25 Wonderful Things No.6

Doctor Who fans that are looking forward to their imminent pensions will remember with fondness the "Dalekmania" of the mid-1960's, when a merchandising craze for Daleks swept the UK.

Well, that was nothing compared the global merchandising phenomenon that surged in the wake of Proper Star Wars and its sequels.

Tuesday 6th December

I had considered just talking about Star Wars here (or "Episode IV: A New Hope" as we are meant to call it now), but to coin a cliche, it really is a subject that is just too broad and too deep for the small Security Kitchen screen.

Being a child of 1972, I have scant few childhood memories that fall into a pre-Star Wars bracket. Yet I can vividly recall standing in the stationary department of Sokell's and wondering what the golden coloured man and the blue and white dustbin were doing on a packet of pencils.

Maybe if my mother hadn't bought that packet of pencils, I wouldn't have got where I am today.

In other words, I was fascinated and hooked, and for six years became the most painfully intense Star Wars fan in town.

But it wasn't all pencils, oh no.

My recollection for childhood tat is pretty good, but even I have a hard time remembering the sheer bloody volume of stuff with a Star Wars logo on it that ended up in my toy cupboard and bookshelves. (And a quick trawl around the Internet will make my parents grateful that they hadn't lived in America back then. My mania would have bankrupted them).

But it was the toys and the figures that did it for me, and after a very slow start, I soon managed to increase my collection by bi-weekly visits to Hull. (Debenhams always yielded one figure, as the toy department was next to the in-store cafe that my mother liked).

The first figure I ever got was R2-D2, which was soon modified with the aid of a screwdriver to stop it making that damn annoying clicking noise when you turned its head.

And the second was that chap you see up there.

At which point I seemed to get stuck for quite a while with just two figures. But I do recall I bitter winter afternoon, playing on the back of the living room sofa while my mother was ironing.

In the days before double-glazing and central heating, exciting adventures on the surface of Hoth could easily be re-enacted on a domestic window sill....