logo Sign In

Random memories from 1977-83 — Page 2

Author
Time
Post link
That's one thing I've always found amazing about Star Wars: is that minor, insignificant characters would develop such devoted fanbases. I mean, Bossk literally appears for about two seconds, but he looks cool enough that he just gets fans!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

Author
Time
Post link
Gaffer Tape said:That's one thing I've always found amazing about Star Wars: is that minor, insignificant characters would develop such devoted fanbases. I mean, Bossk literally appears for about two seconds, but he looks cool enough that he just gets fans!

 

 He was one of the coolest action figures I had.  Can't explain it, but he was just cool looking! 

You think about new characters in ESB, all cool:

-Yoda

-Lando

-Bossk

-IG-88

-Boba Fett

-The Emperor Hologram Image

 

 

 

Author
Time
Post link

You forgot Lobot, I love lobot he is my favorite character EVER!!! ......

 

This just in, the previous statement by myself is not true.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain.
"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes"...James Feibleman (1904-1987)
www . axia . ws/axia

Author
Time
Post link

Well, Lobot is one of the only original figures I have (along with ESB Han and ESB 3PO), so I think he's pretty cool if only for that reason.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

My Bossk and my Snagletooth figures used to partner up and make all kind of mischief. Fortunately, Bespin Luke (my very favorite figure, followed closely by Anakin Skywalker in Shaw's likeness), along with Bespin Han and Bespin Leia (what can I say, the Bespin line was pure quality), always saved the day and threw the fanged duo into into a shoe box with slits cut in it to represent prison bars. Damn, I want to be a kid again! Life is too complicated now. :(

As for Lobot, he is pretty cool. None of my Star Wars figure collecting friends had him when I was a kid, and for some reason we couldn't find him in stores. We would always look at the back of the packaging and say, "I really want that guy!" pointing at Lobot. But none of us ever got him. Sometime in my teens I happened into a pawn shop and saw him for $10 bucks and snatched him up, finally, I had found our holy grail of Star Wars figures. I couldn't wait to tell the two SW figure collecting friends from childhooh who I still hung out with that I had finally managed to get a Lobot! I was sure they were going to be so jealous of me, I had fricken Lobot! The very next time I saw them burst out the news with great excitement, I had purchased an authentic Lobot! A Lobot guys! A Lobot! And they just shrugged it off and we went back to talking about video games and boobs.

 

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

Author
Time
Post link

I'm sure I've told this story before (lol) but my nephew was SO excited to get the new Luke figure in the black jedi outfit- I guess he was 5 (his birthday is May 25th 1978).

One of his little monster friends stole the figure - I think my niece said she saw it in his back pocket as he was walking out of the house (good plan). I got really mad and walked down the street with my nephew to the kid's house and asked for (and got) it back. :-)

Author
Time
Post link

I remember when i first saw star wars in theaters. Good times

Author
Time
Post link

One of these days I'm going to find a time machine and use it to travel back to 1977, 1980, and 1983. Then I'll finally be able to post in this thread.

Author
Time
Post link

I remember when RotJ came out, was 8 at the time. First I read some articles about it in the Swedish popcult-magazine OKEJ. Some time later my nephew had seen it and had gotten the soundtrack from his dad. He told about the movie in great detail showing the photos in the inlay poster, and the music was really getting to me- as had the E.T. dito done one year earlier. That xmas I got that cassette - book thingie of RotJ, and the fandom was set in motion.
However, in october '84 I finally got to see SW in  monochrome full length glory, and I was stuck! :)

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

I don't ever remember seeing Star Wars for the first time, it's one of those things that's always been there. I was 4 when it came but I don't actually remember the screening.

I do remember playing with my friends Land of the Jawas play set in the summer. Wow. I grew up by the beach so Tatooine was my favourite part, with all the aliens in the cantina. I remember seeing the picture of a stormtrooper on a Dewback and I thought it was a dinosaur. Didn't realise it was in the film. Lucas should really have made more of that.

I didn't really like Empire at the time, and I still think the yoda section goes on a bit. I agree it's Han's film - he gets the girl. I also thought it was someone different playing Luke, I didn't think it was really him.

I remember Jedi the most. A mate in school went on holiday to the U.S and came back with a toy poster featuring a speeder bike. I was obsessed with that. I also thought that the Tie-Interceptor's back was the front ( with the spikes going behind). When I actually saw it in the film it knocked me out, thought it looked amazing. It's all connected with collecting the figures, the summer, great times.

At the end of Jedi I was down because I knew it was over. I remember thinking the film had so much "stuff", so much to it I couldn't wait to get to school to talk about it. It's one of those films that has loads of great bits but fails to be great. But there you go, at the time I thought it was the best one.

oh, and Carrie Fisher... big impression...

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

C3PX said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

I suspect that if ROTJ was less triumphant and more downery it might get more respect.

 

You might be right about that. I can't even remember how many times I have heard people say the movie would have been better had Han (or Lando) died at the end. Really don't see how that would improve anything though.

When I was a kid I definitely considered ROTJ as my second favorite SW film. It wasn't until I was older that I began to notice some of the silliness. The first thing that hit me as I started to get older, is how dumb it was that the Ewoks with there sticks and stones are able to beat these armed men in heavy armor. I like the idea of a small group defeating overwhelming odds using guerrilla tactics. But when you start to think about these guys in heavy armor getting knocked out (or possibly killed) by a stone being shot out of a sling, or by being beaten on with wooden sticks, it has a sort of Magical World of Disney quality to it. Like the little kid who managed to defend his house from the mofia by using suctioncup arrows and marbles or some crap like that. It is fun stuff for kids, but there is not much of a lasting appeal as you get older. 

I always loved the ROTJ space battle, and the final saber duel is one of my favorite moments from any SW film (though Vader losing his robotic hand was not near as cool as when Luke lost his real hand).

Hasbro released a Bespin Luke figure that has a removable hand. I was a bit old for action figures when it came out, but I still couldn't help but buy it. When you remove his hand, it makes a cool "pop!" sound. Love that thing. I bought a Vader with a removable hand and mask to go along with it. If I had had those things when I was a kid, I am sure I would have had hours of great fun making them mutilate each other. Closest thing to that I had as a kid was a Threepio that had arms and legs that came off, and after I used him a good bit, I couldn't get one of his legs to stay on, thing was always falling off.

I have a Jango Fett whose head pops off. It has a little magnet inside. I think there might also have been a Threepio that you could take the arm off of, too.

I think a fun Star Wars figure collection would be to just buy the figures that you can pops the limbs off of.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

END OF LINE

(It hasn’t happened yet)

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

C3PX said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

I suspect that if ROTJ was less triumphant and more downery it might get more respect.

You might be right about that. I can't even remember how many times I have heard people say the movie would have been better had Han (or Lando) died at the end. Really don't see how that would improve anything though.

Well, I don't think Han or Lando's death would improve things per se, it's just that Han has little-to-nothing left to do in Jedi, and Lando loses any ambiguity/complexity in Jedi that he once had, so killing them off (at the beginning, not the end!) is just a way to trim the dead-weight off the film and potentially refocus efforts on the stronger storyline of Luke and the Emperor.  It's not yay-face vs boo-face, in my opinion.  Not that I can speak for all Jedi critics, because I actually like the film.

As for random memories, my favorite nostalgia is in trying to figure out, sometime in 1980 or so, why they leapfrogged over three episode numbers and called Empire "Episode V".  Were they going to fill in the episodes that happened between Star Wars (the presumptive Episode I, of course) and Empire later?  Were the numbers being skipped just to give the impression of time passing?  Lots of fun childhood speculation just on that "missing material", and what it might contain.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

Author
Time
Post link

I remember getting the Kenner Han Solo figure and thinking "he looks like Steve McQueen"

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

dan76 said:

I don't ever remember seeing Star Wars for the first time, it's one of those things that's always been there. I was 4 when it came but I don't actually remember the screening.

I do remember playing with my friends Land of the Jawas play set in the summer. Wow. I grew up by the beach so Tatooine was my favourite part, with all the aliens in the cantina. I remember seeing the picture of a stormtrooper on a Dewback and I thought it was a dinosaur. Didn't realise it was in the film. Lucas should really have made more of that.

I didn't really like Empire at the time, and I still think the yoda section goes on a bit. I agree it's Han's film - he gets the girl. I also thought it was someone different playing Luke, I didn't think it was really him.

I remember Jedi the most. A mate in school went on holiday to the U.S and came back with a toy poster featuring a speeder bike. I was obsessed with that. I also thought that the Tie-Interceptor's back was the front ( with the spikes going behind). When I actually saw it in the film it knocked me out, thought it looked amazing. It's all connected with collecting the figures, the summer, great times.

At the end of Jedi I was down because I knew it was over. I remember thinking the film had so much "stuff", so much to it I couldn't wait to get to school to talk about it. It's one of those films that has loads of great bits but fails to be great. But there you go, at the time I thought it was the best one.

oh, and Carrie Fisher... big impression...

 We are the same exact age, and I had the same impressions towards each movie!  I saw SW in 1977 with the whole family when I was 4 1/2 years old, but don't have any vivid memories of the film that day.  But I do remember playing with all the action figures that Christmas, as that was the coolest thing at the time for kids like us.

I did not like Empire in 1980, as it was much too dark for me, and thought the Yoda scenes were boring.  Now its my favorite film, as I learned to appreciate it when I got older.

Jedi was the first movie I was old enough to enjoy the hype, and couldn't wait for it to come out in 1983.  Jedi was my favorite back then, and now it is my least favorite of the 3 OT movies.  When it was all over, I remember thinking that a part of my life was over and I could turn the page.

Author
Time
Post link

Never did find a Bossk myself, and I always lusted after the pictures of him on the cardbacks.

I distinctly remember my first figures: Luke in Hoth fatigues, Imperial Officer (bowling ball helmet dude) and the Taun Taun with the slit belly.

Now that I recall that memory, it's blowing my mind because it must have been either my second or third birthday when my mom gave them to me, since I know I had a whole slew of figures by the time ROTJ came out when I was four. 

It's probably my first memory!

I had a tape of SW recorded from HBO, which I probably watched daily from age 2 to 4, and the HBO theme therefore calls up that SW thrill more than the 20th Century Fox fanfare.  You know the one: do-do-doooo, do-doooo, do-do do do.  Do-do-dooo, do-DOOO!  Do-DO-DOOO!

Dunh!  Dunh! Dun-nuh-nuuuunh!

Author
Time
Post link

I was five or six the first time I saw the films. My parents are fans and they sat me down and I watched all three back to back. So it was 86-87. I was completely blown away and I've been a fan of all things Star Wars ever since. I love the good, the bad, and all the shit I should be, but am not, embarrassed for liking.

I am what all Jedi fear to become, and what all Sith wish to be. A GOD!

Author
Time
Post link

The year I saw Star Wars will always be with me, my Mother died in March '77 when I was 8,....my world was Planet of the Apes, Six Million Dollar Man and Space 1999,...through the summer I had to stay at my uncles farm, where I saw images in newspapers of an exciting new film coming, I remember drawing sketches & making models of some of the characters out of plasticine.

Elvis died that summer.....he died at the same age as my Mum

I had to wait until January '78 to see the film,....I saw it in Belfast in a cinema that has been torn down now

I remember getting a paper Chewie mask & 'The Official Collectors Edition' magazne at the Kiosk

.......my life hasnt been the same since

I'd say theres hardly a day that I don't think about Star Wars

J