Star Wars, Nothin' But Star Wars... George Lucas may have his faults, but he knows a cash cow when he sees it. Unlike most kids my age (if I had a dollar for every time I've said that...), I didn't grow up with the magic of Star Wars. I think I was 14 before I ever saw it (I totally didn't get it), and I didn't really appreciate it until I watched it again last year during my post-Revenge of the Sith marathon of the original trilogy. As with a lot of the major cultural events of my childhood, I arrived late to the party. In fact, most of my Star Wars knowledge came from catalog pages like the one you see above. I watched the original movies saying things like, "That thing! It was a toy in the Best Catalog!" I could have been sitting next to a guy who was wearing thick glasses, holding a light saber, and wearing a shirt that said "Han Shot First", and I still would have been the biggest loser in the room.
     I think my favorite items on the page are the clocks at the top. The fact that they got a third of the page to themselves says to me that I'm not alone. They're less like clocks and more like Star Wars dioramas. I love them. My favorite part is that C-3P0 and R2-D2 can wake you up...with a conversation. This was only a good gift for kids who were light sleepers. Even I have a hard time imagining that I could be awakened from a dreaming coma by Threepio saying in his British drawl, "Hello, there. You might want to open your eyes and get up now." Yes, quite.
     I'm also amused by the shampoo bottles. No disrespect to the man in black, but Vader really loses some villainous points by being turned into a bottle containing fresh-smelling, hair-cleaning goodness. I feel bad for the fighter pilot, because you know he knows he's the least desirable of the bunch. Wait, maybe that's supposed to be Luke. Considering there were at least a dozen people in the movie dressed like that and it has an incredibly non-descript face, it could go either way. I don't have the catalog in front of me anymore to double check and I'll be darned if I dig it back out for THAT. Maybe eBay knows. Yeah, according to eBay, this was Luke Skywalker. Well, the bottle may say "Luke Skywalker", but a kid on Christmas morning was only going to see "Random X-Wing Pilot", followed closely by, "By the way, kid, this is shampoo".
     As for the watches, I won't spend time on them because we dealt with watches a few days ago. Watches are played out.