Various Star Wars toys

Radio controlled R2-D2

This is the Japanese Coke R2-D2 from Ed Squair . When Mark Hamill and I did a world wide promotional tour, the Japanese gave me some art for this piece. Steve York remembered my post and shared Ed's photo it it.

I've always thought this was kind of a PIA. It's so big it takes up a lot of room.

Kenner continued to send me toys for a while, then booted me off the list.

Another one of these big, awkward toys. This one, the acid from the cardboard discolored it, so leaving things in storage for years on end is not always a good policy.

 Assorted stuff from Kenner, MPC, etc

All of these don't come close to the popularity of the Kenner action figures

Kenner toys

As I said, we had the smaller toys graded and sold them a couple of years back. These are photos I found on the hard drive -- all of toys you've had, seen or wanted to have.

Kenner sent these to me to my home in Silverlake -- the East Hollywood section of the LAPD Ramparts Division.

Kenner copyrights

I'm going through my drive looking for documents for the article I'm writing on Marvel's STAR WARS Comics and found this bid of esoterica. It's a KENNER internal document informing Kenner staff of the proper way STAR WARS items must be copyrighted.

In this memo, Jim Kipling says he and Craig Stokely had different views of how the copyright identifications should be worded, so the wording was clarified by 20th Century Fox. So you see, contrary to Chris Taylor's claim of the Kenner deal being a handshake and $50, details of things like copyright were written into the deal. Kenner couldn't just go off and do what they wanted. Each step of the way, Kenner had to abide by their part of the deal. To get to that point, it was not, as Chris Taylor claims in How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, $50 and a handshake. It was lengthy negotiations and a contract detailing out the finer points, such as copyrights.