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Archive for the Star Wars Category

A look at the Star Wars Q&A Book about computers (1983)

Posted in 80s, books, computers, movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Wars, technology with tags Book Report, books, computers, movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Wars, technology on August 15, 2011 by Paxton

I love vintage kids books. I love vintage pop culture books. I also love vintage books looking at early computing technology. This week, I get all three wrapped into one. I’ll be looking at three early 80s activity books featuring awesomely retro computing technology. Being a tech guy and a pop culture guy sure pays off some days. The first book I’ll be looking at is the Star Wars Question and Answer Book about Computers from 1983. Yes, I know, mixing Star Wars and computer technology? Yes, please. And the book is filled with some of the most awesome artwork mixing R2-D2 and C3PO and computer machinery. The artwork in this book is by Ken Barr. Ken Barr is a comic artist. He’s done a lot of work for Marvel, especially back in the 70s and 80s with titles like Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Doc Savage, Savage Sword of Conan and Rampaging Hulk. Most of that work being for Marvel magazines that showcase the really nice painted look of Barr’s creations. You can see a lot of that here, too. This book is mainly an information dump about computers, how they began and what they can be used for. Much of the information is surrounded by Barr’s gorgeous paintings. However there are also pages without artwork but instead use photographs of actual computer machinery.

Here’s the intro to the book explaining about computers. Next to the intro is another information page featuring a picture of an Apple II. Click the images to make them BIGGER.

Here are some pages talking about computers and video games. You can see an adorable picture of R2-D2 playing chess against a computer and both Artoo and Threepio playing an upright arcade machine. I’m seriously in love with that arcade machine painting. See it much bigger here. Continue reading →

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A Cavalcade of Collector Cups

Posted in advertising, fast food, McDonald's, movies, pop culture, Star Wars, Tron with tags fast food, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Wars, Tron on August 12, 2011 by Paxton

I’ve talked about fast food collector glasses before. But that article covered collector glasses made of actual GLASS. There are also a plethora of plastic collector cups. A few weeks ago Nerd Lunch talked about super hero cups. So, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring and talk about a few of my favorite collector cups that have been given away at movie theaters and fast food chains.

I have each of these cups in my collection right now.

This is the Capt America The First Avenger Tri-Color Coolatta Cup. My boy CT from Nerd Lunch discussed this back in July. There are three sides/sections. Each section holds the red (cherry), white (vanilla) and blue (raspberry) flavors of Dunkin Donuts Coolattas. You can see the second side here and the third side is here. The cup is sitting next to the stars and stripes donut that also promoted the Capt America movie. They were both good, but I won’t lie, after consuming both for breakfast it felt like Cap and the Howling Commandos were fighting World War II in my colon.

This was the collector cup given out at movie theaters in 2000 to promote the first Singer X-Men movie. I like the tapered base of this cup so it fits in your cup holder. Many cups now don’t do that. And check out the web address of the movie with all of those dashes. http://www.x-men-the-movie.com. Hello late ’90s.

Everyone remembers the Star Wars cup toppers from 1999 during the whole Episode I merchandising frenzy. There were 12 cups and figure toppers you could collect from KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Well, those toppers were based on an earlier promotion for the Star Wars Special Edition in 1996-97. It was a set of 4 and featured C3PO, R2D2, Vader and a Stormtrooper. There were two versions of this set. Above left you can see the set that came from the Las Vegas FAO Schwartz store. They had setup their own version of the Mos Eisley Cantina including themed ICEE drinks (like Jabba Juice). I had visited Vegas in 1998 and was able to buy these at the store. Click the image to see it bigger and to see the commemortive FAO Cantina cup. The other version of this set on the right came from Pizza Hut and Taco Bell stores overseas (I don’t believe they were offered in the US). The toppers were exactly the same but instead of the FAO cup it had a blue cup with a picture of the character on it (see the Stormtrooper above). You can see how these influenced the Episode I cup toppers. For obvious reasons, only the R2D2 was reused in the 1999 Episode I promotion.

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Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire released 20 years ago

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags anniversary, Book Report, books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on June 1, 2011 by Paxton

Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire was released at the end of May 1991 which makes it 20 years old. Heir to the Empire was the first “expanded universe” Star Wars novel since the Lando Calrissian solo novels in the 80s. It would become immensely popular and spark an avalanche of Star Wars novels that continues to this day.

The next two books in Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy”, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command, were released in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

The characters Zahn created in his trilogy became extremely popular and would be used by other authors for years afterward. Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire’s strategic military genius, would be one of the more popular. However Thrawn as a character would not really be written by anyone other than Zahn. Mara Jade would be used by many authors up until the current day. She would go on to marry Luke and have his children. Talon Karrde, smuggler extraordinaire would also prove popular and show up in novels from time to time, as would the New Republic’s military strategist, General Garm Bel Iblis. Zahn’s three books would also popularize the idea of clones in the Star Wars Universe as well as be the first to use the formal name of the Imperial homeworld (and current Republic homeworld); Coruscant.

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A closer look at the Shadows of the Empire art by the Hildebrandt Brothers

Posted in Boba Fett, Empire Strikes Back, movies, Star Wars with tags movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 28, 2011 by Paxton

I discussed the 15th anniversary of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on Tuesday. In that article I mentioned that a set of trading cards was created for that event featuring awesome artwork by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I want to look at the paintings that made up this set.

You get a great look at the creation of these paintings in this book:

The above book goes into a fair amount of detail about the Hildebrandt creative process. It’s fascinating. The book mostly covers the creation of the paintings for the Shadows of the Empire card set. But it provides a lot of information about that set. It’s a really good read.

Now let’s take a look at some of my favorite of these Shadows of the Empire paintings.

These are the heroes of the book; Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie. I created a custom Jedi Luke figure based on the Shadows of the Empire book cover. See that figure and card here.

This is Boba Fett going toe-to-toe with Dengar and Bossk over the frozen Capt Solo. This actually happened in the comic book, not the novel.

Here’s a new character created for the book, Guri. She’s the android bodyguard of Prince Xizor, ruler of Black Sun, who is also a new character.

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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire turns 15 years old

Posted in books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags anniversary, books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 26, 2011 by Paxton

This month is the 15th anniversary of the release of the Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire multimedia event.

Shadows of the Empire was a huge undertaking by LucasFilm and LucasArts in the Summer 1996. It was essentially the release of a new Star Wars movie, but without the actual movie. The events of Shadows of the Empire take place in the years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Up to this point, no other expanded universe material had ever taken place within the timeline of the original movies. This event would also serve as a springboard into the release of the Special Edition trilogy in theaters the following February. To give the whole event a more “theatrical” feel, LucasFilm released a trailer featuring footage from the movies and a voiceover. It was played in front of audiences at comic conventions across the US. LucasFilm decided to pull the trailer, however, fearing that people would think there was an actual movie being released.

The trailer was added to the official Star Wars website for the Shadows of the Empire 10th anniversary. Click here to watch the trailer on StarWars.com.

The Shadows event consisted of the release of a novel, a comic book, a video game and a symphonic soundtrack. You could get one or more of these things and get a complete story, but you had to get everything to get the full Shadows of the Empire story.

Released first and foremost was the Shadows of the Empire novel by Steve Perry. You would get most of the story from this book. All other media in the Shadows event was based in some way off this book. The events take place several months after The Empire Strikes Back. I bought and read this book when it was released in 1996. I then bought the paperback and read it again a few years after that. I think I even read it a third time after that. The book is good. REALLY good. I read it again last summer and it still holds up. The story is solid, the characters are written fantastically and it’s just a lot of fun. Prince Xizor is a fun villain and great foil for Vader. It’s really fun to see Vader being vexed by Xizor in their constant tug-of-war for Palpatine’s approval. It’s also fun to read the budding Jedi Luke before he becomes the supremely confident Jedi. Han is out, obviously, because he’s in carbonite on Boba’s ship, but we get a new character, Dash Rendar, to supposedly take the smuggler role. However, I hate Rendar as a character. He serves little to no purpose. First of all, he isn’t in Return of the Jedi so you know he can’t stick around. Second, he’s ridiculously immature and and a braggart. Thirdly, the novel also includes Lando Calrissian. Rather effectively, I might add. There was no need whatsoever to even have Dash. I think Perry was forced to use Dash because they needed a new character for the video game. That one gripe aside, I love this book and really wish Perry could have expanded the story a little bit more in a prequel or sequel novel.