When a long time ago was not so far, far away

Jim Henson

Back in 1987 Star Wars was a distant memory to me and a lot of people. I was 13 and I thought Star Wars was a stale dead franchise with its best years behind it. At the time I was too busy obsessing over another stale dead franchise with its best years behind it-the Transformers. Even if I had known entertainment industry magazine Variety was doing a 10th anniversary Star Wars celebration in the pages of its June 3, 1987 issue I probably would not have cared much. But boy am I glad they did it now. I was looking through a copy of it on microfilm at the library and that issue is chock full of awesome Star Wars retrospective articles. There's some great quotes in one article from a tenth anniversary Star Wars convention appearance by Charles Lippincott, the man George Lucas hired to be the very first marketing director for Star Wars. Charles explained how it was tough convincing Marvel that a 5 issue movie adaptation comic was a good idea. He went on to explain how it was tough convincing anybody that Star Wars merchandise was a good idea!

What's also fun about this issue is that many Hollywood film companies and other organizations in the entertainment industry got in on the act by taking out giant ads congratulating George Lucas on his milestone. So in between the pages of articles chronicling Star Wars' commercial success were some great ads from some very famous people and places. Here's a couple of what I thought were the nicer ones.

Disney	Paramount Studios
Marvel Comics	Del Rey