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.

Advertisement - First Marvel "Star Wars" Comics Action Figure Ad - Issue #14, August 1978

Here is the first in-issue advertisement for Star Wars action figures from Issue #14, August 1978.  Note the price of a Marvel comic book back then ... 35 cents!

The color is good but wrong, also note the price ... $2.79 each plus fifty cents shipping and fondling.  The original three vehicles (Landspeeder, X-Wing fighter and TIE fighter).  Again, just the first nine figures.  Missing in action are the three rarer figures; the Sand People, the Death Squad Commander and the Jawa.  

I've said before that, at least for me, the Sand People, Death Squad Commander and Jawa were the hardest figures to find.  Maybe I wasn't the only one that this happened to.  All told, it took me nearly a year after the Early Bird Kit to finish out my original twelve back figure collection.

Advertisement - early Star Wars Action Figure ad - "Creepy" Magazine, May 1978

Back during the late 1970's we didn't have the Internet, toy companies didn't have websites and the only way to find out about new toys or cool stuff was this mass media object called a "magazine."  It was like a soft book, it had pages inside of it, most of them black and white.  There were sections for the editors to talk to you ("news") and sections for you to respond ("mail" or "feedback") which, I guess, was like an early type of message forum.  Nevertheless, way back in the 1970's the way that we, as kids, found out about new toys was often in the back of magazines like "Starlog", "Fantastic Films" and of course, Warren Publishing's "Creepy" and "Eerie" magazines which were a treasure trove of new toys.  I usually found out about new Star Wars toys first in "Creepy" and "Eerie" because those were two magazines that I read each month.  

I never bought the magazines, I just read them and that's because my mother would go grocery shopping at Jitney Jungle near Cloverleaf Mall and Jitney Jungle had a well stocked magazine section that had everything from romance novels to best sellers and of course, magazines.  While my mother shopped for groceries, I would sit on the lower magazine rack (it was angled slightly upward, like a pew at a church) and I would take each magazine and read it from cover to cover.  I was a quick reader but my mom usually took about 45 minutes to an hour to shop and compare prices, etc.  This gave me plenty of time to "catch up" from what I had read and learned from last month's issues.  

Among the magazines were such (then) contemporary favorites like "Cracked", "Mad", "Starlog", "Fangoria", "Fantastic Films", "Creepy", "Eerie" and later, "The Rook."  While the glossy sci-fi magazines had some sections at the back to advertise products and toys you could buy the Warren Publishing titles were like a set of horror, fantasy and science fiction stories stapled to a toy catalog.  Once the last story was told, page after page of toys, games, puzzles, models, novels, movies, posters, clothing ... just about anything and everything ... was listed for sale and since "Star Wars" merchandise had such a high demand (and a high profit margin), the "Star Wars" section soon grew from a single page to several pages during the late 1970's.  Sometimes full color spreads of "Star Wars" merchandise would grace the back cover or inside covers of these magazines, such was the attention that these items were demanding and getting.

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May 1978.  New "Star Wars" products!  See page 73.

"Star Wars" and its merchandise was so hot that magazines advertised the fact that you could purchase this stuff out of this magazine ... with the intent being that even if you didn't like the magazine you might just buy it so you could fill out the order form and purchase some of the "Star Wars" merchandise.  Selling "Star Wars" merchandise from a magazine, with the magazine offering itself as a conduit to this amazing swag and booty, was itself a selling point.  All just part of the magic of the era.

 

Already assembled!!!!   I don't ever remember any action figures that ever needed any assembly.  Very early ad from the back of Warren Publishing's "Creepy" magazine, Issue 97, May 1978 (a full year after "Star Wars" hit the theaters) advertising nine of the original twelve Kenner action figures.  Not shown is the "Death Squad Commander", "Sand People" and "Jawa" which would be (at least for me) the hardest three figures of the original twelve to find. 

This was the tip of the iceberg, the snowball that started rolling downhill from the top of the mountain and started the avalanche that covered everything below.  Soon every major cult magazine would be advertising "Star Wars" related merchandise in the hopes of getting their share of the giant cash pie that George Lucas had baked and served up hot and fresh.