The Toys That Made Us (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Star Wars
1 [CHARLIE.]
Mostly unknowns.
But the princess is Debbie Reynolds' daughter.
Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain? Yeah.
That's great.
Great movie.
John, we got the dailies up.
- You got five minutes.
- Come on.
Everybody get ready in five.
- Hey, John.
- Hey, Charlie.
Hey.
So this is Jim Swearingen from Kenner.
He's designing the toys.
Should have been here yesterday.
We blew up the Death Star.
- Wow! - You wanna go check out the model? That's the smuggler ship.
And I'm, like, "My gosh.
" This is everything I was This is what I wanted.
Now I'm pumped to make the very first Star Wars toys.
[NARRATOR.]
A month later, Star Wars opened, and the world was changed forever.
Now, unless you've been frozen in carbonite [BOBA FETT TOY.]
Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.
you know how big Star Wars is.
But consider this.
The Star Wars films to date have roughly made $7 billion at the box office.
The toys have made twice that amount.
[NARRATOR.]
That's $14 billion worth of childhood joy that helped shape generations of us fans.
The original Millennium Falcon and the figures, we had a blast with those.
[BOY ON TV.]
Luke Skywalker wins again.
[NARRATOR.]
Forty years later, the kids of the '70s and '80s who played with Star Wars toys have grown up.
- To some extent.
- There goes his rocket.
[NARRATOR.]
And now a community of collectors spans the globe, men and women who put great passion into their toy collections and search out rare, one-of-a-kind treasures.
[MAN.]
This would've been an emperor on a throne, but it never came to fruition.
The toys were so cool at the time 'cause there was so many of 'em.
[NARRATOR.]
And we'll ask why these little lumps of inexpensive plastic are worth so much to us.
These toys have become my life.
[NARRATOR.]
This is the story of those toys.
They flew off the shelves.
[NARRATOR.]
And the people that created them.
You got to see this Darth Vader.
He is a mean, huge bastard.
These are The Toys that Made Us.
It's an eight-part documentary series About the toys that we all know Plastic creations That last for generations And we still cannot let go Little molded figures That gave us big dreams We'll go back in time And behind the scenes - It's The Toys that Made Us - Toys that Made Us The Toys that Made Us is here [NARRATOR.]
Imagine, if you will, a time before Star Wars, in this barren Jedi-less wasteland.
Fire! [NARRATOR.]
Kids were having a great time and the toy industry was booming.
Time bomb! [NARRATOR.]
The most popular toys were Barbie and G.
I.
Joe.
[MAN OVER TV.]
G.
I.
Joe has 21 movable parts.
[NARRATOR.]
Posable, dressable and 12 inches tall.
Toys were big business, mostly thanks to the small screen.
[MAN 2 OVER TV.]
Hey, kids, look.
[NARRATOR.]
Huge sales were driven by television advertising.
[WOMAN OVER TV.]
The Easy-Bake mix in here [NARRATOR.]
And even TV shows made for successful toy lines.
Parents had their hands full keeping up.
But what about that other popular medium, the big screen, where the magic of the movies doesn't sell toys at all? The problem with a movie is a movie comes into theaters, it's there for a month or two, then it goes away.
There's nothing to constantly remind kids that you need to go buy a new toy or a new action figure in that line.
[NARRATOR.]
But by the mid '70s, things were about to change, because 20th Century Fox had just teamed up with a maverick filmmaker, George Lucas.
He had some sci-fi script with a good story and some really interesting conceptual art he thought probably would make good toys.
Lucas, back then, had such a belief in the film and in the toys that I think a lot of people thought he was nuts.
[NARRATOR.]
Nuts or just plain crazy? The film's release date was a mere six months away.
He'd need to find someone to make his toys, and fast.
Ideally, it's better to shop for toy deals two years before the release of the picture, but George wouldn't authorize us to do that for reasons of secrecy having these pictures of these unique models out because somebody might knock him off.
[NARRATOR.]
As the man in charge of selling the toy license, Marc Pevers had an uphill battle.
Mattel turned us down, Hasbro turned us down, Parker Brothers turned us down.
Ideal, every toy company that we went to turned us down.
[NARRATOR.]
Marc had obviously never been to Cincinnati, where a little toy company named Kenner sat perched on the 11th floor of the Kroger Building.
Kenner was not a large company at all.
It was a smaller company, not a company that was a California company and not the megalopolis of New York.
It was located in the Midwest.
It's Kenner.
It's fun.
[SQUAWKS.]
"It's Kenner.
It's fun.
" [JIM.]
The script for Star Wars came into Kenner.
Somebody said, "Does anyone wanna take a look?" And I said, "I'll take it.
" [NARRATOR.]
Kenner senior product designer Jim Swearingen was a sci-fi fan and he'd been following George Lucas's career.
It was one of those serendipitous things.
It was so obvious to a designer that it was gonna be something great.
So, I brought it back the next morning, gave it to Dave Okada, my boss, and said, "Go in your office, read this.
We have to do it.
" The thing read so well, and Jim said what the rest of us echoed.
We all felt that it was a great script.
The whole group was behind it, even though we all knew the movie timing was awful.
It was a movie opening in May of '77.
At that time, it took at least a year to get into production.
The process that was used to get toys out was they had to get the creative.
The creative had to be approved by the licensor, had to go back to the licensee to make whatever changes.
Then after you did everything on paper, you had to do a prototype.
That had to be approved.
You had to make sure manufacturing could do what you said you wanted to do.
You had to go back to the licensor again and again and again.
And then you had to go to the Orient to do what you wanted done.
There were a lot of steps.
We wouldn't have product out until months after the movie opens.
We had to at least give it a shot.
[NARRATOR.]
But before they could pitch to Lucasfilm, Dave and Jim had to convince the head of Kenner, Bernie Loomis, that this script that everybody else had turned down was worth doing.
He was old school.
We called him the Bear.
He was a big, big guy.
When he shook your hand, you felt it.
He brought chutzpah, energy, balls.
[DAVE.]
He was self-made, self-taught, smart as a whip, he could do crossword puzzles faster than anybody, and he knew toys.
And we called him the Boss with the Golden Gut.
Bernie had a word called "toyetic.
" Toyetic.
Something was very playable, if it had a kind of a toy quality to it.
- Property's got to be toyetic.
- Toyetic.
Yes.
Toyetic.
Star Wars was toyetic.
[NARRATOR.]
The Golden Gut had spoken, so the Kenner team put all their efforts into creating a series of figures to present to the Lucas team in California.
But first, some big decisions had to be made.
We worked on large action figures.
Mattel has large action figures.
Hasbro has large action figures.
Ken, he was a big boy.
Obvious that we weren't gonna be able to do an X-wing fighter for a 12-inch figure.
We wanted to give them the world of Star Wars.
We wanna give them vehicles.
We wanna give them If we could give them the Death Star, we'd give them a Death Star.
Had to be small but not too small.
Big but not too big.
We went up to see Bernie and say, "Hey, Bernie, you have to make a quick decision on how tall Luke should be.
" Luke determined the line.
Bernie says, "I understand.
" He says, "Okay.
" And he put his fist over the table between him and me and said, "Dave, here's my executive decision.
Luke is gonna be this big," and he spread his thumb and forefinger, and these were like two big Dodger hot dogs in the air.
I took my steel ruler out.
"Three and three-quarter inches.
" And Bernie says, "That's it.
That's gonna be the standard for our Star Wars line.
" The ruler said three and three-quarters and that's what they would be.
And Bernie says, "Great.
When do I get to see it?" And we moved so fast.
[JIM.]
We were starting from scratch and there was no way to get action figures done in time.
So, I found some truck drivers from Fisher-Price.
I hate to say that, but they were articulated figures, so we could take them and carve 'em up and whittling them down to taking some body putty, you know, the Bondo that you use on your car, and modeling the helmets for stormtroopers.
We now call it kitbashing.
Everyone was working like demons to get this presentation ready.
We flew out the following morning to show George Lucas, but we suddenly realized that, "We needed those tiny little Jawas.
" And so I said, "I'll do it.
Why not?" So I kitbashed, truly kitbashed the Jawa and I had to drape them with desert garb.
But then I couldn't find the right fabric.
And no matter where I looked around the department, I couldn't find it.
But then I looked down at my feet and I saw I was wearing brown socks.
And so I took off my shoe, like I'm doing now, and I cut the sock up and I put it over the Jawa and it looked pretty darn good.
"But I hope George Lucas doesn't get too close to that.
" We kept showing that thing with my sticky sock for weeks.
We took the morning flight out of Cincinnati.
And landed in Los Angeles Airport.
We drive up to 20th Century Fox, but George Lucas couldn't make it.
He was doing the movie, but we gave the presentation anyway.
We showed features like how they would articulate, how they could move the heads, and the legs.
and they would stand up.
And we had peg holes under their feet so they could really stand up, but they could also stand up on their own.
And they all got it.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a triumph for the creative team, and Dave's sock.
[MAN WHOOPS.]
They weren't willing to write a check yet.
- Go! - Time was running out.
So, both Kenner and Lucas were working on the assumption that a deal would be reached.
[JIM.]
We don't care what's going on with the deal.
If we're gonna do this, how are we gonna do X-wings and TIE fighters? We didn't have blueprints or drawings or anything.
We had a couple of photographs, so we're modeling things based on kind of rough ideas of what things look like.
This is what the TIE fighters started out looking like.
Changed quite a bit after we got some better photography and better information.
Lucasfilm invited us to come out to California, and see more of what was going on.
It turned out I got to take the trip.
So I went through blueprints and drawings, and all kinds of stuff about Death Stars and all these vehicles that they'd done.
So, this is the original X-wing fighter, a TIE fighter.
Just, you know, piles of this stuff, and they let us go through it and look at things that we might do for the toy line.
[NARRATOR.]
While Jim studied spaceship plans in California, back in Cincinnati, the plan for a deal was still in the works, and they were cutting it close.
So, in April of 1977, only a month before Star Wars hits theaters, Bernie Loomis, he strikes a deal with 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm.
[PETE.]
Bernie was incredibly excited about it.
The original deal was close to a handshake, and it didn't cost us much to get involved with it.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a great deal for Kenner.
For every dollar the toys made, Lucas and Fox would split a nickel, and Kenner would get 95 cents.
When you think about that in the context of what has happened with Star Wars, this is an unmatchable deal.
[NARRATOR.]
But remember, George didn't have much choice because Every toy company turned us down.
[NARRATOR.]
And it wasn't long until they realized their mistake.
When the film opened, it was a hit, obviously.
You never ask anyone, "Have you seen Star Wars?" The question you would ask is, "How many times?" You knew you had a tiger by the tail.
[NARRATOR.]
As the film began breaking box office records, back in Cincinnati, the Kenner team struggled to fill a market devoid of any Star Wars toys whatsoever.
How did we get into this mess? [RON.]
When they went to see the movie, some of them were making notes and whatnot of what to incorporate into the stuff they were gonna go back and try to push out as quickly as possible to get it on store shelves.
The deadlines were coming faster and faster, and we wouldn't have any meaningful toys by Christmastime.
By December 1977, Star Wars is the highest-grossing film of all time.
All people wanted was, "When will the figures be available? When will the X-wing fighters, TIE fighters, landspeeders When will the product be available?" [NARRATOR.]
Without anything to sell to a frenzied market, Kenner's team put their thinking caps on.
Um [NARRATOR.]
And what they came up with was a two-part plan.
The first part of the plan is to create anything that can be made quickly, usually picture-based products, puzzles, board games.
The Force is with you.
[PETE.]
Bop Bags, puzzles, paint sets Things that don't require as much safety-checking.
[NARRATOR.]
And if it'd already been safety-checked, all the better.
Early on, they recycled a lot of toys.
Here we have the Red Baron, and there the Death Star.
This is a perfect example of what's called label-slapping.
Basically, all they did was change the color of the plastic, slap some different stickers on it, and, boom, you have a whole new product.
Label-slapping was taking any toy and slapping Star Wars on it.
You got an Easy-Bake Oven, if you got one for boys, put a Star Wars label on it.
Make cakes for the Wookiees.
[ROARS.]
The scariest and riskiest part of the plan was the second phase, which Loomis calls the loneliest decision that he ever made in his life.
And that was to release at Christmas something called [MAN OVER TV.]
The Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package, new from Kenner.
Which is, in essence, an empty box [MAN OVER TV.]
With this colorful Star Wars picture display stand and certificate to send in to get a set of figures by mail.
[JOHN.]
that promised kids that they would be the first in the galaxy to receive four action figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and R2-D2 in the Kenner line.
But Loomis' plan really was brilliant.
It told kids at Christmastime, "They are coming, we promise.
" [NARRATOR.]
And luckily the promises weren't as empty as the boxes, because in spring of '78, Kenner was ready.
It had been nearly a year since the film premiered, and now, finally [MAN OVER TV.]
It's Kenner's new Star Wars action figures, each sold separately.
Someone's coming, Chewie.
- Who's there? - It's Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.
[BOY.]
Now I know the Force is with us.
When the first boxes were delivered, they never even reached the retail counter.
People dove into the boxes.
People were literally attacked when they saw these boxes coming out.
These are the first 12 Star Wars action figures, Princess Leia, Han Solo, the Death Squad Commander.
His name's later changed to the Star Destroyer Commander for kids.
The guys would get their initial stocking and sell it out in three days.
This was the risk of all risks, in a toy product that hardly anyone had any confidence in backing.
Show me what you got.
We had never experienced anything like this.
[NEWSCASTER.]
Industry-wide sales are up by almost 8%, most of the increase attributable to the space toys craze.
Twenty-two million figures per year.
[NEWSCASTER.]
Cincinnati-based Kenner Corporation sales are up 40%, and Kenner officials say the movie Star Wars is responsible.
Just unbelievable.
[NARRATOR.]
It was also unbelievable that nearly two years after the launch of the toys, Kenner and Lucas were still operating under that initial deal memo.
We hadn't even signed an official contract at that time.
They were still working on deal points.
[NARRATOR.]
Hoping to flesh out those deal points, Kenner assigned Jim Kipling, their best and only lawyer.
I'm Jim Kipling.
[NARRATOR.]
And it was Jim's destiny to represent the little toy company from Cincinnati who had risen from obscurity and made it big in the toy world.
I put into the draft that Kenner would have the sole and exclusive intergalactic rights.
[ STAR WARS THEME MUSIC PLAYING.]
I thought it might bring a smile, but it doesn't seem that anything in the agreement brought a smile to Lucas or Fox.
[NARRATOR.]
Jim went back and forth on negotiations with Lucasfilm for months, but, ultimately, with the toys so far into production, George was in no position to negotiate and Kenner was gonna squeeze him for as much as they could.
But that didn't stop Lucasfilm from flexing their muscles.
[KIPLING.]
During a visit to Los Angeles, one fellow from Lucasfilm, he was a bodybuilder.
He got fed up with the negotiations, and he rose from his chair that was right next to me, and put his elbow on his knee and flexed his muscles and said, [LOUDLY.]
"I don't wanna hear any more of this.
" And I said, "That's okay.
Please don't listen.
" We wound up with a really good deal.
[NARRATOR.]
Jim even got those total and intergalactic rights forever, as long as they did one simple thing.
All they had to do was produce enough toys or merchandise in a year that Lucasfilm got $10,000 in royalties or write a check for $10,000.
Too easy.
What could possibly go wrong? I have a very bad feeling about this.
[NARRATOR.]
The contract had taken so long to negotiate that kids had been playing with their Star Wars toys for nearly two years, and it gave collectors plenty of time to do what they do best.
Collectors are into the minutia of it so much.
Some Luke figures have yellow hair.
Later in the line, it changed to a more dirty-blond look.
Why was the hair color on this one different from the hair color on that one? I've never heard an explanation why.
I think someone probably thought it refreshed the figure somewhat.
Maybe it was a bit more naturalistic.
Well, most likely the factory screwed up.
But for every serious Star Wars collector there's one elusive figure that stands above everything that came before or since.
What is the item that has the greatest aura? Has the most prestige surrounding it? Far and away, the greatest figure of Star Wars lore.
The Star Wars Holy Grail.
The most renowned single Star Wars toy item.
There goes his rocket.
The rocket-firing Boba Fett, it's one of those toy legends.
[RANDY.]
This is a reproduction.
There's only a couple hundred of these 'cause it's a custom-made thing that is traded around.
The hardcore fans who know what it is want it.
[NARRATOR.]
And that's just the reproduction the hardcore fans are after.
The true Holy Grail, the original real deal was a mysterious rocket-firing character from the upcoming second Star Wars film that you could get as part of a mail-in promotion.
Boba Fett was a character that, as a kid, none of us knew who he was yet 'cause he had not been in the film, so the first glimpse you ever saw was [MAN OVER TV.]
The Star Wars Holiday Special.
the brief cameo in the Holiday Special which was a dismal thing that they aired only one time.
I am Boba Fett.
Settle down! [RANDY.]
But there was all this mystery around the character.
All of a sudden, we could get a toy of something that we didn't even know anything about him.
He just looked cool and was gonna fire a rocket.
[DAVID.]
He had a really cool look, he was mysterious, but he just seemed such a badass.
[JIM.]
Boba Fett was kind of my swan song.
Now we had our own figures.
Now I took different parts and stuff.
There are collectors now that know exactly what pieces I used.
This is the C-3PO crotch piece for those who recognize their toys.
I don't remember what I used.
[RANDY.]
They put C-3PO in Death Squad Commander.
They added a little bit of clay and putty to it.
I had a model maker help make the original rocket-firing mechanism.
It has the little lever on the back, a little spring inside.
There is an L-shaped version and a J-shaped version.
[NARRATOR.]
But as children around the country waited by their mailboxes, when their rocket-firing Boba Fett did finally arrive, it was something of a misfire.
Kids had expected to get the rocket-firing figure in the mail and when it came, it did not have the rocket-firing feature.
The rocket-firing Boba Fett, it was never available to the public.
Now there's this built-in lust to have this rocket-firing Boba Fett figure.
So fast-forward to the early '90s and several prototypes started to leak out.
Those were worth a lot of money, even at that time.
Now the value is astronomically over that.
The reason why the missile-firing Boba Fett never made it to retail, never made it to retail, is because Mattel's Battlestar Galactica toys, both their Colonial Viper and Cylon Raider had missiles that fired.
One got lodged in a kid's throat.
- The rocket was a small part.
- It was dangerous.
Safety hazards.
And that was the reason that Kenner did not wanna go through with the manufacture of their missile-firing Boba Fett.
Anyone who says they bought that Boba Fett at retail is wrong.
[NARRATOR.]
The legend of this figure has led some to go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on one, despite the danger posed by rocket misfire.
But it's not just the rare ones.
Why do people care so much about these cheap lumps of plastic? This room is our Star Wars room, so come on in, let's take a look.
[NARRATOR.]
Professor John Tenuto teaches a class, the sociology of Star Wars.
Perhaps he can educate us.
A baseball fan can actually go see a game.
But a science fiction fan doesn't have that option.
The best anybody could hope for was maybe go see them film a Star Wars movie.
But you're still watching Harrison Ford play the role.
You're not really watching Han Solo.
People collect all kinds of things.
They may not think of their shoes as a collection, but when you have 30 pairs of shoes, that's a collection.
I think it's a normal human and healthy experience to express who you are through some sort of a collection.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, if a collection is an expression of who you are, then here, on this converted chicken farm in northern California, - is the world's most expressive man.
- Come on in.
So, this is Rancho Obi-Wan.
[STEVE.]
Guinness World Records agrees that this is the largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia in the world.
We probably have over 400,000 pieces.
[NARRATOR.]
Steve's vast collection spans the entire breadth of the Star Wars universe, keeping a record of nearly every toy ever made, for cultural preservation and, well, his own amusement.
[GROWLS.]
It's like bowling.
There are collectors who've seen me picking up things and being fairly casual during interviews.
The toys and memorabilia, they're things that we play with.
[WHOOPS.]
They've increased in value.
Darth Vader Bop Bag.
Some of them have decreased in value.
I could sell you a bunch of Jar Jar Binks toys for a really good bargain.
[NARRATOR.]
But some things at Rancho Obi-Wan stay firmly in the box.
Unfortunately, the Snaggletooth was presented as a regular-size action figure wearing a blue costume, silver boots and silver gloves, when it turns out that the real figure was short and had paws for hands and feet, and was dressed in red.
Oops! But it made for a lot of fun in the collecting world.
[NARRATOR.]
There's more to Steve's collection than oddities and rarities.
Although he does have some beauties.
[STEVE.]
This is a Darth Vader Toothsaber and it goes in and gets your toothpicks for you.
Toothpicks not included.
[NARRATOR.]
But the real deal is down a maze of corridors, through this Rebel blockade runner door, and in this locked cabinet.
And over here, we have one of the vinyl cape Jawa figures.
This Jawa like this, mint in the card, is a several thousand-dollar auction item.
Probably the most valuable thing in the collection right now are the two variations of the prototype rocket-firing Boba Fetts.
There are just a handful of them that survived.
I got one of mine 25 years ago and one of them about 10 or 12 years ago.
[MAN.]
How much did you pay? Uh [MUMBLES.]
You know [CHUCKLES.]
They were not inexpensive, but they were not what they are now.
[NARRATOR.]
He's not wrong.
If you bought one today, it would fetch a bounty of over $20,000, as long as it's in good condition with no disintegrations, obviously.
On May 21st, 1980 [MAN OVER TV.]
One of the best things that ever happened is about to happen again.
[NARRATOR.]
The second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, hit theaters.
And it unveiled a rich new world full of toyetic potential.
[BOY.]
Intruders in Cloud City.
[MAN 2 OVER TV.]
Kenner's Slave One comes with frozen Han Solo.
[NARRATOR.]
There were new creatures, like the Wampa.
Wampa! [NARRATOR.]
And the Tauntaun.
The Tauntaun with the open-belly feature, so you could stick Luke Skywalker inside yourself.
[NARRATOR.]
Building on its success from the first film, perhaps the star of The Empire Strikes Back wasn't a new character like Lando or Yoda.
It was a familiar hunk of junk.
The Millennium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.
But it quickly became its own character just as much a starring member of the cast as the human actors.
[NARRATOR.]
Mark Boudreaux has been lead designer on every single Millennium Falcon since he began a paid internship at Kenner as a fresh-faced 21-year-old.
[MARK.]
I started in January 1977.
February of 1977, they said, "Hey, Mark, you wanna work on the Millennium Falcon?" And I go, "Yeah, I think I might like to do that.
" So, we had drafting tables back at the time.
There was no computers, everything was hand-drawn.
So I started out with a series of layouts, one-to-one scale, put the features into that.
We had a model shop.
They would make wooden forms.
They would vacuform the parts.
[JIM.]
In the '70s, these models were done in mahogany and these very hard woods, and we had pattern makers that would carve these things, turn them on lathes.
The workmanship in this stuff was unparalleled.
[MAN OVER TV.]
From Kenner Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back collection, it's Millennium Falcon, that you put together.
Batteries not included.
Nice landing, Han Solo.
The original Millennium Falcon, it had electronic sounds.
[BEEPING.]
I think it's a magnificent vehicle.
[NARRATOR.]
But magnificence comes at a price.
Back in '79, the toy retailed for $24.
77, by far the most expensive ship in the fleet.
From a business point of view, we are looking at, well, there's a bit of a gap between going to the store and buying the figure and going up to, let's say, a TIE fighter or the Falcon.
So we thought about what could we do to kind of bridge the gap between those two price points? [NARRATOR.]
To solve this problem, Mark Boudreaux came up with the perfect solution.
He just started making up his own stuff.
To us, that was unheard of, but it added breadth to our toy line.
[NARRATOR.]
And what did Kenner call these mini transports they rigged up? Mini-Rigs, of course.
We looked at this as off-camera, if you will.
Just off-camera, in this trench, this little guy is running around.
[NARRATOR.]
So now Kenner's taking liberties with the world of Star Wars.
What would George think about that? George Lucas loved it, because we were giving further life to his property.
[NARRATOR.]
When George is happy, everyone's happy.
George happy? Well, George was never happy.
[NARRATOR.]
Right.
Well, in the early '80s, he did have some competition.
Bernie Loomis' famous sausage fingers had spawned a three and three-quarter inch size G.
I.
Joe line and Masters of the Universe was also doing big business.
And with the next Star Wars film still a year away at least there wasn't much left for Kenner to make.
Every Star Wars character had a figure.
Well, almost every character.
Famously, Kenner did not make a Grand Moff Tarkin figure.
Charming.
They did not make Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.
[NARRATOR.]
There might be a reason for that.
[WOMAN SCREAMING.]
[NARRATOR.]
Not to worry, Kenner had sold millions of Mini-Rigs and even impressed George.
So they thought, "Why not just launch a whole new line?" [BOY OVER TV.]
Imperial TIE fighter, attack! [NARRATOR.]
It really seemed like Kenner could do no wrong.
Kenner had high hopes for the Micro Collection in 1982.
They had invested quite a bit of money and man-hours into the development of the line.
[BOY.]
And each ship comes with a die-cast figure.
[NARRATOR.]
Kenner bet big on the Micro Collection, pouring millions into the design, manufacture and marketing of 70 tiny diecast figures.
Kenner had found a way to unlock enormous sales potential.
[BOY.]
They're small enough to fit in one hand! [NARRATOR.]
If only people had bought it.
It began failing and Kenner just cut the line.
[NARRATOR.]
The Micro line was canceled after just one year.
Families had already invested money and this was a whole other thing.
[NARRATOR.]
Although Kenner did have some exciting prototypes in the pipeline, we'll never know if the line might've been saved by little Luke in his underpants.
It was a blow for Kenner and they lost millions in the Micro line mega-flop.
It was the first sign that Star Wars wasn't completely immune to failure.
So Kenner returned to business as usual, just in time.
[MAN OVER TV.]
Return to a galaxy far, far away.
Return of the Jedi, the next chapter in the continuing Star Wars saga.
[NARRATOR.]
With the Return of the Jedi came the return of the toys.
There were 17 more figures, accessory-laden Ewoks, new vehicles and villains.
And the Gamorrean guard, who incidentally was used by Kenner in the 1990s as a repurposed Friar Tuck for the ROBIN HOOD: Prince of Thieves toy line.
Not to mention the Sherwood Forest, Ewok village similarities.
Or this Ewok battle wagon.
Now perfect for transporting merry men.
There were now three Star Wars films' worth of toys and merchandise.
And the market couldn't be hotter.
The average kid owned ten figures.
[NARRATOR.]
A small Cincinnati toymaker had now become one of the biggest toy companies on the planet.
It's Kenner.
[NARRATOR.]
And as the world was gripped by a Star Wars fever, Kenner maintained a Darth Vader-style chokehold on all toy production.
Or so they thought.
The most bizarre counterfeit figure is the windup Dalmatian Stormtrooper Crawl Baby.
This came from China.
And if you lived in Spain, you could get your Colgate dental cream with Bib Fortuna, the character with the worst teeth in Star Wars.
[SPEAKING ALIEN LANGUAGE.]
[RON.]
There's some other really rare and notorious items.
There was an unlicensed line called Uzay.
This was released in Turkey.
Uzay, and they left out letters from the name, so it's Dart Vader, Che Bacca.
And they released a figure called Blue Stars, who was a Hoth stormtrooper who's all in blue.
Most notoriously, they released a figure called Head Man, who has a shield and a sword.
And then there's the Imperial Gunner at the control of the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, the laser cannon on the Death Star.
Except the controls looks amazingly like a 1980s calculator.
[NARRATOR.]
It may not control the Death Star, but that calculator might well be able to work out the millions of dollars of lost income Kenner and George missed out on through the counterfeit Star Wars toy market, which even today continues to fester like a Star Wart on the international markets.
Return of the Jedi left the cinemas and the Star Wars trilogy was finally over, with no sign of returning.
The day that Return of the Jedi left the theaters, we were going to George, saying, "Hey, when are you gonna do the next one?" Obviously, for the first three films, everybody was on board.
'85 came along.
We even made a pitch to Lucasfilm to try to keep the line going.
We developed a whole Clone Wars story with characters and vehicles, and they said, "This is really awesome work, guys.
We really appreciate it, but Mr.
Lucas wants to rest the brand.
" And he was pretty adamant.
He wanted to have some space and some time.
[ECHOING.]
Space and time There was a period that's known as the dark times The dark times [JOHN.]
which is a brief period in the 1980s and into the 1990s, where there wasn't a lot of Star Wars in the consciousness of the culture, there weren't a lot of toys.
[PETE ECHOING.]
Space and time [JOHN ECHOING.]
Weren't a lot of toys [NARRATOR.]
From the lofty heights of success to a dramatic drop in sales, Kenner was in big trouble.
Enter Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro with their beloved stable of toys.
Alan really delivered when he saw an opportunity to buy Kenner and scoop up some of their lines on the cheap, like Play-Doh, Spirograph and Easy-Bake Oven.
My God, the treasure trove if you've ever thought that you found the Spanish galleon.
[NARRATOR.]
Like a swashbuckling hero, Alan saved Kenner from sinking into a watery grave.
But now, Hasbro had a stagnant old sci-fi franchise to deal with.
And there was no putting it back in the swamp.
The original contract, and check with Jim on this, was forever.
It was, like, written forever.
[NARRATOR.]
But to keep that sweet deal, if you remember, they had to get Lucasfilm a tiny $10,000 worth of toy sales.
Or write a check for $10,000.
[NARRATOR.]
But Hasbro didn't do either of those things.
Maybe they didn't read the fine print.
I don't know.
There was no Kenner merchandise or Hasbro merchandise between 1986 and 1995.
The dark times A year went by and no check was sent and so the contract expired and Lucasfilm had the rights to renegotiate.
[KIPLING.]
George was never happy with the deal.
He gave an interview in which he said, "This deal was probably the stupidest deal that had ever been done in Hollywood.
" The implications of Kenner, Hasbro not sending the check, or not making any toys in a certain year were really huge 'cause it was shortly after that that George announced that he was going to make the prequels.
[BEEPS.]
We thought Star Wars was dead and gone.
We were wrong.
We knew we had to get those rights back.
We just couldn't allow Star Wars to fall into the hands of another toy company.
[NARRATOR.]
Desperate to get Star Wars back, the Hasbro bigwig himself, Alan Hassenfeld, stepped in to take personal control over negotiations with Lucasfilm.
But Alan is not much of a negotiator.
Most of our dealings, on a business level, were done with Howard Roffman.
Alan Hassenfeld patted Howard on the knee and said, "Whatever it takes, Howard.
We have got to have Star Wars.
Whatever it takes.
" It's nerve-wracking.
At that point, my anus contracted.
This put us in a not-favorable position for negotiation.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, the situation also contracted when Howard Roffman and George Lucas approached three other toy companies in the effort to start a bidding war.
The companies would be expected to duke it out.
[NARRATOR.]
Hasbro came out swinging and beat back the competition.
It was a very difficult bidding process and we paid a huge amount of money.
It was worth it.
[NARRATOR.]
Now the real fight could begin.
Contract negotiations with Lucasfilm.
We spent about two weeks tearing this thing apart.
We knew it backwards and forwards.
We were ready for the negotiation.
We had a team of six that went out.
[INTERVIEWER.]
What about Alan Hassenfeld? No.
Alan wanted to be in the meeting, but the board got involved and convinced Alan that he should not be in the meeting.
They would not let me go.
They were holding me in reserve.
It was all day into the night for, I think, six straight days.
It was a very painful negotiation.
They were on the phone with me all the time.
We had limited leverage.
Excuse me.
I was on the phone with them all the time like a nervous, you know, nanny.
But we got the deal done.
The deal was in this binder.
It covered everything that would be favorable to them and unfavorable to us.
It was the most expensive deal by far in the history of the toy industry.
We had to do what we had to do.
Rather than a royalty rate at 5% in the original deal, the base royalty rate in this deal is 18%.
We were very concerned that Hasbro would never be able to make a profit.
We always called it, after that, "George's Revenge.
" [NARRATOR.]
Now he's happy.
Deal was signed.
We hadn't even read a script.
We were going totally on faith that the next movie would be wonderful.
I remember screening the first prequel and it's the first time that you really got a feeling of Jar Jar, and I'm like, "Oh, no.
What did we do?" It was extraordinarily slow, I would say.
I was disappointed.
A tragedy has occurred.
I thought Episode One was like an economics lesson.
There's nothing more exciting than banking and political intrigue for kids and their toys.
Will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations? So, yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
Back in '77, there were no toys ready for the launch of Star Wars.
They wouldn't be making that mistake again.
Our sell-in for Episode One was enormous.
We did a special Star Wars center for every major retailer.
It was a buying frenzy.
Collectors picked shelves clean.
[NARRATOR.]
Until they didn't.
A few months after the movie was released both of my local Toys R Us's started to create "the bins.
" And a lot of toy collectors know what "the bins" are.
Discount bins are essentially the hall of shame for toys and those discount bins were chock-full of Phantom Menace product.
Chock-full.
All the way to the top.
There was a different bunch of people then at Lucasfilm.
And I think pushed a lot of wrong buttons.
Number one, they had Lego was now a licensee, so it was more spread out.
Consumers had more options.
It wasn't clean and concise like the first time.
Little did we know, though, when we'd started, there was going to be Jar Jar.
So, I did three or four Jar Jar action figures.
I did some plush, I did some 12-inch, I did some banks.
I have the satisfaction of knowing I've done more Jar Jar product than anyone will ever do.
[NARRATOR.]
If anything, Jar Jar had made the fans of the original films long for the good old days.
So Hasbro seized on that opportunity.
After 1999, when The Phantom Menace came out, Hasbro really focused on collectors.
They brought out action figures from the original trilogy.
Every couple of years they'd revamp the line.
They'd give it a new name, like, Power of the Force became Power of the Jedi.
It's amazing how many different ways you can do a Chewbacca.
[NARRATOR.]
But it's wise not to overcollect a Wookiee.
The Revenge of the Sith marked the end of the prequel trilogy, and in the minds of the fans, the end of Star Wars.
In 2008, George let the public down gently.
And thus ended absolutely nothing.
Three months later, The Clone Wars animated film hit cinemas, giving birth to a long-running series and, of course [MAN OVER TV.]
It's the massive All Terrain Tactical Enforcer.
[NARRATOR.]
More toys.
The main character, debatably, is Ahsoka Tano.
That figure was incredibly popular with audiences.
Ahsoka, you are making a mistake.
Maybe.
But I have to sort this out on my own.
[NARRATOR.]
In October 2012, George felt the same way.
Out of the blue, he walked away from it all and sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.
05 billion.
[JACKIE.]
When Disney acquired Lucasfilm and Star Wars, there was a lot of speculation.
"What are they gonna do? What are the toys gonna look like? What are they gonna be? Are they gonna wreck the Star Wars franchise?" "Are they gonna do something epic and make it amazing?" Yes.
They're gonna do something epic and make it amazing.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a dream come true for many fans.
The promise of a steady stream of films, and a barrage of new toys, all in the safe hands of Disney's creative teams.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm, it said, "We're doing it for two reasons.
We wanna make more Star Wars movies and we wanna increase the amount of merchandise internationally.
" [NARRATOR.]
The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi keep the Star Wars narrative moving forward while capturing the nostalgia of the first films.
The same attempt was made by Hasbro to weave that nostalgia into their new toys.
If I were to look back at 40 years of Star Wars action figure design from 1978 to the current action figures, some things are the same and some things are better.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, the same or better, new films or old films, there have been over one billion Star Wars toys sold.
If you melted down all these toys, you'd have enough plastic to make a colossal toy Wookiee that would dwarf the Empire State Building.
Back in the '70s and '80s, Kenner sold 22 million figures a year.
Now they sell millions more to the same ten-year-olds that are now in their 40s, sharing their love of the films.
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You're my only hope.
[NARRATOR.]
And of their collections.
For collectors, toys are a tangible symbol of their love for something that isn't real, that has no shape or form in actuality.
It's a very human experience to need to touch, and to feel and to see a thing in order for it to really to have meaning.
Otherwise, it's just an abstraction, which is why everything that is abstract winds up getting some physical symbol.
America is represented by a flag.
Religions are loaded with physical symbols so that we can touch that thing and say, "This represents my faith," because otherwise, it's an ephemeral experience.
[MAN.]
Luke, you switched off your targeting computer.
What's wrong? [LUKE.]
Nothing.
I'm all right.
[NARRATOR.]
For so many, Star Wars has become more than just toys.
But for the team who made them back in the '70s, it was just another day at the office.
[JIM.]
Strawberry Shortcake, Spirograph, Easy-Bake, all the Star Wars stuff that's here.
The last thing I worked on was the reintroduction of Care Bears.
Star Wars changed Kenner by not only putting Kenner on the map, but by putting the city of Cincinnati on the map.
[JIM.]
Eleventh floor, Kroger Building, 40 years later.
This is the way I would come to work every day.
A long time ago, - in a galaxy far, far away.
- Galaxy far, far away.
[JIM.]
Just think of a little toy company in downtown scenic, sunny Cincinnati, Ohio.
Powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.
Kenner's philosophy was homegrown ideas in the heart, in the soul.
I loved every minute with the company.
[JIM.]
It was much more cluttered with stuff.
Dave Okada's office would be here.
[DAVE.]
I've been in the toy business for almost 50 years now.
It went by so fast.
These were golden moments.
They really gave me a good reason for being in this world.
When Mark Boudreaux joined us, his office would have been about here, I guess.
And this is where the Millennium Falcons were started.
To be able for us to translate what we saw on-screen, to actually put it in your hands and in your memory, was just incredible.
I still get the feeling, when I pick this up, it brings me back to when I was 20 years old and doing this.
Below us was the design.
Above us were sales, marketing, accounting, and all that stuff was upstairs.
I went from being in the aircraft engine group of General Electric and working on patents for jet engine parts that you couldn't see operate because they run at 1,500 degrees, which was kind of boring, to being the only attorney at a small, aggressive toy company that wound up winning rights to the biggest toy-related property that's ever occurred.
When I was working on Star Wars toys, my cubicle was about here.
And all the first figures and the drawings for the X-wing and the TIE fighters were done on a desk that was probably somewhere around here.
I had a great time as a toy designer.
I don't think I'd wanna be doing toasters.
Toys still are more interesting than anything else as far as what you can do with them, 'cause you can do anything.
Toy designers actually build the kids that are gonna be doing great stuff.
The kids that are playing with Star Wars toys now might turn into the engineers that build the spaceships that fly next time.
[BOY.]
When the Force is with you, your duty is to do good.
[BOY 2.]
Now I know the Force is with us.
[DAVE.]
Kids have so little control of the real world.
But in their toy world, they're in total control.
They're masters of these guys' destiny.
So, it opens the imagination and then In a bad day I would imagine, if a kid had a bad day at school, Luke will be waiting for him.
When you're Luke Skywalker, you can do anything.
The Force will always be with you.
[BEEPING.]
[MAN.]
and flashes light by wireless radio control.
Hey, let me try.
- [MAN 2.]
You can make R2 move forwards - [BOY.]
Look out, Gus! [THEME SONG PLAYING.]
Mostly unknowns.
But the princess is Debbie Reynolds' daughter.
Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain? Yeah.
That's great.
Great movie.
John, we got the dailies up.
- You got five minutes.
- Come on.
Everybody get ready in five.
- Hey, John.
- Hey, Charlie.
Hey.
So this is Jim Swearingen from Kenner.
He's designing the toys.
Should have been here yesterday.
We blew up the Death Star.
- Wow! - You wanna go check out the model? That's the smuggler ship.
And I'm, like, "My gosh.
" This is everything I was This is what I wanted.
Now I'm pumped to make the very first Star Wars toys.
[NARRATOR.]
A month later, Star Wars opened, and the world was changed forever.
Now, unless you've been frozen in carbonite [BOBA FETT TOY.]
Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.
you know how big Star Wars is.
But consider this.
The Star Wars films to date have roughly made $7 billion at the box office.
The toys have made twice that amount.
[NARRATOR.]
That's $14 billion worth of childhood joy that helped shape generations of us fans.
The original Millennium Falcon and the figures, we had a blast with those.
[BOY ON TV.]
Luke Skywalker wins again.
[NARRATOR.]
Forty years later, the kids of the '70s and '80s who played with Star Wars toys have grown up.
- To some extent.
- There goes his rocket.
[NARRATOR.]
And now a community of collectors spans the globe, men and women who put great passion into their toy collections and search out rare, one-of-a-kind treasures.
[MAN.]
This would've been an emperor on a throne, but it never came to fruition.
The toys were so cool at the time 'cause there was so many of 'em.
[NARRATOR.]
And we'll ask why these little lumps of inexpensive plastic are worth so much to us.
These toys have become my life.
[NARRATOR.]
This is the story of those toys.
They flew off the shelves.
[NARRATOR.]
And the people that created them.
You got to see this Darth Vader.
He is a mean, huge bastard.
These are The Toys that Made Us.
It's an eight-part documentary series About the toys that we all know Plastic creations That last for generations And we still cannot let go Little molded figures That gave us big dreams We'll go back in time And behind the scenes - It's The Toys that Made Us - Toys that Made Us The Toys that Made Us is here [NARRATOR.]
Imagine, if you will, a time before Star Wars, in this barren Jedi-less wasteland.
Fire! [NARRATOR.]
Kids were having a great time and the toy industry was booming.
Time bomb! [NARRATOR.]
The most popular toys were Barbie and G.
I.
Joe.
[MAN OVER TV.]
G.
I.
Joe has 21 movable parts.
[NARRATOR.]
Posable, dressable and 12 inches tall.
Toys were big business, mostly thanks to the small screen.
[MAN 2 OVER TV.]
Hey, kids, look.
[NARRATOR.]
Huge sales were driven by television advertising.
[WOMAN OVER TV.]
The Easy-Bake mix in here [NARRATOR.]
And even TV shows made for successful toy lines.
Parents had their hands full keeping up.
But what about that other popular medium, the big screen, where the magic of the movies doesn't sell toys at all? The problem with a movie is a movie comes into theaters, it's there for a month or two, then it goes away.
There's nothing to constantly remind kids that you need to go buy a new toy or a new action figure in that line.
[NARRATOR.]
But by the mid '70s, things were about to change, because 20th Century Fox had just teamed up with a maverick filmmaker, George Lucas.
He had some sci-fi script with a good story and some really interesting conceptual art he thought probably would make good toys.
Lucas, back then, had such a belief in the film and in the toys that I think a lot of people thought he was nuts.
[NARRATOR.]
Nuts or just plain crazy? The film's release date was a mere six months away.
He'd need to find someone to make his toys, and fast.
Ideally, it's better to shop for toy deals two years before the release of the picture, but George wouldn't authorize us to do that for reasons of secrecy having these pictures of these unique models out because somebody might knock him off.
[NARRATOR.]
As the man in charge of selling the toy license, Marc Pevers had an uphill battle.
Mattel turned us down, Hasbro turned us down, Parker Brothers turned us down.
Ideal, every toy company that we went to turned us down.
[NARRATOR.]
Marc had obviously never been to Cincinnati, where a little toy company named Kenner sat perched on the 11th floor of the Kroger Building.
Kenner was not a large company at all.
It was a smaller company, not a company that was a California company and not the megalopolis of New York.
It was located in the Midwest.
It's Kenner.
It's fun.
[SQUAWKS.]
"It's Kenner.
It's fun.
" [JIM.]
The script for Star Wars came into Kenner.
Somebody said, "Does anyone wanna take a look?" And I said, "I'll take it.
" [NARRATOR.]
Kenner senior product designer Jim Swearingen was a sci-fi fan and he'd been following George Lucas's career.
It was one of those serendipitous things.
It was so obvious to a designer that it was gonna be something great.
So, I brought it back the next morning, gave it to Dave Okada, my boss, and said, "Go in your office, read this.
We have to do it.
" The thing read so well, and Jim said what the rest of us echoed.
We all felt that it was a great script.
The whole group was behind it, even though we all knew the movie timing was awful.
It was a movie opening in May of '77.
At that time, it took at least a year to get into production.
The process that was used to get toys out was they had to get the creative.
The creative had to be approved by the licensor, had to go back to the licensee to make whatever changes.
Then after you did everything on paper, you had to do a prototype.
That had to be approved.
You had to make sure manufacturing could do what you said you wanted to do.
You had to go back to the licensor again and again and again.
And then you had to go to the Orient to do what you wanted done.
There were a lot of steps.
We wouldn't have product out until months after the movie opens.
We had to at least give it a shot.
[NARRATOR.]
But before they could pitch to Lucasfilm, Dave and Jim had to convince the head of Kenner, Bernie Loomis, that this script that everybody else had turned down was worth doing.
He was old school.
We called him the Bear.
He was a big, big guy.
When he shook your hand, you felt it.
He brought chutzpah, energy, balls.
[DAVE.]
He was self-made, self-taught, smart as a whip, he could do crossword puzzles faster than anybody, and he knew toys.
And we called him the Boss with the Golden Gut.
Bernie had a word called "toyetic.
" Toyetic.
Something was very playable, if it had a kind of a toy quality to it.
- Property's got to be toyetic.
- Toyetic.
Yes.
Toyetic.
Star Wars was toyetic.
[NARRATOR.]
The Golden Gut had spoken, so the Kenner team put all their efforts into creating a series of figures to present to the Lucas team in California.
But first, some big decisions had to be made.
We worked on large action figures.
Mattel has large action figures.
Hasbro has large action figures.
Ken, he was a big boy.
Obvious that we weren't gonna be able to do an X-wing fighter for a 12-inch figure.
We wanted to give them the world of Star Wars.
We wanna give them vehicles.
We wanna give them If we could give them the Death Star, we'd give them a Death Star.
Had to be small but not too small.
Big but not too big.
We went up to see Bernie and say, "Hey, Bernie, you have to make a quick decision on how tall Luke should be.
" Luke determined the line.
Bernie says, "I understand.
" He says, "Okay.
" And he put his fist over the table between him and me and said, "Dave, here's my executive decision.
Luke is gonna be this big," and he spread his thumb and forefinger, and these were like two big Dodger hot dogs in the air.
I took my steel ruler out.
"Three and three-quarter inches.
" And Bernie says, "That's it.
That's gonna be the standard for our Star Wars line.
" The ruler said three and three-quarters and that's what they would be.
And Bernie says, "Great.
When do I get to see it?" And we moved so fast.
[JIM.]
We were starting from scratch and there was no way to get action figures done in time.
So, I found some truck drivers from Fisher-Price.
I hate to say that, but they were articulated figures, so we could take them and carve 'em up and whittling them down to taking some body putty, you know, the Bondo that you use on your car, and modeling the helmets for stormtroopers.
We now call it kitbashing.
Everyone was working like demons to get this presentation ready.
We flew out the following morning to show George Lucas, but we suddenly realized that, "We needed those tiny little Jawas.
" And so I said, "I'll do it.
Why not?" So I kitbashed, truly kitbashed the Jawa and I had to drape them with desert garb.
But then I couldn't find the right fabric.
And no matter where I looked around the department, I couldn't find it.
But then I looked down at my feet and I saw I was wearing brown socks.
And so I took off my shoe, like I'm doing now, and I cut the sock up and I put it over the Jawa and it looked pretty darn good.
"But I hope George Lucas doesn't get too close to that.
" We kept showing that thing with my sticky sock for weeks.
We took the morning flight out of Cincinnati.
And landed in Los Angeles Airport.
We drive up to 20th Century Fox, but George Lucas couldn't make it.
He was doing the movie, but we gave the presentation anyway.
We showed features like how they would articulate, how they could move the heads, and the legs.
and they would stand up.
And we had peg holes under their feet so they could really stand up, but they could also stand up on their own.
And they all got it.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a triumph for the creative team, and Dave's sock.
[MAN WHOOPS.]
They weren't willing to write a check yet.
- Go! - Time was running out.
So, both Kenner and Lucas were working on the assumption that a deal would be reached.
[JIM.]
We don't care what's going on with the deal.
If we're gonna do this, how are we gonna do X-wings and TIE fighters? We didn't have blueprints or drawings or anything.
We had a couple of photographs, so we're modeling things based on kind of rough ideas of what things look like.
This is what the TIE fighters started out looking like.
Changed quite a bit after we got some better photography and better information.
Lucasfilm invited us to come out to California, and see more of what was going on.
It turned out I got to take the trip.
So I went through blueprints and drawings, and all kinds of stuff about Death Stars and all these vehicles that they'd done.
So, this is the original X-wing fighter, a TIE fighter.
Just, you know, piles of this stuff, and they let us go through it and look at things that we might do for the toy line.
[NARRATOR.]
While Jim studied spaceship plans in California, back in Cincinnati, the plan for a deal was still in the works, and they were cutting it close.
So, in April of 1977, only a month before Star Wars hits theaters, Bernie Loomis, he strikes a deal with 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm.
[PETE.]
Bernie was incredibly excited about it.
The original deal was close to a handshake, and it didn't cost us much to get involved with it.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a great deal for Kenner.
For every dollar the toys made, Lucas and Fox would split a nickel, and Kenner would get 95 cents.
When you think about that in the context of what has happened with Star Wars, this is an unmatchable deal.
[NARRATOR.]
But remember, George didn't have much choice because Every toy company turned us down.
[NARRATOR.]
And it wasn't long until they realized their mistake.
When the film opened, it was a hit, obviously.
You never ask anyone, "Have you seen Star Wars?" The question you would ask is, "How many times?" You knew you had a tiger by the tail.
[NARRATOR.]
As the film began breaking box office records, back in Cincinnati, the Kenner team struggled to fill a market devoid of any Star Wars toys whatsoever.
How did we get into this mess? [RON.]
When they went to see the movie, some of them were making notes and whatnot of what to incorporate into the stuff they were gonna go back and try to push out as quickly as possible to get it on store shelves.
The deadlines were coming faster and faster, and we wouldn't have any meaningful toys by Christmastime.
By December 1977, Star Wars is the highest-grossing film of all time.
All people wanted was, "When will the figures be available? When will the X-wing fighters, TIE fighters, landspeeders When will the product be available?" [NARRATOR.]
Without anything to sell to a frenzied market, Kenner's team put their thinking caps on.
Um [NARRATOR.]
And what they came up with was a two-part plan.
The first part of the plan is to create anything that can be made quickly, usually picture-based products, puzzles, board games.
The Force is with you.
[PETE.]
Bop Bags, puzzles, paint sets Things that don't require as much safety-checking.
[NARRATOR.]
And if it'd already been safety-checked, all the better.
Early on, they recycled a lot of toys.
Here we have the Red Baron, and there the Death Star.
This is a perfect example of what's called label-slapping.
Basically, all they did was change the color of the plastic, slap some different stickers on it, and, boom, you have a whole new product.
Label-slapping was taking any toy and slapping Star Wars on it.
You got an Easy-Bake Oven, if you got one for boys, put a Star Wars label on it.
Make cakes for the Wookiees.
[ROARS.]
The scariest and riskiest part of the plan was the second phase, which Loomis calls the loneliest decision that he ever made in his life.
And that was to release at Christmas something called [MAN OVER TV.]
The Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package, new from Kenner.
Which is, in essence, an empty box [MAN OVER TV.]
With this colorful Star Wars picture display stand and certificate to send in to get a set of figures by mail.
[JOHN.]
that promised kids that they would be the first in the galaxy to receive four action figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and R2-D2 in the Kenner line.
But Loomis' plan really was brilliant.
It told kids at Christmastime, "They are coming, we promise.
" [NARRATOR.]
And luckily the promises weren't as empty as the boxes, because in spring of '78, Kenner was ready.
It had been nearly a year since the film premiered, and now, finally [MAN OVER TV.]
It's Kenner's new Star Wars action figures, each sold separately.
Someone's coming, Chewie.
- Who's there? - It's Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.
[BOY.]
Now I know the Force is with us.
When the first boxes were delivered, they never even reached the retail counter.
People dove into the boxes.
People were literally attacked when they saw these boxes coming out.
These are the first 12 Star Wars action figures, Princess Leia, Han Solo, the Death Squad Commander.
His name's later changed to the Star Destroyer Commander for kids.
The guys would get their initial stocking and sell it out in three days.
This was the risk of all risks, in a toy product that hardly anyone had any confidence in backing.
Show me what you got.
We had never experienced anything like this.
[NEWSCASTER.]
Industry-wide sales are up by almost 8%, most of the increase attributable to the space toys craze.
Twenty-two million figures per year.
[NEWSCASTER.]
Cincinnati-based Kenner Corporation sales are up 40%, and Kenner officials say the movie Star Wars is responsible.
Just unbelievable.
[NARRATOR.]
It was also unbelievable that nearly two years after the launch of the toys, Kenner and Lucas were still operating under that initial deal memo.
We hadn't even signed an official contract at that time.
They were still working on deal points.
[NARRATOR.]
Hoping to flesh out those deal points, Kenner assigned Jim Kipling, their best and only lawyer.
I'm Jim Kipling.
[NARRATOR.]
And it was Jim's destiny to represent the little toy company from Cincinnati who had risen from obscurity and made it big in the toy world.
I put into the draft that Kenner would have the sole and exclusive intergalactic rights.
[ STAR WARS THEME MUSIC PLAYING.]
I thought it might bring a smile, but it doesn't seem that anything in the agreement brought a smile to Lucas or Fox.
[NARRATOR.]
Jim went back and forth on negotiations with Lucasfilm for months, but, ultimately, with the toys so far into production, George was in no position to negotiate and Kenner was gonna squeeze him for as much as they could.
But that didn't stop Lucasfilm from flexing their muscles.
[KIPLING.]
During a visit to Los Angeles, one fellow from Lucasfilm, he was a bodybuilder.
He got fed up with the negotiations, and he rose from his chair that was right next to me, and put his elbow on his knee and flexed his muscles and said, [LOUDLY.]
"I don't wanna hear any more of this.
" And I said, "That's okay.
Please don't listen.
" We wound up with a really good deal.
[NARRATOR.]
Jim even got those total and intergalactic rights forever, as long as they did one simple thing.
All they had to do was produce enough toys or merchandise in a year that Lucasfilm got $10,000 in royalties or write a check for $10,000.
Too easy.
What could possibly go wrong? I have a very bad feeling about this.
[NARRATOR.]
The contract had taken so long to negotiate that kids had been playing with their Star Wars toys for nearly two years, and it gave collectors plenty of time to do what they do best.
Collectors are into the minutia of it so much.
Some Luke figures have yellow hair.
Later in the line, it changed to a more dirty-blond look.
Why was the hair color on this one different from the hair color on that one? I've never heard an explanation why.
I think someone probably thought it refreshed the figure somewhat.
Maybe it was a bit more naturalistic.
Well, most likely the factory screwed up.
But for every serious Star Wars collector there's one elusive figure that stands above everything that came before or since.
What is the item that has the greatest aura? Has the most prestige surrounding it? Far and away, the greatest figure of Star Wars lore.
The Star Wars Holy Grail.
The most renowned single Star Wars toy item.
There goes his rocket.
The rocket-firing Boba Fett, it's one of those toy legends.
[RANDY.]
This is a reproduction.
There's only a couple hundred of these 'cause it's a custom-made thing that is traded around.
The hardcore fans who know what it is want it.
[NARRATOR.]
And that's just the reproduction the hardcore fans are after.
The true Holy Grail, the original real deal was a mysterious rocket-firing character from the upcoming second Star Wars film that you could get as part of a mail-in promotion.
Boba Fett was a character that, as a kid, none of us knew who he was yet 'cause he had not been in the film, so the first glimpse you ever saw was [MAN OVER TV.]
The Star Wars Holiday Special.
the brief cameo in the Holiday Special which was a dismal thing that they aired only one time.
I am Boba Fett.
Settle down! [RANDY.]
But there was all this mystery around the character.
All of a sudden, we could get a toy of something that we didn't even know anything about him.
He just looked cool and was gonna fire a rocket.
[DAVID.]
He had a really cool look, he was mysterious, but he just seemed such a badass.
[JIM.]
Boba Fett was kind of my swan song.
Now we had our own figures.
Now I took different parts and stuff.
There are collectors now that know exactly what pieces I used.
This is the C-3PO crotch piece for those who recognize their toys.
I don't remember what I used.
[RANDY.]
They put C-3PO in Death Squad Commander.
They added a little bit of clay and putty to it.
I had a model maker help make the original rocket-firing mechanism.
It has the little lever on the back, a little spring inside.
There is an L-shaped version and a J-shaped version.
[NARRATOR.]
But as children around the country waited by their mailboxes, when their rocket-firing Boba Fett did finally arrive, it was something of a misfire.
Kids had expected to get the rocket-firing figure in the mail and when it came, it did not have the rocket-firing feature.
The rocket-firing Boba Fett, it was never available to the public.
Now there's this built-in lust to have this rocket-firing Boba Fett figure.
So fast-forward to the early '90s and several prototypes started to leak out.
Those were worth a lot of money, even at that time.
Now the value is astronomically over that.
The reason why the missile-firing Boba Fett never made it to retail, never made it to retail, is because Mattel's Battlestar Galactica toys, both their Colonial Viper and Cylon Raider had missiles that fired.
One got lodged in a kid's throat.
- The rocket was a small part.
- It was dangerous.
Safety hazards.
And that was the reason that Kenner did not wanna go through with the manufacture of their missile-firing Boba Fett.
Anyone who says they bought that Boba Fett at retail is wrong.
[NARRATOR.]
The legend of this figure has led some to go to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on one, despite the danger posed by rocket misfire.
But it's not just the rare ones.
Why do people care so much about these cheap lumps of plastic? This room is our Star Wars room, so come on in, let's take a look.
[NARRATOR.]
Professor John Tenuto teaches a class, the sociology of Star Wars.
Perhaps he can educate us.
A baseball fan can actually go see a game.
But a science fiction fan doesn't have that option.
The best anybody could hope for was maybe go see them film a Star Wars movie.
But you're still watching Harrison Ford play the role.
You're not really watching Han Solo.
People collect all kinds of things.
They may not think of their shoes as a collection, but when you have 30 pairs of shoes, that's a collection.
I think it's a normal human and healthy experience to express who you are through some sort of a collection.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, if a collection is an expression of who you are, then here, on this converted chicken farm in northern California, - is the world's most expressive man.
- Come on in.
So, this is Rancho Obi-Wan.
[STEVE.]
Guinness World Records agrees that this is the largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia in the world.
We probably have over 400,000 pieces.
[NARRATOR.]
Steve's vast collection spans the entire breadth of the Star Wars universe, keeping a record of nearly every toy ever made, for cultural preservation and, well, his own amusement.
[GROWLS.]
It's like bowling.
There are collectors who've seen me picking up things and being fairly casual during interviews.
The toys and memorabilia, they're things that we play with.
[WHOOPS.]
They've increased in value.
Darth Vader Bop Bag.
Some of them have decreased in value.
I could sell you a bunch of Jar Jar Binks toys for a really good bargain.
[NARRATOR.]
But some things at Rancho Obi-Wan stay firmly in the box.
Unfortunately, the Snaggletooth was presented as a regular-size action figure wearing a blue costume, silver boots and silver gloves, when it turns out that the real figure was short and had paws for hands and feet, and was dressed in red.
Oops! But it made for a lot of fun in the collecting world.
[NARRATOR.]
There's more to Steve's collection than oddities and rarities.
Although he does have some beauties.
[STEVE.]
This is a Darth Vader Toothsaber and it goes in and gets your toothpicks for you.
Toothpicks not included.
[NARRATOR.]
But the real deal is down a maze of corridors, through this Rebel blockade runner door, and in this locked cabinet.
And over here, we have one of the vinyl cape Jawa figures.
This Jawa like this, mint in the card, is a several thousand-dollar auction item.
Probably the most valuable thing in the collection right now are the two variations of the prototype rocket-firing Boba Fetts.
There are just a handful of them that survived.
I got one of mine 25 years ago and one of them about 10 or 12 years ago.
[MAN.]
How much did you pay? Uh [MUMBLES.]
You know [CHUCKLES.]
They were not inexpensive, but they were not what they are now.
[NARRATOR.]
He's not wrong.
If you bought one today, it would fetch a bounty of over $20,000, as long as it's in good condition with no disintegrations, obviously.
On May 21st, 1980 [MAN OVER TV.]
One of the best things that ever happened is about to happen again.
[NARRATOR.]
The second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, hit theaters.
And it unveiled a rich new world full of toyetic potential.
[BOY.]
Intruders in Cloud City.
[MAN 2 OVER TV.]
Kenner's Slave One comes with frozen Han Solo.
[NARRATOR.]
There were new creatures, like the Wampa.
Wampa! [NARRATOR.]
And the Tauntaun.
The Tauntaun with the open-belly feature, so you could stick Luke Skywalker inside yourself.
[NARRATOR.]
Building on its success from the first film, perhaps the star of The Empire Strikes Back wasn't a new character like Lando or Yoda.
It was a familiar hunk of junk.
The Millennium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.
But it quickly became its own character just as much a starring member of the cast as the human actors.
[NARRATOR.]
Mark Boudreaux has been lead designer on every single Millennium Falcon since he began a paid internship at Kenner as a fresh-faced 21-year-old.
[MARK.]
I started in January 1977.
February of 1977, they said, "Hey, Mark, you wanna work on the Millennium Falcon?" And I go, "Yeah, I think I might like to do that.
" So, we had drafting tables back at the time.
There was no computers, everything was hand-drawn.
So I started out with a series of layouts, one-to-one scale, put the features into that.
We had a model shop.
They would make wooden forms.
They would vacuform the parts.
[JIM.]
In the '70s, these models were done in mahogany and these very hard woods, and we had pattern makers that would carve these things, turn them on lathes.
The workmanship in this stuff was unparalleled.
[MAN OVER TV.]
From Kenner Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back collection, it's Millennium Falcon, that you put together.
Batteries not included.
Nice landing, Han Solo.
The original Millennium Falcon, it had electronic sounds.
[BEEPING.]
I think it's a magnificent vehicle.
[NARRATOR.]
But magnificence comes at a price.
Back in '79, the toy retailed for $24.
77, by far the most expensive ship in the fleet.
From a business point of view, we are looking at, well, there's a bit of a gap between going to the store and buying the figure and going up to, let's say, a TIE fighter or the Falcon.
So we thought about what could we do to kind of bridge the gap between those two price points? [NARRATOR.]
To solve this problem, Mark Boudreaux came up with the perfect solution.
He just started making up his own stuff.
To us, that was unheard of, but it added breadth to our toy line.
[NARRATOR.]
And what did Kenner call these mini transports they rigged up? Mini-Rigs, of course.
We looked at this as off-camera, if you will.
Just off-camera, in this trench, this little guy is running around.
[NARRATOR.]
So now Kenner's taking liberties with the world of Star Wars.
What would George think about that? George Lucas loved it, because we were giving further life to his property.
[NARRATOR.]
When George is happy, everyone's happy.
George happy? Well, George was never happy.
[NARRATOR.]
Right.
Well, in the early '80s, he did have some competition.
Bernie Loomis' famous sausage fingers had spawned a three and three-quarter inch size G.
I.
Joe line and Masters of the Universe was also doing big business.
And with the next Star Wars film still a year away at least there wasn't much left for Kenner to make.
Every Star Wars character had a figure.
Well, almost every character.
Famously, Kenner did not make a Grand Moff Tarkin figure.
Charming.
They did not make Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.
[NARRATOR.]
There might be a reason for that.
[WOMAN SCREAMING.]
[NARRATOR.]
Not to worry, Kenner had sold millions of Mini-Rigs and even impressed George.
So they thought, "Why not just launch a whole new line?" [BOY OVER TV.]
Imperial TIE fighter, attack! [NARRATOR.]
It really seemed like Kenner could do no wrong.
Kenner had high hopes for the Micro Collection in 1982.
They had invested quite a bit of money and man-hours into the development of the line.
[BOY.]
And each ship comes with a die-cast figure.
[NARRATOR.]
Kenner bet big on the Micro Collection, pouring millions into the design, manufacture and marketing of 70 tiny diecast figures.
Kenner had found a way to unlock enormous sales potential.
[BOY.]
They're small enough to fit in one hand! [NARRATOR.]
If only people had bought it.
It began failing and Kenner just cut the line.
[NARRATOR.]
The Micro line was canceled after just one year.
Families had already invested money and this was a whole other thing.
[NARRATOR.]
Although Kenner did have some exciting prototypes in the pipeline, we'll never know if the line might've been saved by little Luke in his underpants.
It was a blow for Kenner and they lost millions in the Micro line mega-flop.
It was the first sign that Star Wars wasn't completely immune to failure.
So Kenner returned to business as usual, just in time.
[MAN OVER TV.]
Return to a galaxy far, far away.
Return of the Jedi, the next chapter in the continuing Star Wars saga.
[NARRATOR.]
With the Return of the Jedi came the return of the toys.
There were 17 more figures, accessory-laden Ewoks, new vehicles and villains.
And the Gamorrean guard, who incidentally was used by Kenner in the 1990s as a repurposed Friar Tuck for the ROBIN HOOD: Prince of Thieves toy line.
Not to mention the Sherwood Forest, Ewok village similarities.
Or this Ewok battle wagon.
Now perfect for transporting merry men.
There were now three Star Wars films' worth of toys and merchandise.
And the market couldn't be hotter.
The average kid owned ten figures.
[NARRATOR.]
A small Cincinnati toymaker had now become one of the biggest toy companies on the planet.
It's Kenner.
[NARRATOR.]
And as the world was gripped by a Star Wars fever, Kenner maintained a Darth Vader-style chokehold on all toy production.
Or so they thought.
The most bizarre counterfeit figure is the windup Dalmatian Stormtrooper Crawl Baby.
This came from China.
And if you lived in Spain, you could get your Colgate dental cream with Bib Fortuna, the character with the worst teeth in Star Wars.
[SPEAKING ALIEN LANGUAGE.]
[RON.]
There's some other really rare and notorious items.
There was an unlicensed line called Uzay.
This was released in Turkey.
Uzay, and they left out letters from the name, so it's Dart Vader, Che Bacca.
And they released a figure called Blue Stars, who was a Hoth stormtrooper who's all in blue.
Most notoriously, they released a figure called Head Man, who has a shield and a sword.
And then there's the Imperial Gunner at the control of the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, the laser cannon on the Death Star.
Except the controls looks amazingly like a 1980s calculator.
[NARRATOR.]
It may not control the Death Star, but that calculator might well be able to work out the millions of dollars of lost income Kenner and George missed out on through the counterfeit Star Wars toy market, which even today continues to fester like a Star Wart on the international markets.
Return of the Jedi left the cinemas and the Star Wars trilogy was finally over, with no sign of returning.
The day that Return of the Jedi left the theaters, we were going to George, saying, "Hey, when are you gonna do the next one?" Obviously, for the first three films, everybody was on board.
'85 came along.
We even made a pitch to Lucasfilm to try to keep the line going.
We developed a whole Clone Wars story with characters and vehicles, and they said, "This is really awesome work, guys.
We really appreciate it, but Mr.
Lucas wants to rest the brand.
" And he was pretty adamant.
He wanted to have some space and some time.
[ECHOING.]
Space and time There was a period that's known as the dark times The dark times [JOHN.]
which is a brief period in the 1980s and into the 1990s, where there wasn't a lot of Star Wars in the consciousness of the culture, there weren't a lot of toys.
[PETE ECHOING.]
Space and time [JOHN ECHOING.]
Weren't a lot of toys [NARRATOR.]
From the lofty heights of success to a dramatic drop in sales, Kenner was in big trouble.
Enter Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro with their beloved stable of toys.
Alan really delivered when he saw an opportunity to buy Kenner and scoop up some of their lines on the cheap, like Play-Doh, Spirograph and Easy-Bake Oven.
My God, the treasure trove if you've ever thought that you found the Spanish galleon.
[NARRATOR.]
Like a swashbuckling hero, Alan saved Kenner from sinking into a watery grave.
But now, Hasbro had a stagnant old sci-fi franchise to deal with.
And there was no putting it back in the swamp.
The original contract, and check with Jim on this, was forever.
It was, like, written forever.
[NARRATOR.]
But to keep that sweet deal, if you remember, they had to get Lucasfilm a tiny $10,000 worth of toy sales.
Or write a check for $10,000.
[NARRATOR.]
But Hasbro didn't do either of those things.
Maybe they didn't read the fine print.
I don't know.
There was no Kenner merchandise or Hasbro merchandise between 1986 and 1995.
The dark times A year went by and no check was sent and so the contract expired and Lucasfilm had the rights to renegotiate.
[KIPLING.]
George was never happy with the deal.
He gave an interview in which he said, "This deal was probably the stupidest deal that had ever been done in Hollywood.
" The implications of Kenner, Hasbro not sending the check, or not making any toys in a certain year were really huge 'cause it was shortly after that that George announced that he was going to make the prequels.
[BEEPS.]
We thought Star Wars was dead and gone.
We were wrong.
We knew we had to get those rights back.
We just couldn't allow Star Wars to fall into the hands of another toy company.
[NARRATOR.]
Desperate to get Star Wars back, the Hasbro bigwig himself, Alan Hassenfeld, stepped in to take personal control over negotiations with Lucasfilm.
But Alan is not much of a negotiator.
Most of our dealings, on a business level, were done with Howard Roffman.
Alan Hassenfeld patted Howard on the knee and said, "Whatever it takes, Howard.
We have got to have Star Wars.
Whatever it takes.
" It's nerve-wracking.
At that point, my anus contracted.
This put us in a not-favorable position for negotiation.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, the situation also contracted when Howard Roffman and George Lucas approached three other toy companies in the effort to start a bidding war.
The companies would be expected to duke it out.
[NARRATOR.]
Hasbro came out swinging and beat back the competition.
It was a very difficult bidding process and we paid a huge amount of money.
It was worth it.
[NARRATOR.]
Now the real fight could begin.
Contract negotiations with Lucasfilm.
We spent about two weeks tearing this thing apart.
We knew it backwards and forwards.
We were ready for the negotiation.
We had a team of six that went out.
[INTERVIEWER.]
What about Alan Hassenfeld? No.
Alan wanted to be in the meeting, but the board got involved and convinced Alan that he should not be in the meeting.
They would not let me go.
They were holding me in reserve.
It was all day into the night for, I think, six straight days.
It was a very painful negotiation.
They were on the phone with me all the time.
We had limited leverage.
Excuse me.
I was on the phone with them all the time like a nervous, you know, nanny.
But we got the deal done.
The deal was in this binder.
It covered everything that would be favorable to them and unfavorable to us.
It was the most expensive deal by far in the history of the toy industry.
We had to do what we had to do.
Rather than a royalty rate at 5% in the original deal, the base royalty rate in this deal is 18%.
We were very concerned that Hasbro would never be able to make a profit.
We always called it, after that, "George's Revenge.
" [NARRATOR.]
Now he's happy.
Deal was signed.
We hadn't even read a script.
We were going totally on faith that the next movie would be wonderful.
I remember screening the first prequel and it's the first time that you really got a feeling of Jar Jar, and I'm like, "Oh, no.
What did we do?" It was extraordinarily slow, I would say.
I was disappointed.
A tragedy has occurred.
I thought Episode One was like an economics lesson.
There's nothing more exciting than banking and political intrigue for kids and their toys.
Will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations? So, yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
Back in '77, there were no toys ready for the launch of Star Wars.
They wouldn't be making that mistake again.
Our sell-in for Episode One was enormous.
We did a special Star Wars center for every major retailer.
It was a buying frenzy.
Collectors picked shelves clean.
[NARRATOR.]
Until they didn't.
A few months after the movie was released both of my local Toys R Us's started to create "the bins.
" And a lot of toy collectors know what "the bins" are.
Discount bins are essentially the hall of shame for toys and those discount bins were chock-full of Phantom Menace product.
Chock-full.
All the way to the top.
There was a different bunch of people then at Lucasfilm.
And I think pushed a lot of wrong buttons.
Number one, they had Lego was now a licensee, so it was more spread out.
Consumers had more options.
It wasn't clean and concise like the first time.
Little did we know, though, when we'd started, there was going to be Jar Jar.
So, I did three or four Jar Jar action figures.
I did some plush, I did some 12-inch, I did some banks.
I have the satisfaction of knowing I've done more Jar Jar product than anyone will ever do.
[NARRATOR.]
If anything, Jar Jar had made the fans of the original films long for the good old days.
So Hasbro seized on that opportunity.
After 1999, when The Phantom Menace came out, Hasbro really focused on collectors.
They brought out action figures from the original trilogy.
Every couple of years they'd revamp the line.
They'd give it a new name, like, Power of the Force became Power of the Jedi.
It's amazing how many different ways you can do a Chewbacca.
[NARRATOR.]
But it's wise not to overcollect a Wookiee.
The Revenge of the Sith marked the end of the prequel trilogy, and in the minds of the fans, the end of Star Wars.
In 2008, George let the public down gently.
And thus ended absolutely nothing.
Three months later, The Clone Wars animated film hit cinemas, giving birth to a long-running series and, of course [MAN OVER TV.]
It's the massive All Terrain Tactical Enforcer.
[NARRATOR.]
More toys.
The main character, debatably, is Ahsoka Tano.
That figure was incredibly popular with audiences.
Ahsoka, you are making a mistake.
Maybe.
But I have to sort this out on my own.
[NARRATOR.]
In October 2012, George felt the same way.
Out of the blue, he walked away from it all and sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.
05 billion.
[JACKIE.]
When Disney acquired Lucasfilm and Star Wars, there was a lot of speculation.
"What are they gonna do? What are the toys gonna look like? What are they gonna be? Are they gonna wreck the Star Wars franchise?" "Are they gonna do something epic and make it amazing?" Yes.
They're gonna do something epic and make it amazing.
[NARRATOR.]
It was a dream come true for many fans.
The promise of a steady stream of films, and a barrage of new toys, all in the safe hands of Disney's creative teams.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm, it said, "We're doing it for two reasons.
We wanna make more Star Wars movies and we wanna increase the amount of merchandise internationally.
" [NARRATOR.]
The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi keep the Star Wars narrative moving forward while capturing the nostalgia of the first films.
The same attempt was made by Hasbro to weave that nostalgia into their new toys.
If I were to look back at 40 years of Star Wars action figure design from 1978 to the current action figures, some things are the same and some things are better.
[NARRATOR.]
Well, the same or better, new films or old films, there have been over one billion Star Wars toys sold.
If you melted down all these toys, you'd have enough plastic to make a colossal toy Wookiee that would dwarf the Empire State Building.
Back in the '70s and '80s, Kenner sold 22 million figures a year.
Now they sell millions more to the same ten-year-olds that are now in their 40s, sharing their love of the films.
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You're my only hope.
[NARRATOR.]
And of their collections.
For collectors, toys are a tangible symbol of their love for something that isn't real, that has no shape or form in actuality.
It's a very human experience to need to touch, and to feel and to see a thing in order for it to really to have meaning.
Otherwise, it's just an abstraction, which is why everything that is abstract winds up getting some physical symbol.
America is represented by a flag.
Religions are loaded with physical symbols so that we can touch that thing and say, "This represents my faith," because otherwise, it's an ephemeral experience.
[MAN.]
Luke, you switched off your targeting computer.
What's wrong? [LUKE.]
Nothing.
I'm all right.
[NARRATOR.]
For so many, Star Wars has become more than just toys.
But for the team who made them back in the '70s, it was just another day at the office.
[JIM.]
Strawberry Shortcake, Spirograph, Easy-Bake, all the Star Wars stuff that's here.
The last thing I worked on was the reintroduction of Care Bears.
Star Wars changed Kenner by not only putting Kenner on the map, but by putting the city of Cincinnati on the map.
[JIM.]
Eleventh floor, Kroger Building, 40 years later.
This is the way I would come to work every day.
A long time ago, - in a galaxy far, far away.
- Galaxy far, far away.
[JIM.]
Just think of a little toy company in downtown scenic, sunny Cincinnati, Ohio.
Powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.
Kenner's philosophy was homegrown ideas in the heart, in the soul.
I loved every minute with the company.
[JIM.]
It was much more cluttered with stuff.
Dave Okada's office would be here.
[DAVE.]
I've been in the toy business for almost 50 years now.
It went by so fast.
These were golden moments.
They really gave me a good reason for being in this world.
When Mark Boudreaux joined us, his office would have been about here, I guess.
And this is where the Millennium Falcons were started.
To be able for us to translate what we saw on-screen, to actually put it in your hands and in your memory, was just incredible.
I still get the feeling, when I pick this up, it brings me back to when I was 20 years old and doing this.
Below us was the design.
Above us were sales, marketing, accounting, and all that stuff was upstairs.
I went from being in the aircraft engine group of General Electric and working on patents for jet engine parts that you couldn't see operate because they run at 1,500 degrees, which was kind of boring, to being the only attorney at a small, aggressive toy company that wound up winning rights to the biggest toy-related property that's ever occurred.
When I was working on Star Wars toys, my cubicle was about here.
And all the first figures and the drawings for the X-wing and the TIE fighters were done on a desk that was probably somewhere around here.
I had a great time as a toy designer.
I don't think I'd wanna be doing toasters.
Toys still are more interesting than anything else as far as what you can do with them, 'cause you can do anything.
Toy designers actually build the kids that are gonna be doing great stuff.
The kids that are playing with Star Wars toys now might turn into the engineers that build the spaceships that fly next time.
[BOY.]
When the Force is with you, your duty is to do good.
[BOY 2.]
Now I know the Force is with us.
[DAVE.]
Kids have so little control of the real world.
But in their toy world, they're in total control.
They're masters of these guys' destiny.
So, it opens the imagination and then In a bad day I would imagine, if a kid had a bad day at school, Luke will be waiting for him.
When you're Luke Skywalker, you can do anything.
The Force will always be with you.
[BEEPING.]
[MAN.]
and flashes light by wireless radio control.
Hey, let me try.
- [MAN 2.]
You can make R2 move forwards - [BOY.]
Look out, Gus! [THEME SONG PLAYING.]