I received this in my e-mail today from a friend: a British magazine ad for one of the very first
Star Wars knock-off toys - the "Force Beam!" Basically a flashlight attached to a long plastic tube, this was the closest thing to a lightsaber an aspiring Jedi Knight could buy... at least, for a while. The manufacturers took advantage of Lucasfilm & Kenner's slowness in getting licensed product on the consumer market, and rushed these to K-Marts and chain toy stores months before an official lightsaber toy had appeared. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got one of these (or some other, similar unauthorized lightsaber knock-off) for Christmas in '77!
(A quick Google search found this ad - and some shots of the toy itself - on a site called
The Star Wars Collector's Archive.)
What amazes me about the advertisement obve isn't the obvious
Star Wars-inspired graphics, but the fact that they actually use the
Star Wars name (and facsimile logo) in an ad for what was clearly an unofficial product! Like the makers of the
Warrior's Battlejacket, these guys had stones!
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