I have a little present for you… keep reading!
Anyone who’s been within a mile of a geek is aware that the Star Wars franchise continues to exert its influence on popular culture. Yet, in the 30+ years since its initial release, I think that we’ve forgotten the ferocity with which that space opera seized our collective imagination… it was a massively incredible time to be a kid… a time when words like “wookie” and “darth” and “R2-D2” were alien and exotic and felt wrong and strange and wonderful when spoken aloud.
The First Age of Star Wars stretched easily from 1977 into 1978, and yet there was very little merchandise marketing to take advantage of the movie’s staggering popularity. In time, Star Wars and its ilk would pave the way for today’s relentless merchandise marketing machines, but in that very first year there was little preparation by the studio or its licensees and intellectual property theft was rampant. It was a time when you could glue the words “Star” and “Wars” onto your product and make a million dollars.
Take, for instance, the following treasure stored safely below ground in the depths of the Drewcave, replete with children-drawn illustrations of creatures and characters from Star Wars (click here to download (note!!! this is a 14.7MB PDF). This isn’t a joke or a fabrication, but a real scan of a real book given to our class for the 1977-78 school season… a rare first glimpse into a burgeoning Star Wars phenomenon that has endured and is nearly as popular today as it was back then.
How It Was Made
I removed the original staples of this book and set them aside before scanning in each page. After scanning, the pages were straightened in Adobe Photoshop and then broken into single pages and placed into Adobe InDesign, before being exported as a PDF.
Thanks for the memories!!!