Tag Archives: Vintage Star Wars

Collector Snapshot #2: Adolfo Martinez aka ‘Merlin(72)’

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Welcome to the second installment of our regular segment, where a vintage collector is given 10 short questions to answer using only a sentence or two. The same questions will be given to the next collector appearing on the blog.

The current victim is Adolfo Martinez, known as Merlin(72) on the forums. If anyone has crossed paths with Adolfo they will know that not only is his collection outstanding but that he is equally humble and a very down to earth and friendly collector.

Here’s a photo of the handsome Adolfo with his awesome collection.

Adolfo

Adolfo is 41 and for the last 25 years he has lived in Cancun, Mexico (tough life huh), where he works as a travel agent. He is currently one of the admins of the largest SW FB groups in Spanish named Star Wars Collecionistas / Collectors. This forum has over 6500 members and was founded in 2010 by Adolfo’s good friend Moises Rodriguez. Adolfo is proud to say that he was the second member of that forum.

I’m a little bit disappointed by having Adolfo appear in this segment. Not that he isn’t interesting, quite the opposite – in fact he is too interesting to simply appear for 10 quick questions! I think we’ll try to get him back on the blog in the future in some capacity.

Anyway let’s get to the questions! Let’s go Adolfo!

1. How long have you been collecting?

I’ve been collecting since the early 2000s.

2. What do you collect?

I’m generally known for collecting Lili Ledy MOCs (and all the entire Kenner set before that) but recently I started collecting pre-production items. Some of my favourite pieces are: my Lili Ledy Mock up, (only seven Lili Ledy mock ups are known to exist and they are the grails of the LL line), Blond Luke Bespin with Lili Ledy Han Bespin blaster and LL lightsaber (Imperio Contraataca action figure production) on a “Retorno de Jedi” 12 Back (No guarantee inside or sticker, and a Yoda Master Jedi Variant) inside a hand glued Imperio Contraataca Bubble.

3. What’s your grail?

My Holy Grail would be any Lili ledy “Imperio Contraataca” MOC.

4. What collectors inspire you?

My good friend Oscar Didier (known as Oscar cases) inspired me to collect Lili Ledy MOCs

5. What is your most embarrassing moment as a collector?

It has to be every time that someone asks me about modern SW items (90s to present days) because I don’t have a clue what they are talking about lol!

6. What is your favourite Star Wars film?

ESB! Is there another one?

7. What would you change about the collecting community?

I would like collectors to take more time to research the SW collectibles they plan to buy.

8. Forums or Facebook groups?

Both are great, everyone needs to learn to get the most out of them. Facebook groups let me put faces to names and I’ve seen more interesting things in the Facebook groups than on the forums. But forums are the encyclopedias of SW, they maintain a lot of important information about collectibles, such as reference guides.

9. What Star Wars character do you most resemble?

Han Solo – because I’m a scummer like him!

10. Is there one thing that collectors may not know about you?

I’m also an avid coin collector and I really enjoy what I do for a living!

Thanks for the opportunity to share this info with my fellow SW collectors in this extraordinary place.

World Cup Luke Skywalker Variant Quiz!

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Well the Football World Cup is finally down to the knockout phase. I know a lot of my readers (Americans and Australians!) don’t care for ‘soccer’ so much but I’m a huge fan (Allez l’OM!). Australia has been knocked out but France is still in and I guess I have The Netherlands to support as well….

Well I have a quick trivia question for those with both variant and World Cup knowledge. Check out each variant and tell me which ones represent team(s) that have been knocked out. More points if you can guess all of the teams represented by the variants.

Good luck!

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Documentary Review: Plastic Galaxy – The Story of Star Wars Toys

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Well I finally got around to watching this wonderful DVD. I’ve been anticipating it since even before its release so I’m a little perplexed why it took me so long to get around to it. A documentary simply about vintage SW toys? What on earth could be better than that? You had me at Star Wars…

Here’s a teaser:

When I got my hands on the DVD I was immediately struck by the beautifully designed cover, plus my favourite figure Luke Farmboy takes front and centre stage like the little attention seeker he is. I’m an absolute sucker for marketing so I was taken in before I even put the DVD into the player.

DVDB101_out

What more can I really say except that I loved it! What an awesome effort by Brian Stilman and his crew, including Karl Tate and Rebelscum old timers John Alvarez and Mike Ritter. I’d heard only great things about it so my expectations were extremely high. Fortunately I was not let down one bit and in actual fact it beat my expectations by a country mile. I knew it was going to be cool – a bunch of dudes my age talking about SW vintage. Right up my alley. But sincerely I did not expect such a high standard of production quality, right up there with the best. Really this was so crisp – all the way from the editing to the sterling animations by Stephen Baker.

The content itself was brilliant. Given my hyperactivity, I usually struggle to stay focussed for more than five minutes but this one received my full attention for the duration of the film. A huge task indeed. Plastic Galaxy mainly uses interviews to explore the history of SW toys, including the production and retail phases and the influence these toys had on a generation of boys (and some girls!) born in the 1970s. I loved seeing collectors that I know from the forums chatting about both their childhood and adulthood connection to the SW toy phenomenon and this really took me back to my youth. Although I connected with all of the collectors interviewed, there was one specific line that really stood out for me as a childhood collector who never quite recovered from giving up these toys all those years ago. One of the collectors interviewed said that the toys were much important for us than the films themselves. I think this would be and is still the case for the majority of the Star Wars generation.

While I knew I would love the collector guests, I was surprised to be so fascinated with the interviews of former Kenner employees. They told great stories about the design and marketing of these toys, loads of stuff the average collector probably wouldn’t have known. The great thing about these guys is that you can see that they really dug working on these toys, it wasn’t just a job for them. They love it that they were such an important part of Star Wars history. When we are buying, trading and selling our SW collectibles, it would be easy to lose focus of the individuals who made it all possible for us – these toys were sincerely ahead of their time. Thanks to Brian Stillman et al for reminding us.

My favourite section was easily the discussion of pre-production work because while I was well-versed in most of the topics mentioned in the film, my knowledge is lacking in the pre-production realm. So it was great to have the process broken down by some of the best in the business.

As a bootleg lover, I was a little disappointed that these were not discussed but this really did not detract much for me from the overall production. I did hear that Brian actually filmed a chat with bootleg overlord Joe Y but that it didn’t make it into the final cut. I’d love Brian to release this footage sometime for us fans of unlicensed vintage.

I had a few quick words with Brian and he told me that the film is selling quite well and copies are still available for purchase from Amazon or from this link:

http://www.plasticgalaxymovie.com/

At the moment Brian doesn’t have plans to make a follow up film on the subject but there are other subjects he’s interested in exploring. He will start work on his next film in September but isn’t willing to let the cat our of the bag just yet!

If you are a vintage collector then you will have a blast and if you aren’t one right now, this film will no doubt convert you! Join us in this celebration of the children we once were and still are.

Thanks for reading

Christian