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.

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