Robot Claw

I just finished reading this book:

It is a book written by Steve Sansweet all about his collection of Star Wars merchandise and memorabilia. Sansweet is a legend in the world of collecting (note: not just Star Wars collecting) and over the years since 1977 he has managed to amass a warehouse-busting collection totalling over 110,000 items.

He started with toys but quickly moved into other items (such as clothes or licensed food), feverishly buying anything at all that had a Star Wars license. He set up a large network of dealers and friends all over the world so during the eighties his collecting expanded to contain international licensed items as well. The collection grew and grew, and Steve became an expert on all things Star Wars. Eventually (in 1996) he accepted a position working for Lucasfilm and is still with them today.

The book doesn’t even attempt to showcase the entire collection, instead highlighting a subset (< 1%) of notable items. The photography is superb, but even better are the anecdotes and asides Sansweet has included about many of the inclusions. I particularly liked the chapter on food packaging, since he relates tales of spending day after day in an Australian hotel room stuffing large quantities of potato chips into the tiny hotel garbage as he was emptying the bags for the packaging. Or doing something similar in France, this time disposing of more than 80 different types of chicken product so he could collect the packaging. And so on and so on…

The scope of the collection is truly mind-boggling. This is a man that doesn’t just have all the action figures, but he also has prototypes, point-of-sale displays and every single variant including the ones you’ve never heard of (like the Bib Fortuna figure packed with Spanish toothpaste). Virtually every type of item imaginable is represented in the book, and there are so many times he states that his may be the only complete collection of that type that I lost count.

For instance, in 1983, Harper’s Pet Chow in Australia packaged tiny Return Of The Jedi stickers only inside their 4kg (~9 lb) bags of dog food. There were 12 stickers in total, packed randomly. Given the size of the bag and the random distribution, what is the chances anyone actually completed the set? Yep, Steve has it (and he thinks it is the only complete set in the world).

Many such stories exist in the book. One can only imagine the difficulty of collecting such items pre-internet but he somehow managed to do it. And he continues to this day. I may have imagined that his Lucasfilm job may have made the collecting much easier since he could just get the licensees to send him items but that is not the case, and he seems to have spent a great deal of time during the years the prequel films came out flying around the world amassing Star Wars stuff 🙂

A highlight of the book for me was being reminded of items from my Star Wars past, such as these Australian iceblocks:

I remember eating lots of those back in the day. He also had pictures of ancient Australian lollipops and the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes from 1980 with cut-out Star Wars masks on the back (I can vividly recall cutting out and wearing a C3PO mask around).

It’s a great book, and I say that not only as a Star Wars collector myself. I think most of you would find it quite interesting.

Now… one of these days I need to do a post about my strange SW collection…

(The image comes from toltoys.com, a nifty site dedicated to vintage Australia toys… it’s worth a look if you’re Australian!)

Ok, where was I… ummm… oh yes: Scarborough!

Scarborough was a moderately low-brow seaside resort. Beautiful, but they did sell chocolate gentleman’s sausages so they can’t claim to be prideful. However the next day we cut across the country to one of the most famous seaside towns of Blackpool.

There it is: REAL ENGLISH WEATHER!

We had enjoyed glorious sunny days for the entire first week of our trip, and it wasn’t until Blackpool that the rain came. Even then it was little more than a heavy drizzle, but enough to make me go and buy an umbrella (see a future entry for details…)

The leftmost shot shows the Blackpool tower (admission, £17, we passed) and both the central and (in the distance) northern piers. These were like the Brighton pier; containing amusement parks, arcades and restaurants. The rightmost shot is looking back in the other direction (both shots were taken from the south pier, at different times) toward Pleasure Beach (the rollercoaster).

I went down to the waters edge and put my hand in. It was very, very cold and great amounts of sand were suspended in the water. I imagine it would have been an uncomfortable swim.

Pleasure Beach is a very good looking amusement park and is apparently Britains top tourist destination. We walked past just after it opened (our hotel was right next door) and the lines to buy tickets were mind-bendingly long. We didn’t go in, which was a shame since that giant coaster is one of the worlds tallest and looked like a lot of fun.

Here’s two pieces of airbrush art from rides on one pier:

Yep, Blackpool isn’t about high class 🙂

The streets were alive with Britoners of all ages and all classes. Many of these were gangs of roaming females all dressed alike: hen parties (aka. bachelorette parties). Drunkenness was on full public display. Everyone was having fun.

I ate the best fish’n’chips of the trip here:

< Yum!

And JBF and I shot some Terminators:

And here are the horsey rides, protecting themselves from the rain:

Blackpool had 1.5 surprises for me. The first requires some backstory. For many years Britains only official Doctor Who museum/exhibit was in Blackpool, right on the promenade. It closed late last year, but I was surprised and elated to find that the gift shop is still there. I was amazed by some of the stuff they had for sale, and even made a few purchases. Alas most of the stuff was either way too expensive or impossible to bring home. Such as the finest item of them all:

< Yum!

The other surprise relates to the Blackpool Illuminations. Every year in September the city turns on a large amount of lights all along the seafront. This is a big spectacle, and is always done by someone famous (such as David Tennant or the Top Gear guys). Even though the lights are not on yet, they are there, and you can guess my reaction when we discovered the particular sets of lights outside our hotel were themed around Doctor Who!

Blackpool was kitschy and quaint, saucy and quite a bit special. I wish we’d had more than one day there.