Star Wars has been used to promote food for decades now, and every now and then I’ve bought something and kept the packaging. Here’s what I found in storage:
The above is a box of Star Wars cereal released in 2016. This was released to promote The Force Awakens and in total there were eight different designs. It’s also one of my favourite pieces of Star Wars ephemera. I don’t recall eating any of the cereal.
General Mills released a lot of Star Wars branded boxes that year, and I have the two above as well. You can see these included a little ‘droid viewer’, but strangely I seem to have discarded those. These three are the only cereal boxes I own (I think…) which is just a drop in the bucket of the over 2000 Star Wars cereal boxes released worldwide since 1977!
The above is a true curiosity, since it’s a store brand item (Price Chopper is a local supermarket) that also happens to be Star Wars themed. I’m sure I threw away the gummies and kept the box, and I wonder how many Star Wars food box collectors worldwide would love to have this rare item in their collection?
Jelly Belly used this branded packaging in 2017 and they were available everywhere for a long time. I think there may have been other wrappers as well, but the above are all I have.
I don’t remember this Skittles promotion at all (from 2005) but obviously I bought at least one pack. ‘The Hunt For Grievous’ was obviously to raise hype for Episode III, which makes it stranger I don’t remember it since merchandise for that film seemed slim.
Around the same time – and as part of the awful ‘Star Wars Mpire’ cross-branded event – these M&Ms were released. I only have the above wrapper, but the back shows a Sith version was available as well. I used to enjoy M&Ms, but no longer like the taste of their chocolate.
And speaking of M&Ms, although it’s not Star Wars themed, here’s an Indiana Jones wrapper from 2008. This was of course to promote The Crystal Skull film, and I like the designs on the candies as well as the white variant.
Space Punch was a horrible drink – far too sweet for even my taste buds – and in 2018 the German company released a large variety of Star Wars themed cans and distributed them worldwide. Heavily marketed to collectors, people were trying to sell the ‘rare’ cans for silly money online. The above was the only one I ever saw/bought (in Oregon), and I’m happy it’s Artoo for reasons that will be clearer on Friday.
I’ve bought lots of other Star Wars foodstuffs over the years – including ice creams, waffles, cookies, candy and many other drinks – but I’m not one of those lunatics that keeps the packaging just because it has a Star Wars character on it. Most of the time, anyway 😉