I have a passion for collecting vintage Star Wars merchandise from the late 70's. Action figures, comics, trading cards etc - anything related to the first Star Wars movie. But why only until 1980? It's not that I don't love The Empire Strikes Back and beyond (I really do), but there is something about that first wave of Star Wars mania that really grips me, back when it was all fresh and exciting...

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Famous Monsters of Filmland #142

It's been a long time since I blogged. Things have been chaotic but the good news is that a new job = an increased income so I have hunted down a few items I'll be taking a look at over the next few weeks.


First up is this issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland from April 1978 featuring the Dark Lord of the Sith himself on the cover. This was the 20th anniversary issue of the magazine that began in 1958 and it's a whopper of an issue at 132 pages.

Star Wars had been released nearly a year previously and was still a hot topic in many magazines. FM takes a look back at the movie in an article entitled 'Lord Darth Vader: Badnik or Merely Misunderstood?' which, (well ahead of its time), points out that he may not be such a bad dude after all.


Being the 20th anniversary issue, a ton of film stars and film makers wrote in and sent signed photos wishing FM all the best. Here's one from Lucas himself and appears to be a behind the scenes shot from the movie.


There's also an abundance of Star Wars related ads including a fantastic one for the Kenner figures which I've never seen before.



4 comments:

Erik J Kreffel said...

Good to see you back. Great scans with some photos I've never seen.

Chris Thorndycroft said...

Thanks EJK! I had a bit of trouble with the scans as they are a bit too small. Does anybody know why blogger has stopped images becoming clickable? Or how I can make them enlargeable by clicking on them?

Daily Star Wars said...

Glad to see you're back. That is odd about the images. I haven't had that problem but I still use the classic interface.

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