Topps Trading Cards Pack: Series 4

Series 4 seems to be the only series that had borders that matched the pack colours (green). 

Star Warp Magazine - April 1978

This is issue #1 of a cheap sci-fi magazine that lasted 7 issues. The '6 Gigantic Star Wars Posters' emblazoned on the cover is a bit cheeky as the so-called posters are merely black and white full page illustrations and seem to be part of a promotion for a 'Star Wars Portfolio' by artist Clifford Bird which can be sent away for.  

The rest of the magazine is a pretty good read with info on upcoming sci-fi flicks like Superman (1979) De Palma's Carrie follow-up The Fury (1978) and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake (1978). In an interesting parallel to the present cries of 'Hollywood has run out of ideas!' the writer calls for more originality in sci-fi films even to the point of dismissing the inevitable Star Wars sequels as mere cash-ins. I suppose back then the idea of a sequel matching its original in terms of quality was unheard of and nobody could have predicted just how good The Empire Strikes Back was really going to be.   

Elvis Presley died less than a year before this issue's publication and pages such as the one below make greasnapshots of the time period.  

Topps Trading Cards Pack: Series 3

Series 3 came with the yellow borders as shown below.

Happy Birthday Star Wars! + Burger King and Burger Chef Commercials

Well, it's been 35 years and we can all feel a little old today. May 25th, 1977 was the date that changed cinema. It never fails to amaze me how old my all time favorite movie really is. And it's a little frightening to be honest. To celebrate, here's a couple of fast food commercials from way back then...

Starlog Magazine - December 1978

I've only just picked up an issue of this Sci-fi fan favorite magazine and can only say that it's brilliant! The quality is top notch in comparison with the slew of cheaper magazines put out at this time. As well as covering the upcoming Star Wars sequel, issue #18 of Starlog also has a feature on Battlestar Galactica which I also like mainly as it stylistically borrowed so much from Lucas (probably down to Dykstra's involvement). There's also an update on the Star Trek motion picture which was in development at the time and several articles on monsters and make-up that one might expect to find in Famous Monsters of Filmland.

The article on 'the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker' is a very interesting read. I'm surprised that Empire had a name this early on (a good year and a half before the film's release), albeit a working title. Gary Kurtz is really hammering home the point that 'Star Wars II' is actually 'Episode IV' and it's interesting to see the discussions on how confusing this could get for fans in the future. We coped with it Gary! Although he keeps referring to a possible 12 installments... I'm kind of glad they left it at 6!  

 There's a few tasty advertisements in its pages too. 

Donny and Marie 1977

I'm a bit late for the whole 'May the 4th be with You' Star Wars day thing (I much prefer to celebrate on May 25th in any case) but I only just found this vintage clip from 1977 and thought I'd post it now.

It's pretty God-awful but I'm a sucker for any early pop culture references to Star Wars and the more disco and polyester I see accompanying it, the better!  

Space Wars: October 1977

There was a ton of these cheap sci-fi magazines put out in the wake of Star Wars. This one's from October 1977 and also features an article on the future of Star Trek which had been a thing of reruns for nearly ten years. The magazine begins with a list of the greatest sci-fi movies including the conventional titles of Forbidden Planet, Metropolis, 2001: A Space Oddity and THX 1138, which, the magazine states, was due for a re-release in light of Lucas' more profitable movie. It's strange to think that most people reading this in the days before home entertainment wouldn't have had the chance to see THX 1138 as once it left cinemas after it's initial (and poor) release, it vanished into obscurity for several years.

There's also a section on the classic serials that inspired Star Wars like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. I particularly like this little snippet of an article that looks at the easy translation of comic book sci-fi to cinema in regard to the relative difficulty of adapting ideas found in the novels by H. G. Wells and Isaac Asimov.

There was nothing in the article about the movie that I hadn't read elsewhere (particularly on the backs of trading cards for some reason) so I don't know if this was written first or compiled from other sources. But there's some good pictures here, the lightsabers in the Ben Vs. Darth pic are particularly nice I think.