Darth Vader and C-3PO Carrying Cases

Some unsung heroes of collecting here - the infamous carry cases. Seems like you can't swing a dead tauntaun sometimes without hitting a Darth Vader case with one broken hinge, but when you find one with the inserts and sticker sheet it's still something special for a production completist like me. As for the 3PO case, these were never sold in Canada and have been something I've always been on the lookout for. Finally found one!

This ESB Vader case is a Canadian version (you'll see) and as with many finds in my collection, I have Mike Freeman of 4th Moon Toys to thank for it. Mike spotted this one in Winnipeg on Facebook Marketplace, and while he didn't have an interest in picking it up for his shop stock (mainly due to shipping cost), he very kindly sent me the ad. As I didn't have a case with inserts in my collection I quickly made a deal with the seller.

The seller was a woman about my age whose mother had bought her Star Wars toys when she was a child. This case was the last remnant of her collection and was essentially unused. It came with the insert and an unapplied sheet of stickers.

The insert is nice and crisp with great lithography.

Here's the sticker sheet - note the rather untidy borders, which I am advised are a peculiarity of the Canadian version of the case.

Back of the sheet with manufacturer identification ("Mactac") and "Made in/Fabrique au Canada".

Interior of case with no stickers applied, ever.

Note bilingual identity on the insert. No "L'Empire Contra-Attaque" there though!

Which brings us to this definitely minty RotJ C-3PO carry case with its distinctive vacuum-metallized finish. This special gold finish is infamous from the cover of the book that brought many of us old-timers (back) into collecting - Steve Sansweet's "From Concept to Screen to Collectible." This book featured a very cool  shot of a Darth Vader case done up in gold vac-metallizing ("one of less than 100 originally created by Kenner Products as a packaging sample") and it looked awesome!

In any event, I've always wanted to add a nice 3PO case to my collection. I just picked up this one from Mike at his shop on a recent trip to Toronto and although it wouldn't fit in my checked luggage, it made the trip back with me as a carry-on.

This one also came with its insert showing 65 different figures then-available in the range. 

I just think these inserts are really cool.

Stickers are mostly unapplied...

... as the original owner got about halfway through applying them and obviously lost interest!

The 3PO case includes a lengthy statement and 1983 date, but the Vader's is limited to some faint chicken-scratchings on the inside of the front.

Interestingly, period catalog advertisements describe the C-3PO carry case as "life-size"! I guess that could well be the case, as it's noticeably much larger than the Vader case.

So that's it for these two cases. As noted, Vader cases are super-common but 3PO cases much less so. I did find a good use for busted Vader cases though - you can use a Dremel to cut off the hinges and separate the two halves of the case, polish up the front with Plexus or another quality plastic polish, and hang the front half of the case in your collecting room... or in my case, give it to your Star Wars-loving nephew to hang on his bedroom wall :-) 

Ewok Village Action Playset (Kenner Canada)

OK, so back to this blogging thing after some time away from it. As I'm sure many of you also feel, 2020 has been the worst year I can remember so far, and it still has four months to go... Oh well, I guess the thing to do is just keep putting one foot in front of the other and making the best of it. And that includes some Star Wars toy blogging. So here goes.

Honestly the Ewok Village playset had been pretty low down on my list of stuff to get. Although I do have vivid recollections of seeing Return of the Jedi in the theatre (our family traveled down to Minot, ND to see the movie at the Dakota Square Cinema 9 or whatever it was called) and later ransacking the local Target for mini-action figures (my mother got Chief Chirpa, and I got a Biker Scout), I have never been a big Ewok fan.  I still have both figures though. But we digress... 

"Contents: One playset with elevator, throne, prisoner poles [?], escape chute, simulated boulder, net trap." 

So I never found the Ewok Village playset to be particularly compelling... although the Endor scenes with the speeder bike chase were SO COOL, the encounters with the Ewoks never really excited me. But in the spirit of completism I picked up a Canadian boxed example of the toy, and maybe it's started to grow on me just a tiny bit.

The box is bilingual of course, with French as well as English text. There aren't so many tableau-worthy play images on the Village box as there are on some other earlier Kenner toys, but that's OK. The Village actually has some pretty neat aspects to it.

Of course the net trap our heroes get swept up by is a main feature of the playset. Later on in the post I've photographed detail of the intricate way in which the strings are set up under the base of the playset. This did cause me some consternation as I was restoring the playset in pieces to its former glory. The elevator feature is also shown above.

The coolest thing is probably the "spit" that Han gets (nearly) roasted on over the firepit. The "escape chute" is merely a hollow trunk with openings at top and bottom.

The reverse side of the box is a line drawing of the same image as appears on the front, again with bilingual text.

The box ends alternate English with French text.

The opposite long edge has some interesting line art and bilingual text.

On to the photos! I've set up the playset outside as it was a nice summer day yesterday and the greenery adds something to the background. Also this playset is quite large!
Threepio's throne/litter/sedan chair is one of the cooler inclusions in the playset. It's pretty awesome. But one of the strange things about the box art is the homogeneity of the Ewoks... only Chief Chirpa and Logray were featured on the box. However I only have three Chirpas so I had to substitute Lumat... can you spot him?

The net nestles underneath the playset base and easily scoops up Luke, Chewie and Artoo as seen on the box front.

I find this hilarious... roasting Han on a spit. You'd expect that even our friendly peace-loving Rebels would have shot their way out of this mess before it came to this, but no. Faith in the power of negotiation (and Threepio the Golden God of course).

The "spit" itself is made of a kind of flexible rubbery plastic that holds the figures well. Note that I'm missing the "fire" sticker in the firepit... aaargh.

One from the box art here.

And another one.

Elevator with a Chirpa.

Threepio's litter. I like how the chair part separates to be used as a throne.
Overhead view of the toy. When you get one, be sure that it includes all of the railing pieces (there are three) and the brown wooden platform support pieces (example shown at lower right under the platform)... plus the boulder, stool, firepit, elevator car, spit and supports, net...

Detail shot of the underside of the platform with strings from the net.

Here's the copyright information.
And HERE is a piece that's often missing. It's the piece for the end of the strings from the net.

It's actually a really important part for the function of the playset, as the pegs on the bottom of the playset deck (seen in the "string thread this direction" photo above) fit snugly into the round hole on this part, holding the strings securely in place.

Well, that's the Ewok Village for you. Takes up lots of space, is only marginally cool, but no production toy collection is complete without one :-)

Stay safe everyone...

Walking Wind-Up R2-D2 (Kenner Canada/Takara)

Remember how I wrote a couple years back that my vintage run was complete? Well, I recently had second thoughts on that... of course, this has to do with the figure above - the infamous wind-up R2-D2 by Takara of Japan, sold briefly here by Kenner Canada.

The wind-up R2 is certainly familiar to collectors and was referenced as far back as 1992 in Steve Sansweet's seminal work, Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible. Sansweet wrote that the Takara R2 was one of George Lucas's favourite toys, and Lucasfilm ordered them by the thousand as gifts for employees and friends of the company. Lucasfilm pressured Kenner to license it or create their own wind-up R2, but Kenner demurred.

However, according to James McCallum in his book Irwin Toys: The Canadian Star Wars Connection, "Kenner Canada had a strong relationship with Takara of Japan" and "frequently took other products from them for Canada" in association with other toy lines. So it was with the wind-up R2. While in Japan it was sold loose, the figure was packaged for Canada on a bilingual blister card (known sometimes as an "18-back") that looked quite unlike any of the other Kenner cards. It retailed at Consumers Distributing (among other places) for $2.99.

The figure has two applied stickers front and back which are often missing. The name of the maker, Takara, is molded into the bottom of the chassis back, below the sticker. The front chrome details are actually quite impressively done, as shown in the first photo.

The COO "Japan" can be seen molded in block capitals underneath the manufacturer ID. The front bottom bit has an embossing of "(c) GMFGI. 1978".

R2's head rotates but doesn't click like the conventional action figure's. But of course, the real attraction of the figure is the wind-up walking action. Check it out in the video above!

Here's a group shot of the entire R2 range. L to R: Takara wind-up, standard R2, R2 Sensorscope, R2 with pop-up lightsaber. [edit: the ever-helpful Mike F. has pointed out that further R2s do exist, including the Droids, Lily Ledy, and Droid Factory three-legged variants. I have a DF R2 that didn't make it to picture day, but to me the Droids R2 is part of the Droids run and the Ledy R2 is a solid-dome variant :-)]

I'm really glad to have a nice example of this Japanese-Canadian figure in my collection, and the way I got him really illustrates the value of friends and community in tracking down rarer pieces like this. In this case, I got to meet some Ontario collectors when I was at Celebration in Chicago earlier this year, and it was in talking to my new buddy Mike F. that I realized that I needed - NEEDED - a wind-up R2 in my collection. Mike had actually brought TWO with him to Chicago but had already sold both, but when he acquired an entire loose run from another collector he suddenly found himself with a spare, which he kindly sold on to me. Cheers Mike!!

Mike also emphasized the importance (and rarity) of the figure being a good walker. Apparently the mechanisms wear out and are prone to damage from overwinding, so make sure to test before you buy. As you can see from the video, this one walks beautifully.

And with that the loose run REALLY IS COMPLETE. I mean it this time! :-)

Tauntaun (Kenner Canada) and Tauntaun with Open Belly Rescue Feature

The second "riding animal" to be released in the vintage line (after the Patrol Dewback) was the Tauntaun, released in "Empire Strikes Back" packaging. The example in my collection happens to be a Kenner Canada item. Let's have a closer look!

"Contents: One marsupial mammal." Oddly specific, isn't it? I quite like this line, probably the Marketing Department's idea of a clever little joke. "One creature" or "one riding animal" just doesn't have the same ring, does it? Interestingly, this directly contradicts (!) the ESB script which reads:

EXT. PLAIN OF HOTH - DAY

A small figure gallops across the windswept ice slope.  The bundled 
rider is mounted on a large gray snow lizard, a Tauntaun.

Being a Kenner Canada item, French and English coexist in easy harmony on the box. Unfortunately some English infiltrated the French side as the "Action figures sold separately" appears in both languages on both box ends.

Back of the box demonstrates play features. Those reins... I have three Tauntauns in my collection and I think every set of brown rubbery plastic reins is broken and repaired, right at the top of the "loop". One of them is from my childhood collection and I remember that the reins broke soon after I got it. Superglue effects a repair but any flexibility in the repaired area is gone.

Typical Kenner escalation in this photo... two Rebel Soldiers, OK... but what kid is gonna have THREE TAUNTAUNS??

This is quite a nice picture of the Rebel Soldier grooming and saddling his smelly disgusting Tauntaun.

That's the box, now on to everyone's favourite part... playing with the toys setting up tableaux of the box photos. Must've been early in the ESB toy cycle as here we have Princess Leia Organa (as opposed to Hoth Outfit) and a non-Sensorscope R2. However as I've noted before, availability of certain figures often didn't seem to "figure" into the Kenner box art choices. Stormtrooper flying a TIE Interceptor anyone??

A fine profile shot of the Tauntaun with Han Hoth aboard.

Rebel Soldier lovingly grooming his mount. Perhaps trying to leverage the "horse-mad preteen girl" market? In any event, I like this softer side of the Rebel Soldier.

Setting off in search of Luke. Not quite the scene from the movie with Han storming off with his "I'll see you in Hell!!" line, but this is definitely more kid-friendly.

Now, the main thing people remember about Han's rescue of Luke on Hoth is stuffing him into the carcass of Han's dead Tauntaun. It was gross in the movie, and it's equally disturbing as a toy. However, by '82 the Tauntaun toy may have been getting a bit stale, and adding another play feature was a great way to invigorate sales.

No longer a "marsupial mammal", now just a mammal. Perhaps "marsupial" was removed so as not to create the impression that the open belly feature was some sort of joey pouch? Because reference to a natural birth process would be disgusting and inappropriate, not at all like a reference to cutting open a dead animal and stuffing your friend inside the carcass...

Ugh... nice close-up. We get the idea.

Recycled top picture from the Tauntaun box, with a re-imagining of the Hoth Rescue, this time with Rebel Commander and two Rebel Soldiers as witnesses to the horror. What is seen cannot be unseen!

Further recycling from the Tauntaun box.

It's surprisingly difficult to stuff Luke all the way into the Tauntaun abdominal cavity. I actually had to open the back hatch and stuff Luke's legs through there.

Close-up picture of the horrifying scene.

Maybe this is actually a reenactment of the rescue back at Echo Base, for the benefit of the Rebels who didn't get to see it the first time?? "Then I totally had this awesome idea, I took Luke's lightsword thingy and cut open the smelly old Tauntaun, and stuffed Luke inside it! He was totally unconscious so he didn't even realize until he woke up covered in Tauntaun guts, bile and feces! Try making time with the Princess now, farmboy! You're disgusting!" Makes drawing a dick on someone's head at a party look absolutely pedestrian in terms of pranks.

Well, enough with the Tauntaun stuffery... An interesting tidbit is that the COO information on both Tauntaun versions is exactly the same, on the bottoms of the feet - except for letter designations (A and D for regular and B and C for open-belly). Luckily for Kenner, they didn't print the COO on the belly of the beast like they did with the Dewback - if they'd done so they'd have needed to move it for the open-belly version. Just luck? Or did the designers anticipate a later "open belly" version when designing the first toy?

Another difference between the toys is that the saddle on the open-belly version (top) has a much thicker strap than the standard version (bottom). Presumably this is the result of real-world feedback on the flimsiness of the plastic strap. Kenner really does care!

Anyway, there you have the comprehensive survey of the Tauntaun in both versions. For me, I'll take the original recipe. The open belly just freaks me out.