Kenner "Early Bird" Star Wars figure mail away offer

I consider myself lucky to have been seven years old when "Star Wars" first hit the theaters in 1977 (seven because SW hit the silver screen about three weeks before I turned 8).  It was a glorious time to be a kid and SW brought with it a veritable Renaissance in toys based on the runaway hit movie ... but that was in the long months to come.  One of the great things about "Star Wars" was that it was such a surprise hit.  "Star Wars" was magic made manifest and while it caught the pop culture of America (and the world) by surprise, it also caught all of the toy companies by surprise.

One of the greatest toy legends of all time was how Kenner sold four "Star Wars" action figures without really selling the action figures at all.  Christmas 1977 would have been a monstrous windfall for toy companies if they had made any "Star Wars" toys and Kenner was doing its best to get a new line of three and three quarter inch action figures to market ... but they didn't make it and they wouldn't make it for the massive cash influx that the 1978 Christmas holiday season promised to bring.  Kenner, not having any toys to offer (but knowing that they would be coming in the months to follow) did what I think no other toy company has ever done ... they sold what amounted to an "IOU".

Some of you may not be old enough to know what an "IOU" is ... basically, Kenner sold an empty folder with a promise to mail four new (and then unavailable in stores) "Star Wars" action figures to the kid who took the chance on Kenner.

Kenner sold an IOU in that they pre-sold four of their new action figures in a special mail-away offer, the first of three very important mail-away offers associated with the original release of "Star Wars" in 1977; the Kenner "Early Bird" kit.

This IOU promised kids four hot new action figures ... Luke Skywalker with an extending / retracting telescoping Lightsaber (strangely colored yellow), Princess Leia with a vinyl cape and a laser pistol, Chewbacca with his Wookie bowcaster (minus the crossbow part) and R2-D2.

WHAT YOU DO:

MAIL IN ... the postage paid Early Bird Certificate

RECEIVE ... between FEBRUARY 1 - JUNE 1, 1978, before they're available in stores, poseable Action Figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and Artoo-Deetoo (see back of package for full details).

The kit included some stickers, a mail-in certificate for the first four action figures, a "Star Wars" club membership card and a colorful fold-up display stand (featuring the original 12 Back artwork) to display your figures.  The Early Bird Certificate kit was the first of the 12 Backs and a hint of what was to come from Kenner in the next 18 months.

Kids went nuts and the Early Bird Certificate kits flew out of the stores.

Here is a television commercial from that time period for the Kenner Early Bird Kit.

When the figures finally arrived (shipped in a cardboard box, packed in a white package tray), here is how they came ...

Included in the mail-in offer you received the four action figures you were owed by Kenner, a plastic bag filled with twist-in foot pegs to secure your four figures to the fold-out display (plus enough plastic pegs to secure another 8 figures later on as you purchased them), the first of the small Kenner "Star Wars" toy catalogs (these things were gold to a kid back then), and yet another mail-in offer ... this time for the "Star Wars" Action Figure Collector Stand.

"Stars of STAR WARS look-alike action figures available soon!"

The truth is that I never had one of these ...

Personally, while I remember seeing these kits in the store (and picking them up and looking them over in great detail) I never had an Early Bird Certificate kit because I just didn't "get it" as a kid.  Here was a toy company, selling me an empty package and promising to mail me four figures at sometime in the future.  When you're a kid and you want something really bad four to six to eight weeks isn't just a month or two, it's a frigging eternity.  

By the time I got interested in the kits locally and by the time that my interest had been piqued by the television commercials the December 31, 1977 expiration date had passed and the kits were pretty much useless after that.  I remember finding three of these kits still on the shelf at the "toy cave" at Howard's department store sometime in January 1978 but my dad didn't let me get one because he looked it over said that the kit had an expiration date on it and I wouldn't be able to get the figures by mail if I bought the kit.

Man, I wanted those action figures!  Some kids at school started to get their action figures by mail and brought them to school and we played with them during recess.  These figures were my new want and I kept checking the toy department of the local department stores looking for these figures.

One day I found them.

There they were.

Each figure, individually sealed in a clear plastic blister on a picture card.

The 12 Backs had arrived.  The first "Star Wars" figures, a set of twelve figures on card backs.

Strangely enough, my first four action figures that I bought that day were Luke, Leia, R2-D2 and Chewbacca, all purchased at Wilson's department store in the University Mall area in Hattiesburg, MS in January of 1978.

These were the first of my 12 Backs and they would start a collection craze and an action figure hunt that would last for the better part of the next 12 months.

36 Years Ago Today: 5-25-1977 to 5-25-2013

Welcome to my new "Star Wars" blog ... launched thirty-six years to the day (May 25, 1977) after the original release of "Star Wars" the movie in theaters.  

That's "Star Wars" ...  

Not "Episode IV: A New Hope" ... just "Star Wars" from a time when there was one movie and only one movie.  Back before the dark times ... before the sequels and prequels ... a time before the magic was lost.

"Star Wars" - just ... "Star Wars"

I can still remember what seeing this poster in the marquee display at the Cloverleaf Mall twin cinema used to do to me, walking past it, seeing "STAR WARS" in those slide on black letters on the display out front ... it was enough to make a eight year old boy's heart race and imagination soar.

Years passed.

Decades.

And yet, my love for this one movie never died.  It suffered, it faltered, sometimes it even went a little cold but it never died.  Over the many years since 1977 I've often thought back to that time in my life ... those wonderful years of 1977 to 1979 and having those memories I thought it might be nice, maybe even important, to share those memories with others who were there, with others who might have forgotten or who might want to remember again the magic that George Lucas brought to the silver screen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

So ...

I decided to start a "Star Wars" blog, filled with memories of my childhood and what it was like to be a seven year old kid when "Star Wars" hit the big screen in 1977.  I decided to do this because if I didn't separate the "Star Wars" memories from the rest of the things I wanted to talk about then the "Star Wars" memories would rapidly drown the "Angst and Speed" blog.

The three years of time that stretched from December 1976 to December 1979 will always be a golden age of childhood for me ... a special time of magic and wonder and excitement and awe.  This new blog of mine is called "The March of the Twelve Backs" and the title is taken from the name of the card stock that the original twelve Kenner Star Wars action figures used back then.  

The original "12 Back" card circa 1978 showing the super ultra-rare telescopic Lightsaber (very few figures arrived with these) and the first three vehicles designed for those new three and three quarter inch sized action figures.  The artwork was 

The action figures were in such demand, hell, anything with the "Star Wars" name on it let alone toys, were in such high demand that Kenner didn't even have pictures of the final figures to show ... so they did some beautiful full color artwork of the characters that would be represented by the action figures and put this artwork on the card backs of the original 12 action figures along with a description of what each figure was and the equipment that came with it.  Hence, the term "Twelve Backs."  I know, given thirty-six years later that there are hundreds of Star Wars figures out there from all six movies and all the other Star Wars related shows and specials and games and novels but back when "Star Wars" hit the big screen there were only twelve action figures.  Period.  And three toy vehicles.  Period.

Star Wars affected people around the world like a cultural supernova.  There was magic and awe in the air, people lined up around the block to get to see "Star Wars" and they saw it multiple times.  "Star Wars" was magic, pure and simple, and it was a real kind of magic.  I'm a huge fan of the original 1977 "Star Wars" movie ... the first release ... before George Lucas re-released it and stuck the tagline of "Episode IV: A New Hope" into the prelude scrawl across the stars.  For me, there was only one "Star Wars" and that was the original, 1977, unedited release.  Everything after that pretty much blew sweaty Bantha genitalia.

There was a very palpable magic in "Star Wars" ...  Lucas was hailed as a visionary at the time but as the decades would slowly prove George Lucas was much less a visionary than he was a revisonary ... often with terrible results.  Lucas said that when he made "Star Wars" he set about to "Give a fairytale to a generation that didn't have any fairytales."  

Of course, my generation had fairytales.  We had the classics like Aesops and others. 

What Lucas really meant was that he was going to give a fairytale to a generation that had no fairytales because the generation that he was talking about didn't believe in classic, traditional fairytales.  No.  That generation was the generation that spawned all of the bleeding heart liberals and tree hugging, environmental whackos and with tthat in mind Lucas set about to turn "Star Wars" into the biggest, whine-fest of a liberal fairytale that the world had seen.  What started out as a simple tale of good versus evil with good triumphing over evil must have really messed up Lucas' mind and laid his hippy spirit low ... After "Star Wars" became the cultural phenomenon that it did there was speculation and talk of how evil Darth Vader was.  Vader's rapid rise to one of, if not the, most iconic villains in movie history probably threw Lucas into overdrive to correct that perception.

How is "Star Wars" a liberal fairytale?

Easy.

Taken as a whole, the six movies put together tell the story of Darth Vader, aka Anakin Skywalker, and how it just wasn't his fault that he turned out to be evil.  You see, in a liberal mindset, devoid of logic and thinking and filled with emotion, there really isn't any such thing as good and evil ... instead there's just different shades of gray.  No one is evil, no one is responsible for what they do or did, rather they're all victims of bad childhoods, not getting a pony for their 8th birthday, growing up in a single parent family, unfair child labor, competing in violent pod races ... to a liberal anyone who does something bad is never at fault ... instead, it's their circumstances which are to blame for their behavior.  

Liberals are the kind of people who, when one person takes a gun and shoots another person then the person who used the gun and pulled the trigger isn't to blame ... no, they are just the victim of all the bad things that happened to them in life and we must explore those circumstances, compassionately, in order to arrive at the real truth of the situation.  Oh, and it's the gun's fault for shooting the other person.  Liberals love to blame inanimate objects and give them animate traits and since liberals really can't punish a handgun they instead try to punish the company that made the handgun ... rather than punish the person who actually pulled the trigger and shot the other individual.  In the liberal mindset the real crime is that the gun exists in the first place.  If the gun had never existed or been manufactured then the person wouldn't have used it to shoot another person.

For some of you reading this, I've just introduced you to the incredibly stupid world of liberalism.  I've come to realize that most liberals are simply suffering from advanced mental retardation.  You cannot be a liberal unless you are severely mentally retarded because what they use for logic makes no real sense at all and defies everything else that we know is sound and true.

Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker is a perfect example of liberal logic.  

Anakin was from a single parent home and over the six different movies we come to find out that Darth Vader, once considered cinema's reigning black armor clad prince of evil, was not so much a tremendous villain as he was just a tremendous fuck up.  After he is thrust into greatness at Naboo he consistently fails to live up to expectations after that.  In the second movie he is shown to have severe mommy issues.  In the third episode he is refused what he wants, he breaks the rules of those who have taken him in and ultimately his greed and desires destroy everything around him.  He was supposed to bring balance to the Force, according to a prophecy, but instead he destroys the Jedi order ... almost.  

In Episode IV Vader is tasked with retrieving the stolen plans to the Death Star and he fails in that ... it's only when the plans come blundering back his way does he get a chance to redeem himself.  Often touted as the greatest star pilot ever, Darth Vader, given all of his experience in starfighters and his command of the Dark Side of the Force, can't even protect the massive Death Star from one single Rebel X-wing piloted by a daydreaming teenager (who we come to later discover is his son), a teenager who is only a fledgling in the powers of the Force and no where near the level of mastery that Vader is.  

In Episode V, Vader is tasked with finding the rebels and when he eventually does they escape!  Our heroes leave Vader, literally, empty handed at the end of the movie.  Oh, he caused the rebels a lot of grief in Episode V and even managed to split up the merry band of friends by giving Solo to Boba Fett but in reality Vader really didn't do any permanent damage to either our band of Rebels or the Rebellion.  In Episode VI, he is charged with protecting the Emperor and the new Death Star.  Vader fails again, on both counts.  In the end, after getting his ass kicked by his now acknowledged son, Vader wusses out, attones for his sins, turns sides, kills the Emperor and, well, the rebels win (with the help of lots and lots of tree hugging teddy bears with sharp sticks).

"Star Wars" (1977) is an amazing film.  

Taken as a whole, the story given to us in Episodes I to VI leaves a lot to be desired and ultimately disappoints in a huge way.  Someone said that when it came to Episode I: A Phantom Menace, that Lucas just went "pants wetting insane" and that's not hard to believe given that Episodes I to III pretty much were Lucas giving the middle finger to everyone who had believed in him since 1977.   Each of those five movies (Episodes I to III, Episodes V and VI) took the "Star Wars" name and franchise and ruined it more and more with each new movie released until by the end of the entire six part story the original magic that was "Star Wars" was pretty much dead and buried for all time.  Some of the highlights of Lucas' epic failure in even basic story telling include the fact that Vader built C3PO, Luke is Vader's son and Leia is Vader's daughter ... oh, yeah, and The Force is just like the flu, it's caused by tiny germs in your body.  The flu can bring you down and make you miss work but if you've got Mitochlorians in your bloodstream, you can jerk an X-wing out of a swamp and set it down on dry land.  Oh, almost forgot ... Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader was immaculately conceived ... no father, his mother just got pregnant with The Force or The Holy Spirit whichever you want to liken that to ala the Jesus story.

This Robot Chicken Star Wars skit had me rolling on the bed laughing because it was so true.   

The original 1977 "Star Wars" movie was (and still is) the best.  

By far.  

Period.

My new blog, "The March of the Twelve Backs" will be recounting the memories of the magic and awe that George Lucas brought into the world in May of 1977 ... the first and last time that he did so.  The blog will be about memories of a time when magic was real and of a time when that magic was everywhere.  If you were a kid way back then and you were lucky enough to see "Star Wars" in the theater back in 1977 then you know what I'm talking about and I think you'll like this new blog.

If you're one of those people who think that "Empire" is better than "Star Wars" or that the prequels were any good then I doubt you and I have very much to talk about.

Anyways, welcome to "The March of the 12 Backs"!  

Enjoy!

Leading up to the Storm ...

Starting in the late Summer and early Fall of 1977 I began to see television commercials for "Star Wars" and I was hooked.  "Star Wars" was like nothing that I'd ever seen before ... it wasn't a movie, no, it was liquid magic painted on your eyes with a high tech brush.

The quick images, eye candy, the music and the sounds were often caught incomplete with me hearing the commercial start in the other room, dropping everything and running to catch what I could of the commercial while I could before it ended. 

Sometimes I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and I got to see the entire commercial from start to finish.

Thirty seconds ... that's all it took to blow my seven year old mind right out of my skull.

Remember, back then there was no Internet, no Youtube, no DVR, no rewind.  TV stations were limited, the Big Three networks and a few other channels, no where near the hundreds of channels that we have today.  These early advertisement commercials played at random times during the day and night and if you missed them, well, you missed them.  If you missed them and your friends didn't, well, you'd know about it the next day at school.  Yeah, back then sometimes childhood was just bucket loads of steaming hot disappointment.  

Kids today are so spoiled ... media and information sharing has come so far in the last four decades that kids today have no idea of how hard it was way back then to find a new picture of this movie, to see a trailer again or to find out any information at all.  "Star Wars" opened in a limited number of theaters and slowly added to that as 1977 rolled on.  Big cities got "Star Wars" but smaller cities and towns had to wait so even though "Star Wars" opened in May of 1977 it wasn't until October or November of 1977 that "Star Wars" reached Hattiesburg, Mississippi, opening in the Cloverleaf Mall Twin Cinema (now long out of business).

Here are two television commercials that aired advertising "Star Wars", the first was an early promo.

"Star Wars" early promo commercial

The second commercial was run more often ...

"Star Wars" trailer

And a brace of TV spots that I remember the most ...

"Star Wars" TV spot 

Memories.

Welcome to the March of the Twelve Backs ...

Welcome to The March of the Twelve Backs, a new blog that will journey back to a time long ago in a childhood far, far away ...

It was a time of great turmoil in America and in the world.  A time when there was no Internet, no Twitter, no "Ain't It Cool News", no IMDB, no YouTube or Facebook.  There was a time when information was shared by word of mouth, over telephone (not cellphone), when a house had one or maybe two telephones, one television, and no computers.  Journey back to a time when monthly magazines, comic books, and television were the major sources of news, when you couldn't watch the latest movie trailer online, no, you had to be lucky to catch it as a commercial on TV and if you walked in on the middle or tail-end of the commercial then tough because you couldn't rewind and watch it again.

This was a time that many of us remember as the late 1970's, specifically for me it was the time of 1976 to 1979, call it four years, four wonderful, individual years (1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979) that were not only a truly golden period in my childhood but it was also the time of the meteoric rise of George Lucas' epic space opera "Star Wars" and the blistering supernova of science fiction, the awakening of imagination, that filled that period with palatable, tangible magic.

For many, there is a certain time in their youth that is magic.  For my father, who was born in 1940, that time was 1955 to 1957, those three years.  His favorite car?  1957 Chevy.  He can often look at something and tell me what year it was but if whatever catches his fancy falls into the time period of 1955, 1956 or 1957 ... he becomes a living Wikipedia on the subject.  For my dad, those three years are golden and filled with wonderful memories of being young.  For me, it is the time period of 1976 to 1979.  To this day (and I was born in 1969 ...) I can look at something, a movie, a book, a toy, and tell if it was made during that era.  Chances are, if it was then I either saw it, read it or played with it.

While "Star Wars" was a big thing (probably one of the biggest things) to come along in the 1970's it wasn't the only thing to come along.  "Star Wars" ignited a wildfire that, in its wake, left lots of other fires burning ... some large, some small, some great, some mediocre, but fires nonetheless.  "Star Wars" was like a nuclear bomb, it was a blinding flash, an ear deafening roar, and it obliterated everything that had ever come before it.  In its wake it left a rising super hot mushroom cloud in the collective pop culture of the world, a mushroom cloud that sucked in everything around it.  Nature abhors a vacuum and in the wake of "Star Wars" there was a vacuum that everyone tried to fill either by creating and marketing science fiction products or by filling their lives with said products.  

There came a time, after May of 1977, when you could not go anywhere in America without being slapped in the face with something "Star Wars".  It was everywhere, it was everything.  People lost their minds over "Star Wars" (myself included as a 8 year old boy) and "Star Wars" became a pop culture phenomenon.  It was magic, it was light, it was sound, it was imagination, it was music, it was ... an escape.  Above all else, "Star Wars" gave us something that no other science fiction movie before it ever had ... an escape.

Why was there a need to escape?

If you didn't live in the 1970's, if you didn't grow up in the 1970's then you can't possibly understand what a time of turmoil it was.  Fashion was out of control, we were coming out of the peace, love and happiness (and free sex) of the 1960's and trying to be more responsible.  The Vietnam War had finally ended, Watergate had happened, clumsy Ford was in office and was soon replaced by Jimmy Carter who was the second worst president in American history.  It was a time of crying American Indians on television warning us that pollution would kill the world.  It was a time when performance in automobiles meant fuel economy rather than cubic inches.  It was a time when disaster movies and nature gone wild movies were the big blockbusters.  The 1970's sucked, it was a decade long marathon of decadence, of coming to grips with reality and embracing nonsense.  It was a time of mysticism, new age religions, and new science.  In the 1970's, everything was tried and a lot of it didn't work.  It was a somber time, a mediocre decade.  It was a glorious time and a fantastic decade.  Poverty and excess, stupidity and brilliance, boredom and excitement.  Amid all of this was an insane amount of social pressure, building to a boiling point.  Everyone was looking for a way out, an escape from rising gas prices, inflation, bad government, unrest in the Middle East, the ever increasing tension with Russia …

“Star Wars” was an escape.  

It hit at the right time in the 1970’s to be an epic success.  “Star Wars” was a fairy tale, pure and simple, and it was delivered with special effects technology that had to be invented just for the film.  “Star Wars”, as Lucas is quoted as saying, was a fairy tale for a generation that had no fairy tales.  Society changed so much and so fast during the 1960’s and 1970’s and very little of that change was for the better.  Society fragmented along cultural, sexual, racial and political lines.  In that regard, the power of fairy tales, the goodness that was basic story telling, fell by the wayside in favor of over the top political hammering and force-fed indoctrination at nearly all levels.

“Star Wars” was different.

It didn’t preach.

It didn’t warn.

It didn’t advocate.

It didn’t alienate or divide.

It didn’t pander to one type of people or another.

It didn’t glorify wrong and vilify right.

“Star Wars” was a story of good versus evil, of right versus wrong and it was a story that had been told, in one form or another, since recorded history and probably for a lot longer before that.  “Star Wars” was timeless and classic.  It didn’t take a lot of brain power to watch “Star Wars” and that was the best part … “Star Wars” was an escape.  It was a pure escape that was convenient, welcome and available to all.  

“Star Wars” showed us a galaxy of strange and wonderful things, creatures, planets, spaceships, weapons and robots and it was a believable galaxy because people worked hard in that galaxy.  Stuff was dirty and broken, there was good and bad, ugly and beautiful, heroes and villains.  It was the stuff of fairy tale and also of every day life.  “Star Wars” was a believable escape because it immersed the viewer in the make-believe world and that world was a gritty world like our own, not the antiseptic, sterilized, do-goody, everyone gets alone, we don’t need money, all races coexist, gawdy and bright future that we’d seen in “Star Trek”.  It wasn’t the ominous future that we’d seen in movies like Kubrick’s “2001" either.  "Star Wars" blew our minds with its simple but elegant story, it stunned our ears with its masterful orchestral soundtrack, it melted our eyes with its amazing special effects and it captured the hearts and minds of millions of people instantly.  

People who didn’t like science fiction liked “Star Wars”.  

It reached out, across all types of people and gave a universal message, a message that most had been told when they were young … good will overcome evil, even against impossible odds.

“Star Wars” was an escape from years of oppressive reality.  It was an escape from politics, from hoky religions, from social movements, from disasters … you could buy a ticket to see “Star Wars” and for an hour and a half, give or take, you could just turn your mind off and enjoy yourself.  You didn’t have to think hard about “Star Wars”, it wasn’t that cerebral, it didn’t take a college education or a doctorate to figure it out and it could be enjoyed by people of all ages.

“Star Wars” was magic.

"Star Wars" was a super nova of science fiction.

I’m not talking about “Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope”.  I’m talking about “Star Wars”.  

Just … “Star Wars”, before Lucas took the next two and a half decades to turn something wonderful into something utterly mediocre, all the while trying to show the world what a great visionary he was when in reality he was little more than a hack revisionist who never seemed to be happy with his work.  Long before episode I, II, III, IV, V, and VI there was just “Star Wars” with that familiar logo and the preface screen crawl that didn’t have “Episode IV: A New Hope” between the logo and the preface crawl … often confusing the viewer and leading people to wonder “if this is episode four, when did I miss the other three episodes?”

For a while there was “Star Wars” … pure, undiluted, unrevisioned … just “Star Wars” and it was amazing.  For a time in the late 1970’s there were a few years that seemed to go on forever to the kids who were just coming of age, for kids who had been frightened out of their wits by all sorts of doomsday stories and rampant fear mongering "Star Wars" was like a long awaited release.  There came a time when everything that we knew was torn down and made new again, when toys changed, when the technology of toys changed, when our imaginations were sparked and ignited and when we dreamed and imagined and life was fun again.

There came a time, in the late 1970’s, that you could look back upon in later years and suddenly you could understand just why it was that your dad liked 1955, 1956 and 1957 so much.  After all of these years, suddenly you really could understand why …

1977 to 1979 were magic years and I was lucky enough to live through those years as a child, caught up in the child-like wonder and awe that comes from being part of something so great, so large, so all-encompassing that even decades later you can't quite wrap your mind around it.

This blog will focus primarily on "Star Wars."  

It is a personal blog full of personal memories of the movie and the other films that followed in its wake.  I'm going to try to keep the time frame of the blog to between December 1976 and December 1979, roughly five months before "Star Wars" appeared and five months before "The Empire Strikes Back" was released.  I'm going to talk about specific childhood memories, how "Star Wars" impacted me as a 8 year old when I first saw it in the theater.  I'm going to talk about the toys, the books, the music, the models ... and all the wonderful stuff, good and bad, that filled those three years of my life.

So, come along with me, on a journey back to childhood.  

It's going to be a fun ride!