Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys Page #3

And that's probably what, uh,

lucasfilm saw in kenner,

that they had

successfully done this

with the six million

dollar man.

(Boy) Bionic eye, a-okay.

Six million dollar man,

ready for action!

(Swearingen) It came into

the office as a script

and a series of

black and white photographs.

Different locales, there were

different vehicles,

there were different characters

waiting to be turned

into a toy.

Everyone, especially

in the design department

was very intrigued

and very excited

about working on "star wars"

as a property

because it was so different

and revolutionary from what

they'd worked on before.

We were foraging

into new territory,

and a lot of us didn't even know

where we were going with it.

Like, you know, what kind

of toys would we make,

what would sell,

what wouldn't sell.

(Troy) Up until that point in

time, "Star Trek" as a license,

everything was polished.

And almost all science fiction

was done that way.

When it came to "star wars,"

all of a sudden we've had

weathered effects on things.

And I thought that was neat.

And then to put

a brand-new form

under that kind of treatment

and then sell it as a product

would be really, really nice.

(Sansweet) Bernie loomis, who was

then the president of kenner

and became very well known

in the toy business,

said, "I thought it had

a 'toyetic' appeal."

It would make an interesting

line of toys."

And they literally

signed the contract

a month before

the movie came out

in April of 1977.

Bernie loomis called me

into his office,

and he said, um,

"I want you to take your staff

to a movie this weekend."

And I said,

"Bernie, it's, uh...

It's a holiday weekend."

And he says, "so what?"

"We just bought

the rights to this movie.

I want your staff to see this."

He didn't tell me

anything about the movie.

He didn't tell me what the name

of the movie was.

At least

they paid for the tickets.

They took the whole department,

all of the development

people over,

they rented a movie theatre,

and we all hauled in

cameras in there

so we could

take pictures of the screens

looking for all the elements

in that movie

that we could create into toys.

(Narrator) ...and George Lucas

bring you an adventure...

Everybody was just blown away

at the number of machines

and all the fighters

and the robots.

(R2-d2 bleeping)

Everybody that walked out

realized that we had

something here

that was incredible.

Not a product line,

it was probably a phenomenon

about to occur.

They went into it

thinking the movie

would be out there for,

you know, a decent

period of time.

And their original

product plan was,

"okay, well,

in the first year we'll have

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