Fittingly, my first exposure to Star Wars was the toys.
Well, one toy in particular. After a trip to Sears for black socks and saw blades (things my stepfather always seemed to need) my mom called me over.
“Here. I got you this.”
The first thing I noticed was the packaging. I’d never seen a toy marketed that way before: the sleek black-and-chrome card looked more like something from an auto parts shop than the toy aisle. I wondered what the heck the “Star Wars” were and what this odd-looking golden robot had to do with them. Without any guns or swords, he didn’t look like he’d be much help in a war. And why was his name written twice? See-Threepio (C-3PO) seemed awfully self-important for someone I’d never heard of before. I considered the small bubble and the even-smaller figure inside. As a dyed-in-the-wool child of the 1970s, I was used to the “Mego standard” of 8-inch-tall figures. This toy was less than half that and lacking most of the mass of my usual toys. It was tiny, shiny, maybe even metal. What the heck was this thing?
I freed Threepio from his card. In spite of his metallic exterior, the figure was mere plastic, weighing next to nothing in my hand. I experimentally moved his limbs. Unlike my Megos, the small golden robot only rotated at the hips, shoulders, and neck. I was put off by the limited articulation even then — this guy didn’t even have a waist. How was he expected to fight in the star war if he couldn’t turn sideways? How could you possibly have fun with this thing? I considered the toy’s odd expression, its almost-alien aesthetic.
In spite of my misgivings, there was still something compelling about the figure. For a start, he was shiny. While I might have had a vac-metallized accessory or two kicking around at the bottom of my toy box, I’d never had a whole figure decorated that way. In the handful of minutes before play and fingerprints wore the high shine away, I could actually see my reflection in the figure. This was amazing in the low-tech days of 1978, when cutting edge was a calculator small enough to carry in your shirt pocket. I wondered at the miraculous metallic coating. Did it serve some purpose in fighting the star war? Did it make my robot fire-proof? Would lasers bounce off it?
I looked at the package for clues, but it was damnably vague. The front simply showed Threepio standing next to some orange computer thing, with no evidence of his identity, or who or what he warred against. There was a small picture of a couple of weird teenagers in white pajamas in the upper right-hand corner, although what this meant I had no idea. They certainly weren’t robots. Did the robots fight the teenagers? That might be kinda cool — at the time I was eight years old, so being a teenager was still a pretty big deal. I contemplated Threepio’s open hands, considered the possibility he did karate. Hey, now that actually might make sense: laser-proof kung-fu robots versus teenagers! At last, I was getting somewhere.
I know, it seems laughable now, but at the time I was a Star Wars virgin. I’d never seen so much as a commercial, so it was all I could do to guess. The back of the card wasn’t helpful. Sure, it told you what figures were available and what accessories they came packed with, but that was it. Motivations and histories, loyalties and alliances — it was all up to me to decide. Personally, I couldn’t wait to have Chewbacca and the Sand People fight Darth Vader and R2-D2. I considered the intricate shapes and tattoo-like details that adorned Threepio — without context the markings had a strange, almost tribal quality to them. The juxtaposition of this seemingly ancient adornment against the space-age material was striking to young Anthill, sparking my imagination in a way my Mego figures’ comic-dictated narratives never could.
I took my strange new figure outside despite my mother’s warnings. I had to share this weird treasure with my friends, to show off this impossible relic from the future. No one else seemed to know what it was either, although my sometimes-antagonist Danny Betz insisted he’d seen Threepio in an old Japanese monster movie. I had my doubts, but kept my mouth shut. The situation was growing tense: it’s hard to convey how desperately exciting something new was, pre-Star Wars. Sure, there was science fiction in movies, but it was either the bleak and sterile futurism of 2001 or post-modern anxiety dramas like The Planet of the Apes. Space fantasy, and the concept of adventure for adventure’s sake, was still as alien to 1970s Hollywood as Greedo. We suddenly all wanted, needed a piece of Star Wars, but I was the only kid who had one.
I managed to slip away somehow, keeping my Threepio safe until accidentally him dropping in into the vent of one of those large dump-freezers that were popular at supermarkets at the time. One minute he was skirting the icy edge of the parapet, the next he was gone, vanished into the shadowed interior of the freezer. My pleas to find a store manager and rip the freezer apart fell on deaf ears. After an all-too-brief life of adventure my robot was gone, and there would be no store manager or ship of intrepid Rebels to rescue him. Sure, I eventually got another one — if I had to guess I probably went through half a dozen Threepios before completely shaking the Star Wars habit — but they never could quite replace the excitement that original figure brought me. I guess what they say really is true: you always remember your first.
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