January 23, 2024 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the "Nostalgia Awakens" is a Star Wars action figure exhibit from enthusiast and museum curator Jarrod Roll. He's here to share the story of how Star Wars toys revolutionized movie merchandising, licensing, and even how children play.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
The Nostalgia Awakens is an exhibit featuring every action figure
toy made by Kenner Toys from nineteen seventy eight to
nineteen eighty five, based on the original three Star Wars movies.
(00:36):
The Star Wars toys on displayer from Jared Role, enthusiast
and museum curator from Wisconsin. He and his brother Kevin
owned many of the toys when they were children. As
an adult, Jared collected the rest of the original toys.
In part one of this two part story, we learned
that Star Wars was released in May of nineteen seventy
seven to just thirty two theaters nationwide, and Howe Lucas's
(01:00):
movie revolutionized movie merchandising, licensing, and even how kids play.
Here's Jared role with the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
One thing that Toys allowed us to do is that
we could carry on that story. We could relive that story.
You know, we could be in control of that story
that we saw on the big screen that one time.
I mean, this is before the days of VHS. This
is before the days of any way to replay this.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I didn't have any means of replaying this movie.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
If you wanted to see Star Wars multiple times, you
had to go to the theater, and being a five
year old kid, I didn't have any power over that.
But the other thing to consider too, is that it
was only at my theater for two weeks and then
it was gone, and then it came back in seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
During that summer, it was back again for two weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So we needed ways to stay connected to Star Wars
when we weren't seeing the movies.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And how do we do that? Well, the best way
was with action.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Figures, because now I can take Luke and Ben and
Walrust's man and I can recreate that scene in the Canteena,
you know, when Walrus's man tries to attack Luke and
Ben steps in and cuts his arm off. I could
do that, and then I could take Walrus's man and
I could have him be some other guy and he
could have his own adventure. And that was the great
thing about about being a kid with action figures is
(02:17):
that it allowed you to have control over this little
world and be your own storyteller, and that stuff was
important because again it was our way of re entering
that world when the movie wasn't there. You know, as
a kid, you really don't have a control over much
of anything, but here I did, and that was a
that was a special thing. When Empire Strikes Back came out,
(02:41):
Just how exciting that was, and the toys were there
waiting for us.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That was the big difference now, is that when I
came out of Empire Strikes Back, and believe.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Me, I was, you know, I was just just lit
up with the excitement, just charged coming out of there.
And and then thankfully we were able to go to
a store within a matter of a few weeks and
pick out a few toys. And that was a very
different experience then, because now the merchandising engine was churning
(03:13):
out things, lots of things for Star Wars because Kenner,
they learned their lesson the first time, they were prepared
this time, and they had wonderful product for us. And
that Christmas and the Christmas after that, we just kept
on asking for Star Wars toys. You know, granted three
years we're in between Star Wars and Empire, and then
between Empire and Jedi. There were three years, and we
(03:36):
kept engaged because you know, Kenner was smart. Every year
they would release another wave of figures in another vehicle,
and in the longevity of this of this the story
of these movies, they it's such an effect on us
that we kept engaged.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You know, kids like me and my friends, me.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Most kids were so that when Jedi came out, we
were just as excited. But then something happened. After Return
of the Jedi came out. You know, again, wonderful toys.
They're waiting for us, and we got them. You know,
we either bought them with our money we saved, or
we got them at birthdays or Christmases. But something was
beginning to change by the time Jedi left the theaters.
(04:19):
What was happening is that kids who grew up with
the original Star Wars movie and went to see Empire,
some of them were aging out. You know, they were
hitting their young teens and you know, getting into toys
isn't such a big thing for them anymore. Or if
you were still in that toy age, you were seeing
(04:39):
other toys and the toy aisles that were competing for
your parents' money or your you know, meager savings that
you had, so right next to the Return of the
Jedi toys, you had He Man and the Masters of
the Universe. You had Gi Joe, you know, the small
g I Joe's, the real American hero GI Joe's. You
had Transformers and Gobots and thunder Cats, and it just
(05:00):
doesn't stop. You have all these toys, these action figure toys,
competing for your dollar. But the biggest thing that hurt
Kenner Star Wars toys after returned the Jedi is that
George Lucas said, I'm not making any more movies. I
don't have any plans for that. And he didn't say never,
(05:21):
but he didn't say He's definitely made it clear that
nothing anytime soon. And when that happened, and the kids,
we knew that as kids, because we wanted to know.
And once we realized there's no more Star Wars, then
something kind of detaches from you. And for the reasons
I said already, you kind of turn your attention to
other things. And so Kenner tried desperately to keep us
(05:41):
coming back to the Star Wars section again. You know,
Kenner went from a small subsidiary of General Mills Foods
to one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world
because of Star Wars. They're not going to give up
easily on this brand. And in nineteen eighty five they decided, listen, Okay,
George doesn't have another movie lined up for us, why
(06:02):
don't we do something where we create a property that
sounds like another Star Wars movie even though it's not.
So they created a toy line called the Power of
the Force, complete with its own logo, and so they
have the Power of the Force toy line. The packaging
looks different, but the character is that they were making
(06:23):
the action figures and the vehicles they were all from
the first three movies, and there's some really neat figure
choices in there, like Luke and Starntrooper uniform.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
You can take off his helmet and see that it's Luke.
Really a neat figure that would have been to have
as a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But again, the problem it was just it was just
too late. They these toys did not sell.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you've been listening to Jared Roll talk about his
experience experiencing the Star Wars trilogy and all the merchandise
and imagineering that went on thereafter. It allowed the kids
to be their own storytellers. He said, as kids, we
didn't have much control of anything with our toys. We
(07:04):
did when we come back. More of Jared Roll's story,
a story about his American youth, so many Americans who
adored the Star Wars franchise and what they did with
it in their imagination and beyond. The story continues here
on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great
(07:32):
American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast
becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:53):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our
American Stories and with part two of this story for
(08:13):
museum curator Jared Roll. Let's pick up where Jared left off.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, decided to pull
the plug on the series after the first three but
the Kenner toy company decided to create a new line,
the Star Wars action figures and playsets. Here again is
Jared Role.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I recall a time, so it was in nineteen it
was probably around nineteen eighty five, could be even eighty six,
stopping at a pharmacy and walking past to the magazine isle,
and there was what we call a dump bin, and
that's a square shaped table with low sides, and inside
is this stuff they're trying to clearance out. And this
(08:56):
dump bin had Star Wars figures in it, Power the
Force figures. So I remember stop and picking one up
and looking at it, and here was a Han Solo
and carbonite figure.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The kind of cool idea.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It was neat. It was like the Hansolo figure and
you had a piece of carbonite and you can put
them in the block and see them through it. And
I remember looking at I think that's kind of neat,
but eh, I don't whatever. And what struck me too
is I remember this looking at the price tag. There
were like three or four layers of price stickers on it,
and the top one said sixty nine cents because they
were just you know, they're probably like two ninety five,
(09:27):
two fifty dollars ninety five sixty nine cents, you know,
just clearancing this stuff out. That figure today is worth
thousands because kids like me looked at him and said
and tossed them right back in there, and we went
and bought a Thundercat instead, or we went and just
bought a magazine about music. I don't know what we
were into, but we weren't buying that stuff and nobody did.
(09:48):
And because of that, some of those toys, the power
of the Force Line, they are the most coveted among collectors,
and they're so cool to see because it wasn't until
I was an adult collector that I even knew they
made a lot of the stuff that they made towards
the end because they just didn't hit the shelves. So
like a lot of kids, at this point, you know,
we move on either to other toys or stop getting toys.
(10:10):
But my toys were very valuable to me. And so
even though I was, you know, in my teenage years,
I did store my toys in actually one big old
refrigerator box in the garage of my parents' house. And
you know, I grew up, you know, went to college,
and it was shortly after graduating from high school. I
(10:31):
went to a record convention in Milwaukee. But one of
the vendors at this record convention sold a newspaper, a
trade newspaper where you could buy and sell music, but
they also sold one for buying and selling antiques.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And all of a sudden, I.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Look and here is the Millennium falcon and somebody is
saying that they're selling one for eighty dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So like, wait a minute, you mean the stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
From my childhood now has value. I mean, it was
an expensive toy, but it wasn't eighty dollars dollars and
they're saying eighty dollars and it's not even in the box.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So after a.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
While, I'm hunched over this this booth and I start kneeling,
and then I sit on the floor and I'm looking
at this and the woman working at the booths she's like,
you can just take that home with you now, you
seem to be really.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Attached to you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm like, oh, thanks. So I took it home and
I poured over inch by inch, and that got me thinking,
I need to know, you know, I need to go
look at my toys for my childhood, because if they
have value, I could be rich, you know. I think
that was one of the ideas that went through my
head that And you just want to know, do I
still have all these things? So I go home in
(11:34):
my parents' place. So I was my first year of
college at the time. But I go home and I dig.
They got this big box in the garage, and I
was a little sad because they weren't as white in
pristine as I remembered them.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
But I still had a lot of them. But now
I've got this new.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Bug inside of me that wants them all like I
want the things I never had as a kid.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
How am I going to do that?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, this was nineteen ninety two and and there was,
you know, before the Internet for anything like that.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So I started.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I started typing up lists on a typewriter of the
things I wanted, or handwriting notices, little little flyers, and
I hung them up in laundromats in my hometown. I
hung them up in the grocery stores when you first
go in. There's a little community board there. And there
was a radio call and show on our local polka
music station called WTKM where you could call in by
(12:31):
selling swap. And I, you know, I'm saying, hey, I'm
looking for Star Wars toys. You know, if you've got any,
to give me a call. And in some ways it
worked because what had happened is that at the same
time this is happening, moms all over the United States
are getting rid of their kids' toys. Kids from my generation,
(12:51):
we're going off the college. Mom's cleaning out the house,
and they're like, they're not going to want these toys anymore.
And so they're calling me and they're saying, yeah, I've
got my kid a lot of this stuff. You know,
he's he's moved away or whatever. Come and take a
look at it. So I'd go to their house and
on their dining room table there'd be a selection of toys,
like a whole mix. I always remember I go there,
(13:12):
I don't just ask for Star Wars stuff, but there'd
be some some Gi Jos, you know, some adventure people,
just a whole.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Mix of things. And you know, the mom didn't know.
She just called them all.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Star Wars toys. And I said, Okay, I'll just take
this one and this one, and she's like, oh no, no, no,
you're gonna buy all everything. It's all or nothing like okay,
so I just bought it all up, I brought it home.
But it wasn't until George Lucas announced in nineteen ninety three,
I believe it was. He said, I have plans to
make more Star Wars movies. And when he said that,
(13:45):
all of a sudden, people from my generation like, whoa
Star Wars? I love Star Wars?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Can you believe that there's gonna be more movies?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And then shortly after that announcement, there was an announcement,
a followup announcement saying that he was going to really
least the original trilogy special editions, and that came out
in ninety seven. So in ninety three ninety four, are
you're starting to hear rumblings of Star Wars coming back
and that's kind of waking things up in us.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
They're like, well, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Around that same time, Kenner Toys is bought by Hasbro Toys.
Now Hasbro they're big, They're one of the big two
toy companies. They always have been. You know, they're known
best for Gi Joe, I guess. But Hasbro is huge
and they buy Kenner and in nineteen ninety five they
do something that we never thought would happen, and that
is they started creating Star Wars action figure toys again.
(14:37):
So in ten first time in ten years, action figure
toys are in the toy aisle. By the way, this
is a new thing, though. We're adults who collect toys,
and we're you know, we've got a lot of purchasing power,
and we're hungry for this stuff. So up to that point,
people like me were now we're buying vintage Star Wars toys,
(14:58):
and the price was started going up.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I saw it right away. I'm like, oh man.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But then now that we have new Star Wars product,
We're thinking two things.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
One this stuff is awesome. I want it. And two,
this stuff is awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I want it, And I'm going to buy two of them,
two of everything, one to open and to enjoy and
one to store away because it's going to be worth
something big, just like my childhood toys. Well, we know
it never happened, but at the time we thought it
was a good plan.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
So we're buying up all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And I remember it was in two thousand and one
and I'm sitting in my office at my apartment and
I get.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
A package in the mail. Normally, is it really exciting,
and I open it up and like, oh, I know
what this is.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
This is a twelve inch figure of four Lom He
was a bounty hunter from Empire strikes Back, and they
made a nice twelve inch figure, very detailed, with the
right weapons, and it's just a beautiful twelve inch figure.
But I remember holding in my hands and thinking, I
don't feel anything up.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
About this, like there's no I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I it was like I feel nothing for this anymore,
for this new stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
And that really marked the end of.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Toy collecting, especially the new stuff, and so I just
packed everything up and put it aside, and that was
it for toy collecting for a while for me.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And then life continued to happen. You know, I got married,
I have kids.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
And yet these toys is kind of follow me around,
and you know, I wasn't collecting anymore, but they were taking.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Up a lot of space.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And then that brings me to twenty fifteen. In the
winter of twenty fifteen, when my colleagues said, Jared didn't
she used to collect toys Star Wars toys? What if
he brought those out and he put them on display
in anticipation of this new movie that's coming out, and
so those a lot of those new toys. I then
started just dumping, just selling for whatever I could get,
(17:02):
but I got it out of my house and I
was able to earn some money to buy some of
those pieces that eventually went on display in what I
called the Nostalgia Awakens, which is the exhibit that I
created of all the vintage Star Wars toys which I
still still love, and I'm grateful to be able to
share it with so many people of my generation who
(17:23):
have those same feelings and memories of Star Wars and childhood.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
As I knew.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And a special thanks to Greg Hangler for a great
job producing that piece and getting the story. And also
a special thanks to Jared Role. The story of Jared
Roll and the story of Star Wars and how young
people and older people across this country and around the
world reacted to this American classic trilogy. Here on our
(17:51):
American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
The Nostalgia Awakens is an exhibit featuring every action figure
toy made by Kenner Toys from nineteen seventy eight to
nineteen eighty five, based on the original three Star Wars movies.
(00:36):
The Star Wars toys on displayer from Jared Role, enthusiast
and museum curator from Wisconsin. He and his brother Kevin
owned many of the toys when they were children. As
an adult, Jared collected the rest of the original toys.
In part one of this two part story, we learned
that Star Wars was released in May of nineteen seventy
seven to just thirty two theaters nationwide, and Howe Lucas's
(01:00):
movie revolutionized movie merchandising, licensing, and even how kids play.
Here's Jared role with the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
One thing that Toys allowed us to do is that
we could carry on that story. We could relive that story.
You know, we could be in control of that story
that we saw on the big screen that one time.
I mean, this is before the days of VHS. This
is before the days of any way to replay this.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I didn't have any means of replaying this movie.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
If you wanted to see Star Wars multiple times, you
had to go to the theater, and being a five
year old kid, I didn't have any power over that.
But the other thing to consider too, is that it
was only at my theater for two weeks and then
it was gone, and then it came back in seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
During that summer, it was back again for two weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So we needed ways to stay connected to Star Wars
when we weren't seeing the movies.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And how do we do that? Well, the best way
was with action.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Figures, because now I can take Luke and Ben and
Walrust's man and I can recreate that scene in the Canteena,
you know, when Walrus's man tries to attack Luke and
Ben steps in and cuts his arm off. I could
do that, and then I could take Walrus's man and
I could have him be some other guy and he
could have his own adventure. And that was the great
thing about about being a kid with action figures is
(02:17):
that it allowed you to have control over this little
world and be your own storyteller, and that stuff was
important because again it was our way of re entering
that world when the movie wasn't there. You know, as
a kid, you really don't have a control over much
of anything, but here I did, and that was a
that was a special thing. When Empire Strikes Back came out,
(02:41):
Just how exciting that was, and the toys were there
waiting for us.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That was the big difference now, is that when I
came out of Empire Strikes Back, and believe.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Me, I was, you know, I was just just lit
up with the excitement, just charged coming out of there.
And and then thankfully we were able to go to
a store within a matter of a few weeks and
pick out a few toys. And that was a very
different experience then, because now the merchandising engine was churning
(03:13):
out things, lots of things for Star Wars because Kenner,
they learned their lesson the first time, they were prepared
this time, and they had wonderful product for us. And
that Christmas and the Christmas after that, we just kept
on asking for Star Wars toys. You know, granted three
years we're in between Star Wars and Empire, and then
between Empire and Jedi. There were three years, and we
(03:36):
kept engaged because you know, Kenner was smart. Every year
they would release another wave of figures in another vehicle,
and in the longevity of this of this the story
of these movies, they it's such an effect on us
that we kept engaged.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You know, kids like me and my friends, me.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Most kids were so that when Jedi came out, we
were just as excited. But then something happened. After Return
of the Jedi came out. You know, again, wonderful toys.
They're waiting for us, and we got them. You know,
we either bought them with our money we saved, or
we got them at birthdays or Christmases. But something was
beginning to change by the time Jedi left the theaters.
(04:19):
What was happening is that kids who grew up with
the original Star Wars movie and went to see Empire,
some of them were aging out. You know, they were
hitting their young teens and you know, getting into toys
isn't such a big thing for them anymore. Or if
you were still in that toy age, you were seeing
(04:39):
other toys and the toy aisles that were competing for
your parents' money or your you know, meager savings that
you had, so right next to the Return of the
Jedi toys, you had He Man and the Masters of
the Universe. You had Gi Joe, you know, the small
g I Joe's, the real American hero GI Joe's. You
had Transformers and Gobots and thunder Cats, and it just
(05:00):
doesn't stop. You have all these toys, these action figure toys,
competing for your dollar. But the biggest thing that hurt
Kenner Star Wars toys after returned the Jedi is that
George Lucas said, I'm not making any more movies. I
don't have any plans for that. And he didn't say never,
(05:21):
but he didn't say He's definitely made it clear that
nothing anytime soon. And when that happened, and the kids,
we knew that as kids, because we wanted to know.
And once we realized there's no more Star Wars, then
something kind of detaches from you. And for the reasons
I said already, you kind of turn your attention to
other things. And so Kenner tried desperately to keep us
(05:41):
coming back to the Star Wars section again. You know,
Kenner went from a small subsidiary of General Mills Foods
to one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world
because of Star Wars. They're not going to give up
easily on this brand. And in nineteen eighty five they decided, listen, Okay,
George doesn't have another movie lined up for us, why
(06:02):
don't we do something where we create a property that
sounds like another Star Wars movie even though it's not.
So they created a toy line called the Power of
the Force, complete with its own logo, and so they
have the Power of the Force toy line. The packaging
looks different, but the character is that they were making
(06:23):
the action figures and the vehicles they were all from
the first three movies, and there's some really neat figure
choices in there, like Luke and Starntrooper uniform.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
You can take off his helmet and see that it's Luke.
Really a neat figure that would have been to have
as a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But again, the problem it was just it was just
too late. They these toys did not sell.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you've been listening to Jared Roll talk about his
experience experiencing the Star Wars trilogy and all the merchandise
and imagineering that went on thereafter. It allowed the kids
to be their own storytellers. He said, as kids, we
didn't have much control of anything with our toys. We
(07:04):
did when we come back. More of Jared Roll's story,
a story about his American youth, so many Americans who
adored the Star Wars franchise and what they did with
it in their imagination and beyond. The story continues here
on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great
(07:32):
American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast
becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:53):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our
American Stories and with part two of this story for
(08:13):
museum curator Jared Roll. Let's pick up where Jared left off.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, decided to pull
the plug on the series after the first three but
the Kenner toy company decided to create a new line,
the Star Wars action figures and playsets. Here again is
Jared Role.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
I recall a time, so it was in nineteen it
was probably around nineteen eighty five, could be even eighty six,
stopping at a pharmacy and walking past to the magazine isle,
and there was what we call a dump bin, and
that's a square shaped table with low sides, and inside
is this stuff they're trying to clearance out. And this
(08:56):
dump bin had Star Wars figures in it, Power the
Force figures. So I remember stop and picking one up
and looking at it, and here was a Han Solo
and carbonite figure.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The kind of cool idea.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It was neat. It was like the Hansolo figure and
you had a piece of carbonite and you can put
them in the block and see them through it. And
I remember looking at I think that's kind of neat,
but eh, I don't whatever. And what struck me too
is I remember this looking at the price tag. There
were like three or four layers of price stickers on it,
and the top one said sixty nine cents because they
were just you know, they're probably like two ninety five,
(09:27):
two fifty dollars ninety five sixty nine cents, you know,
just clearancing this stuff out. That figure today is worth
thousands because kids like me looked at him and said
and tossed them right back in there, and we went
and bought a Thundercat instead, or we went and just
bought a magazine about music. I don't know what we
were into, but we weren't buying that stuff and nobody did.
(09:48):
And because of that, some of those toys, the power
of the Force Line, they are the most coveted among collectors,
and they're so cool to see because it wasn't until
I was an adult collector that I even knew they
made a lot of the stuff that they made towards
the end because they just didn't hit the shelves. So
like a lot of kids, at this point, you know,
we move on either to other toys or stop getting toys.
(10:10):
But my toys were very valuable to me. And so
even though I was, you know, in my teenage years,
I did store my toys in actually one big old
refrigerator box in the garage of my parents' house. And
you know, I grew up, you know, went to college,
and it was shortly after graduating from high school. I
(10:31):
went to a record convention in Milwaukee. But one of
the vendors at this record convention sold a newspaper, a
trade newspaper where you could buy and sell music, but
they also sold one for buying and selling antiques.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And all of a sudden, I.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Look and here is the Millennium falcon and somebody is
saying that they're selling one for eighty dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So like, wait a minute, you mean the stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
From my childhood now has value. I mean, it was
an expensive toy, but it wasn't eighty dollars dollars and
they're saying eighty dollars and it's not even in the box.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So after a.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
While, I'm hunched over this this booth and I start kneeling,
and then I sit on the floor and I'm looking
at this and the woman working at the booths she's like,
you can just take that home with you now, you
seem to be really.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Attached to you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm like, oh, thanks. So I took it home and
I poured over inch by inch, and that got me thinking,
I need to know, you know, I need to go
look at my toys for my childhood, because if they
have value, I could be rich, you know. I think
that was one of the ideas that went through my
head that And you just want to know, do I
still have all these things? So I go home in
(11:34):
my parents' place. So I was my first year of
college at the time. But I go home and I dig.
They got this big box in the garage, and I
was a little sad because they weren't as white in
pristine as I remembered them.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
But I still had a lot of them. But now
I've got this new.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Bug inside of me that wants them all like I
want the things I never had as a kid.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
How am I going to do that?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, this was nineteen ninety two and and there was,
you know, before the Internet for anything like that.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So I started.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I started typing up lists on a typewriter of the
things I wanted, or handwriting notices, little little flyers, and
I hung them up in laundromats in my hometown. I
hung them up in the grocery stores when you first
go in. There's a little community board there. And there
was a radio call and show on our local polka
music station called WTKM where you could call in by
(12:31):
selling swap. And I, you know, I'm saying, hey, I'm
looking for Star Wars toys. You know, if you've got any,
to give me a call. And in some ways it
worked because what had happened is that at the same
time this is happening, moms all over the United States
are getting rid of their kids' toys. Kids from my generation,
(12:51):
we're going off the college. Mom's cleaning out the house,
and they're like, they're not going to want these toys anymore.
And so they're calling me and they're saying, yeah, I've
got my kid a lot of this stuff. You know,
he's he's moved away or whatever. Come and take a
look at it. So I'd go to their house and
on their dining room table there'd be a selection of toys,
like a whole mix. I always remember I go there,
(13:12):
I don't just ask for Star Wars stuff, but there'd
be some some Gi Jos, you know, some adventure people,
just a whole.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Mix of things. And you know, the mom didn't know.
She just called them all.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Star Wars toys. And I said, Okay, I'll just take
this one and this one, and she's like, oh no, no, no,
you're gonna buy all everything. It's all or nothing like okay,
so I just bought it all up, I brought it home.
But it wasn't until George Lucas announced in nineteen ninety three,
I believe it was. He said, I have plans to
make more Star Wars movies. And when he said that,
(13:45):
all of a sudden, people from my generation like, whoa
Star Wars? I love Star Wars?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Can you believe that there's gonna be more movies?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And then shortly after that announcement, there was an announcement,
a followup announcement saying that he was going to really
least the original trilogy special editions, and that came out
in ninety seven. So in ninety three ninety four, are
you're starting to hear rumblings of Star Wars coming back
and that's kind of waking things up in us.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
They're like, well, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Around that same time, Kenner Toys is bought by Hasbro Toys.
Now Hasbro they're big, They're one of the big two
toy companies. They always have been. You know, they're known
best for Gi Joe, I guess. But Hasbro is huge
and they buy Kenner and in nineteen ninety five they
do something that we never thought would happen, and that
is they started creating Star Wars action figure toys again.
(14:37):
So in ten first time in ten years, action figure
toys are in the toy aisle. By the way, this
is a new thing, though. We're adults who collect toys,
and we're you know, we've got a lot of purchasing power,
and we're hungry for this stuff. So up to that point,
people like me were now we're buying vintage Star Wars toys,
(14:58):
and the price was started going up.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I saw it right away. I'm like, oh man.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But then now that we have new Star Wars product,
We're thinking two things.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
One this stuff is awesome. I want it. And two,
this stuff is awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I want it, And I'm going to buy two of them,
two of everything, one to open and to enjoy and
one to store away because it's going to be worth
something big, just like my childhood toys. Well, we know
it never happened, but at the time we thought it
was a good plan.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
So we're buying up all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And I remember it was in two thousand and one
and I'm sitting in my office at my apartment and
I get.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
A package in the mail. Normally, is it really exciting,
and I open it up and like, oh, I know
what this is.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
This is a twelve inch figure of four Lom He
was a bounty hunter from Empire strikes Back, and they
made a nice twelve inch figure, very detailed, with the
right weapons, and it's just a beautiful twelve inch figure.
But I remember holding in my hands and thinking, I
don't feel anything up.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
About this, like there's no I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I it was like I feel nothing for this anymore,
for this new stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
And that really marked the end of.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Toy collecting, especially the new stuff, and so I just
packed everything up and put it aside, and that was
it for toy collecting for a while for me.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
And then life continued to happen. You know, I got married,
I have kids.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
And yet these toys is kind of follow me around,
and you know, I wasn't collecting anymore, but they were taking.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Up a lot of space.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And then that brings me to twenty fifteen. In the
winter of twenty fifteen, when my colleagues said, Jared didn't
she used to collect toys Star Wars toys? What if
he brought those out and he put them on display
in anticipation of this new movie that's coming out, and
so those a lot of those new toys. I then
started just dumping, just selling for whatever I could get,
(17:02):
but I got it out of my house and I
was able to earn some money to buy some of
those pieces that eventually went on display in what I
called the Nostalgia Awakens, which is the exhibit that I
created of all the vintage Star Wars toys which I
still still love, and I'm grateful to be able to
share it with so many people of my generation who
(17:23):
have those same feelings and memories of Star Wars and childhood.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
As I knew.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And a special thanks to Greg Hangler for a great
job producing that piece and getting the story. And also
a special thanks to Jared Role. The story of Jared
Roll and the story of Star Wars and how young
people and older people across this country and around the
world reacted to this American classic trilogy. Here on our
(17:51):
American Story
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