A blog about Star Wars (Episode IV A New Hope) the first time around in the 1970s.
Including production, first release, reviews, merchandising, the novelization, Super 8 movies, Marvel comics and more.
In the days before home video, films disappeared for years between their big-screen release and their appearance on TV. That meant Star Wars fans lapped up any appearance, however fleeting, of the film's characters on TV.
Star Wars makes the cover of Look-In on March 11, 1978
The last in our short series of posts about the British weekly magazine Look-In focuses on the mini-posters that adorned many a bedroom wall after the release of Star Wars.
This Friday, I'll be publishing the last (for the time being) in my short series of posts about how Star Wars was featured in the youth magazine Look-In in the UK. I'll be sharing some of the impressive colour posters that the magazine ran in 1977-78.
In the meantime, though, any child of Britain in the 1970s will find it impossible to resist this TV ad I found on YouTube. It's a commercial for the March 11, 1978, edition of Look-In, which featured plenty of Star Wars, including an interview with Harrison Ford. Watch it and be transported back to a time when 10p could buy you enough glossy entertainment to last a week. And don't forget to return to the 21st century for this Friday's post.
Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame: What did he think of Star Wars?
Gerry Anderson was a huge figure in millions of childhoods from the 1960s onwards, giving us the television series Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Stingray, Space: 1999 and more. He also, unwittingly, cost Star Wars a fair amount of money.
But what did he think of the film that threatened to replace his series in kids’ affections? Fortunately, a cutting from the British young people’s magazine Look-In lets us know.
It’s been quiet at Episode Nothing, but I have been laying plans for some in-depth blog content which I hope you’re going to like.
Until I get going with that, here are some memories of a youth culture magazine that first generation British Star Wars fans are sure to remember fondly.
There's the rub: the front of the first Star Wars set from Letraset Action Transfers, 'Battle at Mos Eisley'
Letraset. If you're a first generation Star Wars fan, you might be tempted to say "Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time ... a long time." But it's a brand name that, for British fans in 1977-78, meant Star Wars – as surely as did the names Del Ray or Kenner in the US or Sphere and Palitoy in the UK.
