:09:08 GMT -6
I despise all things Star Wars.
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
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Post by flightcommander on Apr 13, 2024 15:16:10 GMT -6
Speaking of Star Wars toys, I got the Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package for Christmas when I was a kid. I hadn't see the movie yet, and when the figures arrived in the mail, I had no idea who the characters were, haha. Finally seeing the movie a few weeks later really brought the figures to life and, naturally, wiped away any previous stories I'd cooked up for them. Unfortunately the R2 figure (which was hollow and open at the bottom) later got a yellow Parcheesi marble stuck up his bum and always looked funny after that.
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Parzival
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Is a little Stir Crazy this year...
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Post by Parzival on Apr 13, 2024 15:46:46 GMT -6
Speaking of Star Wars toys, I got the Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package for Christmas when I was a kid. I hadn't see the movie yet, and when the figures arrived in the mail, I had no idea who the characters were, haha. Finally seeing the movie a few weeks later really brought the figures to life and, naturally, wiped away any previous stories I'd cooked up for them. Unfortunately the R2 figure (which was hollow and open at the bottom) later got a yellow Parcheesi marble stuck up his bum and always looked funny after that. That is an awesome gift. I’d have loved it. I did eventually acquire a number of the toys, which I still have, including the Kenner action figures for Obi-Wan, Luke, Darth Vader, C3P0, R2D2, Chewie, Han, a Stormtrooper, and Princess Leia. I also had the X-wing, TIE fighter, and Darth Vader’s TIE fighter, and Luke’s landspeeder. Still have all of them, though R2 and the X-wing are not in good condition (lots of play, including a “pass-on” to my nephews via the toy box at their grandmother’s home. I have since reclaimed them, and still have the boxes for all the fighters.
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 13, 2024 20:14:38 GMT -6
In the late 1970s I had:
The Good Guys (according to me, natch): Luke Skywalker in X-wing uniform Walrus-Man Hammerhead
The Bad Guys (again, according to me): Boba Fett Greedo Snaggletooth
I also had Luke Skywalker's landspeeder.
For the longest time, those were all the Star Wars toys that I owned. I enjoyed hours of wonder as those guys shot blasters at each other during their adventures on Tatooine. For me, those adventures were better than all the movies, comic books, novels, and everything else that followed. Pure magic.
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Post by Piper on Apr 13, 2024 22:20:37 GMT -6
I despise all things Star Wars. May I ask why? Let it be known I’m okay with just because, I’m merely curious as to what you don’t like about it.
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