that’s no moon . . .

Plaid Stallions is one of my favorite stops on the Internets for Gen X nostalgia. While Propelling this morning, I came across their scans of Kenner’s 1978 Star Wars toy catalog.

If you’ve read The Trade from Just a Geek and wondered just how awesome my Death Star play set was, take a look at Plaid Stallions’ Death Star play set page.

Once you’ve fully appreciated how awesome and magnificent the Death Star play set is, scroll to the bottom of the vehicle page and take a look at the Landspeeder.

Then, if you will, join me in sending a nasty curse word back in time to the little bastard who convinced eight year-old me that it it was an equitable trade.

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39 thoughts on “that’s no moon . . .”

  1. Whenever I see these old catalogs of toys I had I still get the same excited feeling I did back then. “Ooh. Look at the landspeeder! Darth Vader is siiiiick!”

  2. That version of the Death Star was never on sale in the UK. It looks so cool! My Death Star was half the size and didn’t feature the Trash Compctor Monster. How lame! However, I did always enjoy my land speeder. I now deeply regret giving my entire Star Wars collection to my Cousin!

  3. The highlight of my SW toy days was finally wearing my parents down long enough to get the Millennium Falcon–so costly it was just about the only thing I got for Christmas that year ($27.48 at Sears. That was some serious coin in them days).
    But, oh, how I longed for a Death Star–at least you had one for a while. And in the end you got a good story out of it, so maybe it wasn’t as bad a trade as you think.
    Thanks for letting me spill a little geek on your page this morning… –mm

  5. Hmmm. I have no idea whether it is the colors in the ad that are off or the colors in my memory, but my trash compactor was bright orange rather than yellow. And I don’t even remember the gun emplacement! It must have been about the first thing to go. The compactor (without screw) and the elevator lasted long enough that I actually remember playing with them.

  6. Dude, even the kid in the catalog playing with the land speeder has that “this thing sucks” look on his face. Boy did you get the crap end of that deal.

  9. Speaking of nostalgia Wil, I just found out something. For years I’ve been trying to figure out the name of this really cool CBS pilot shown back in 87. I was 12, I remembered everything about it such as the plot. Kid moves into an apartment complex across the hall from a shrink. The shrink is treating a werewolf, a vampire, and a witch. Said kid befriends them.
    I LOVED this thing and it’s stuck with me forever dogging my nights and days as I couldn’t remember the damn name. FINALLY someone gave me the name, 13 13th Avenue. And the fact that you were in it.
    That sort of blew my mind.
    Do you remember anything about that show?

  11. Whats really funny is how happy the kids look playing with that Death Star and how the kid playing with Landspeeder looks like someone who lost a bet…or a trade… 🙂

  12. I forgot that R2’s head and Vader’s cape were wrong. It makes me think they either couldn’t quite match them to spec or that the designs had changed while they were making them.

  13. Oh the joy of that playset. The Deathstar was the first in a long line of playsets for me, but it was by far the best. I managed to keep the trash compactor portion into adulthood until it was unceremoneously disposed of in a garage sale with a box of G.I. Joe figures.

  14. Ah, the Star Wars toys. One of my best friends ended up with pretty much the entire collection — his mom *way* overcompensated for family badness by buying him and his snot-nosed baby brother whatever they wanted, and of course the kids knew this. We loved going over to Gerry’s house to share the booty.
    All I was ever able to convince my parents to get me was a TIE fighter one Christmas. It broke by dinnertime. I was never able to convince them to get me another Kenner product again. *sigh*
    But at least I could still go over to Gerry’s house and play with his cool stuff. 🙂

  15. I must’ve been about four when I my parents bought me a Death Star play set. Indeed it was awesome, even after I insisted on playing with it in the bathtub and turned the cardboard walls into grey goo.

  16. Most awesome. Nothing has ever topped the ultimate Star Wars item for me (though you would have been too old for it at the time, I’m sure). It was a giant swing set with an AT-ST Walker at the top of the slide and speeder bikes for swings. My neighbor across the street from us had it when I was in pre-school/kindergarten. Apparently, no one else on the webs had one because I cannot find it referenced anywhere. The closest I can find is this horrible thing: http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=25102
    which, I swear, is close but really looks nothing like what I remember. *sigh* Webs, why must you fail me.

  17. +1 to hours of poring over the Sears catalog. I knew that thing forwards and backwards and knew how to skip all of the boring stuff like sheets and clothing. Just show me the toys, dammit!
    I’ve always had a soft spot for the land speeder. It was the first thing that I got after the initial figure mail order set. I managed to get the x-wing, tie fighter and millennium falcon eventually. I was a lucky little bastard. Of course that didn’t stop me from trying to rip off some of my friends new figures that I lacked a year or so later.
    The picture of the Death Star is how I remember it.
    I remember it being a bitch to keep the whole thing together. A lot parts that were easily lost.
    I gradually lost pieces of it as time went on. The foam “garbage” and the monster went first. I lost whatever rope swing mechanism went over the bridge. I lost one of the supports for the roof and the crank handle that make the compactor “compact”. The walls with the display screens were cardboard and slid in from the side. It didn’t take long for the mechanism that made the gun pop out of its mount to simulate a “hit” to stop working. I’m not sure why making a clicking sound when you swiveled it was cool.
    The elevator was the coolest feature, in my opinion. The lever that raised and lowered it let you lock it at each floor by turning it.
    I didn’t keep any of the Star Wars stuff though I do still have some of the old GI Joe figures. If I remember right, there were some GI Joe / Star Wars mashups involving the Death Star set before it was finally put to rest by puberty.

  20. Ah, the memories. I had that Death Star Space Station Play Set. It was great. I loved that thing.
    If I remember correctly, the dianoga (trash monster) was an almost florescent green. Its intense color was only matched by the bright orange of the trash compactor.
    That and the Falcon play set were probably my two favorite Star Wars toys. And like all of my other Star Wars toys, I played with the Death Star until it was falling apart. I think my mom trashed it a long, long time ago.

  21. I had a Death Star playset. It was super awesome.
    Especially the trash compactor filled with foam that popped open the trash compactor door just before the heros were squashed.
    I had a friend who would convince me to trade toys too. Except he then decided that both toys were his. Trade negotiations quickly broke down.
    My Death Star met its end when a friend tripped and fell on it, breaking a few of the pylons in the process. I told him he totally owed me a new one but he never did.

  22. Hey, that landspeeder photo is a mirror image!
    I only know that because I’m rolling my 1978 vintage die-cast landspeeder around my desk at the moment.
    And no, I’m not trading it for an awesome Death Star, so there.

  24. I had that death star. It vanished at some point. I had one of those fathers who decided periodically that we (the kids, not the whole family) had too many things, and he’d weed them out. Always seemed to get rid of my favorites. Not because they were my favorites, because I’m sure he payed no attention to which ones I really liked. He may have been assuming that, with two daughters, the space things and monsters were the least played with. Never did know me very well.
    That’s where my action figures went, too. Not the little 3″ ones, but the old 1970’s ones, about 3/4 the size of a barbie, that had little polyester jump suits colored like their uniforms, with removable hats, gloves, etc. I had Batman, Spock, Joker, Batgirl, Green Arrow, Dracula, Spiderman, and a couple of others. Though I admit Joker ended up in Dracula’s tux and vice versa. A 7-year-old tomboy’s fashion sense. Go figure.

  25. Wow, I never really realized how lucky I got. I was 3 when Empire came out. My parents took me to see it for my birthday and were pleasantly surprised that their 3 year old not only sat quietly for 2 hours, but apparently had his first religious experience as well. I was always very mature for my age (until I met beer at 18) and ESB made the kind of impression that stays with you for 70+ years. I spent the next 3 years after the following Best Christmas Ever™ running around the house attacking my AT-AT with my Snow Speeder. My parents spoiled me with some pretty cool stuff but they couldn’t afford to drop the whole collection on me.
    Then when I was six, I hit the jackpot of jackpots. The kid down the street was entering his teens when his family got ready to move and he decided that he was too old and cool for the fleet of Star Wars toys that he had been amassing since ’78. I got an X-wing, Tie Fighter, Land Speeder, The Millennium Falcon, and The Death Star play set along with the supporting cast of action figures that I didn’t have. He didn’t take care of his stuff as well as I did but everything was in playable shape with the addition of a little tape to secure a Tie Fighter wing or shore up the hull of the Falcon. Like Alan’s above, my Death Star came with all of the pegs broken off the ends of the supports so the thing was pretty unstable, but it held together well enough if you assembled it carefully and didn’t bump it too hard while you helped Han and Luke rescue the Princess. It’s decrepit “can’t get any more broken” state made it feasible to throw a Nerf football at it and blow up the Death Star in spectacular fashion. I wouldn’t dare do something like that to anything else in my collection. I think my most broken Star Wars toy was actually the coolest because of that.

  26. Ugh, I re-read through Just a Geek last week and was overwhelmed with memories of a similar trade I made in the third grade. I don’t remember the specifics of it right now, but it entailed me somehow justifying the trade of my Batmobile for a Turtle-mobile.
    I still remember crying in my room when I realized I had given up the *awesome* Batmobile my Mom bought me for a lame cartoon van. >_< I think my parents went next door the following day and got my Batmobile back for me. The kid next door never forgave me for it.

  27. The pictures even validate your point: Look how happy the kid playing with the Death Star is. Then, look at the poor kid playing with the Land Speeder. I can almost hear him thinking, “Man, I wish I had a Death Star…”

  28. Wil – yes, I remember reading your post about the Death Star play set for Land Speeder trade that will probably haunt you for the rest of your time on the planet. Your have our complete blessing that, once you are in possession of any kind of time-altering device, you may travel back to that fateful moment and scare the living bejeebus out of the kid who coerced you into such a bargain (and maybe give young Wil a smack and tell him to “make better life decisions” or you’ll be back).
    That picture brought back lots of memories. (Notice the smiles on the kids with the Death Star and the dark, disturbing brooding of the boy with the LandSpeeder – or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Probably not.)
    I also did not have the Death Star playset but I did have the Landspeeder. I coveted the Death Star from the few kids in my neighborhood that had it.
    That, and the Starbird (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/55/109100239_3b0d272324.jpg?v=0), which my 70’s child self would have traded just about anything for (limbs, family members, self respect, etc.)

  29. I am not quite old enough to have had Star Wars action figures myself since I was born in ’83. However, my uncle was exactly 10 years older than me, so he had it all. I remember him letting me play with the figures. I even remember playing with the Death Star playset. I definitely don’t remember a landspeeder toy. Obviously, we know which one is better.

  30. Wil, Thanks for the link to Plaid Stallions. I just spent the last 2 hours poring over all of the pictures of stuff I used to have as a kid. Star Wars figures included. There’s so much that I absolutely *loved* to play with when I was 7-12 years old. I even came across something I had completely forgotten about, but loved playing with: Matchbox Mobile Action Command action figures. Oh the hours I sat in tepid bathwater playing with the mini scuba dudes. Awesome.

  32. Wow, flashback…again. In October my kids and I lost our house due to a wildfire in the San Bernardino Mountains and one of the precious things I lost was my entire collection of Star Wars Toys that I had. From birthdays to Christmas to mowing lawns etc I was able to amass quite an impressive collection…I even showed them to my kids(yeah, geek here also). Seems I have been exposed to a lot of Star Wars stuff since then, searching sites for prices(for insurance), reading your book and the ‘trade’ and now this page…great stuff. Is that kid now a car salesman as it sounds like he would be good at it….
    Ray
    ps. will, my kids and I are still awaiting your Major Nelson debut.
    Ray, Lennon & Savannah.

  34. I’m feeling geeky enough to point out that the kid in the picture with the unhappy face is playing with the DIE-CAST LANDSPEEDER MINIATURE and not the action-figure-scaled landspeeder toy that Wil traded for (and that I had as a kid too.

  35. DUDE! I never heard of plaidstallions…This is awesome…I now hearken back to “Mom’s Big Garage Sale” came home from school one day, and some dude, who appeared about 30 years old was walking away with my Bionic Man, Maskatron, and 4 shoe boxes of Thor, Iron Man, Green Latern…and Spiderman…not even Stretch Arm Strong was spared.. 🙁 I still get a little choked up about it. Mom still contends that she thought it was just a bunch of junk…”Ya but it was My Junk!”, I always retort…
    🙂

  37. My 10 and 11 year old sons looked at the pictures and thought the Death Star play set was the coolest thing ever. My oldest said “Mom, how can we buy one?!?” Then I showed them the land speeder and my 10 year old said “Dude got ripped off!” MY next door neighbor growing up had the Millenium Falcon and we used to play in the back yard with it and his action figures. His sister was my age so the 3 of us played with it for hours. I was the girlie girl in the bunch so I was always Princess Leia. 🙂

  38. You know what’s sad? I still remember the day when my big brother broke that playset … Long story short I hate him (j/k it was a long time ago in a place far far away…)

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