Robot Claw – Page 109 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Star Wars Tuesday: Food Packaging

July 18, 2023

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 😉

Star Wars Monday: Adhesive Bandages

July 17, 2023

In addition to sorting and selling my Star Wars figures, I also dove into a large box of ephemera I had accumulated over the decades. This week I’ll showcase some of what I found.

Today we’re focusing on ‘adhesive bandages’, and since most of us call them ‘Bandaids’ it makes sense to begin with the above three sealed boxes of Star Wars (actual) Band-Aids from 2014. The back of each is shown at right.

The bandages are a bit boring due to the pores and what I think is a mostly failing graphic design. The above are only three of many, and I know there’s been other boxes sold over the years (perhaps even still today) so it’s possible other bandages look better. I’ve received many boxes of these over the years as gifts and have used many of the bandages, .but the above three boxes will remain sealed in my collection.

The above ‘collectible’ Band-Aid tins also were on shelves in 2014. I stalked the local shops until I found all four of these because they’re lovely tins!

It was a little tough to photograph them since the silver metal parts are very reflective. The backs of each are identical and show the Star Wars logo. I particularly like the choice of the Death Star and Darth Vader’s tie fighter since both are rarely seen on licensed ephemera.

The above is an earlier product from 2009. It’s not sealed, and the Yoda design suggests it was a Clone Wars licensed item. I’ve still got about a dozen of the bandages, which are printed on clear plastic (hence the ‘tattoo’ claim):

I seem to recall the tattoo effect mostly failed so this was very much a gimmick product.

Going back even further – all the way to 1999 – we have some Curad brand bandages licensed to The Phantom Menace! I don’t know why I never kept the box, and only two unused bandages remain. The design is similar to the band-aid ones of over a decade later but these, in my opinion, are better.

Lastly we have the above. These again are tins, only they are for Elastoplast brand bandages sold in England. Each ton is double-sided, and all four sides are shown above. I picked these up in chemists during our Scottish trip, and have always wondered if there were others available.

The bandages themselves are superior (in design) to all the ones I’ve seen released in the USA, and there is a larger variety as well. An impressive product!

I also have the above (now empty) box, which I probably purchased on the same trip.

In sorting my ephemera a great deal – old packaging, cheap toys, stationary – has been thrown away, but there’s something so unusual about these bandages that I’ll be keeping them. And I may even buy more if I spy a new design in the bandage aisle one day!

Tea Cards

July 15, 2023

A few weeks back, on the way from fireworks shopping in New Hampshire, we stopped at a flea market in a field in ‘the middle of nowhere’. Imagine my surprise to find – amidst people selling their own unwanted stuff – two postcard dealers! Their cards were vintage and pricey, but I fell in love with a collection of tiny cards one guy had that had been distributed in packets of tea in the 1960s, so I made him an offer and walked away with the entire binder!

The cards were issued by a tea company called Brooke Bond, and in the USA and Canada came packaged in boxes of Red Rose (brand) tea. They were also issued in several other countries, and were most popular in England where 87 sets were issued over several decades!

The album contained 172 unique cards in eight different series. Six of the series (on birds, plants and butterflies) were for the US market, and two (transport and space) are Canadian. I also have dozens of doubles.

The cards are small – about an inch wide and two tall, and are beautifully printed with lots of information about the subject written on the back. Each series had 48 cards, and from what I can determine were available for a year each, so they would probably have been a challenge to collect!

The cards I have range from 1961 (Wildflowers of North America) to 1969 (The Space Age), which is about when they stopped including them in America (they continued until 1999 in England). They’re in incredible condition: some look like they came right off the press and it’s hard to believe they’re 60+ years old!

While these were inexpensive (I paid $25) I don’t plan on seeking out any more, and this will just live in my trading card collection (such that it is) as a lovely little curio from before I was born. As I said I’ve got a lot of doubles: if you want some let me know.

Coincidentally when I was in Australia I bought two cigarette cards from an antique shop. They were also inexpensive ($1) but were almost 100 years old (the above is from 1930) and I couldn’t resist them. They’re the same size as the tea cards, so this one will live in the same binder forever 🙂

Earlier today I went to what I believed was a local stamp show, but when I got there discovered was actually a postcard show! About a dozen vendors were there selling vintage (what I learned was before about 1963) cards to a room of people mostly older than me, but I found a few $0.25 bins of ‘modern’ cards and spent almost an hour sitting next to an elderly gentleman and chatting with him about his collection of 275,000 postcards!

I learned a lot, but perhaps the most amazing thing was that less than a half hour from our home is a postcard shop with 14 dealers selling all sorts of postcards from the 19th century through to modern times. Guess where I’m going next weekend?