Growing up in the 1970's, Warren Publishing's "Famous Monsters" was big among kids my age but for me it was Warren's other horror offerings, "CREEPY" and "EERIE" magazines which were a mixture of fantasy, horror and science fiction. Many famous artists contributed to these magazines, artists like Richard Corben, Pepe Moreno, and Frank Frazetta.
After "Star Wars" debuted in May of 1977, the story aspect of these two magazines began to be less horror and more science fiction. Also, after "Star Wars" merchandise started to roll out the ad sections at the back of these magazines became clearing houses for all the good stuff.
Here is the first Star Wars merchandise advertisement in Warren Publishing's "Creepy" series magazine, Issue 92, and "Eerie" series magazine, Issue 87, both circa October 1977. Figures and toys were still several months away but these early merchandising items were the first few snowflakes of the marketing and merchandise avalanche that was soon to follow.
Here we have the original four masks, a few films, the original double LP (vinyl) soundtrack, the novelization of the movie, a movie poster and four T-shirts. The movies were available in two formats; black and white (with subtitles) for $9.95 or color with sound for $29.95 (which back then was quite a bit of money).
For what it is worth, in the Summer of 1978, the local Hattiesburg public library had a special showing of the color 8mm movie with sound. They touted that they were showing "Star Wars" but it was only about 10 minutes long ... butchered for the Super 8 genre but hey, it was "Star Wars" ... again, and I loved sitting on that tile floor in the dark in the old public library and watching 10 minutes of pure magic.
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