Originally posted by: R2Glad I could help SKot. I'll try and stimulate the grey matter some more and see if I can remember any more commercials that I've seen. Since that was so long ago, I don't think I can remember much more than I already have.
I do remember that General Mills did offer as a send away off of cereal boxes, a Star Wars tumbler, but I don't know if they ran a commercial for it or not. If they did, it was probably piggy backed with thier regular commercials for the stickers, cards and posters that were in their cereals. Yep... I have a feeling there's a lot more early commercials that ran back then that we don't know about. These will be the hardest to track down, as well as the hardest to find in good quality if we can find them at all. Of course, we have to know for sure what we are looking for first.
Have you thought to try and track down any TV promos for the Holiday Special? I'm sure there were some. Those would be a hoot to see after all these years. You can bet I've thought about that many times... I'm sure there had to be some as well, and chances are I may have even seen one on TV back in the day. But unfortunately, I've never in all these years found any further evidence of one. Since so few people had VCRs back then, someone taping the Holiday Special itself was a rare occurrence... so taping a TV promo for it would be astronomically rare. But I'd give my left arm to have a copy of one.
I'm sure that you are aware that there are DVDs out there with several of the vintage Kenner commercials. I checked your list and there were commericals for the Millenium Falcon, X-Wing and Tie Fighter from 79 and 79. The footage for the X-Wing and Tie Fighter commercial was first seen in the Star Wars collection commercial that ran during the Holiday Special. The entire X-Wing and Tie Fighter commercial did run by itself later. I wish I could find a comprehensive list of all Kenner commecials that ran. It's so difficult finding any information about them, though with all the collectors out there you'd think *somebody* would have documented this. My info was all gleaned from various sources of commercials I had, then put together to make up that list. I believe Rikter has a Kenner commercials DVD in his release list, and I'd really like to get hold of that plus any others out there like it for use in the project.
There was also a commercial for the Star Wars Early Bird pack. Part of the commercial was shown in the Empire of Dreams documentary and I do recall seeing the commercial several times on TV in 78.
I guess this would have to have been early 1978 then, or was it late 1977? Seems they might have wanted to push that one for Christmas.
I seem to recall seeing a commerical for the first Kenner lightsabers with the inflatable blades. Boy those were really hokey.
They sure seemed cool at the time, though. I always wanted one but never got one until recently, when I found one at Celebration 3. Wouldn't surprise me if there was a commercial for it, too... but I've no solid evidence yet.
In fact, I'd almost bet that there was a commericial for everything that Kenner had at the time. I hope that you can turn up more Kenner commercials for Return of the Jedi toys. I only have a couple on my DVD. I have tons of Empire Strikes Back toy commericials but I'd like to have more from Star Wars and Jedi.
One of the reasons why there were more ESB commercials I realized is that they got such a late start on Star Wars (no figures until almost a year after the film came out!), and then such an early start on ESB toys (I think they may have been already airing them by late 1979). So it seems we kinda got short-changed for the Star Wars period toys and commercials... which would explain there being so few of the characters from that film.
The Escape From Death Star, Destroy The Death Star and Adventures of R2-D2 games commericals come to mind. I did see commercials for all of those games. Boy, the more I think about it, the more seems to come back to me.
By the way, I think that this is a great project. It will be interesting to see how much footage you are able to find. Best of luck to you. I can't wait to see the results. If I think of anything else, I'll post it here.
Great... thanks again! And remember, hard evidence is even better, so if you or anyone else can put me in touch with actual footage (even if it's poor quality - at least we can see the commercial existed), then we'll have something more to put on the list.
