McDonalds Jabba the Hutt Glass

I love fast food promotional items, especially those that tie in to movies. When I was a kid my favorites were the ones that were also the most fragile – the collector’s glasses. I especially loved the Star Wars ones. All three Star Wars films had collectible glasses available from McDonalds. I even remember getting some and having my coke actually served to me in the restaurant in one of these glasses. In the 90’s the fast food joints gradually went to plastic promotional cups. I still have a lot of those, but my actual “glasses” are mostly gone. They had a tendency to eventually break, after all. We weren’t smart enough to just keep them nice. We drank out of them, and put them through the dishwasher, on a nightly basis.

One that I still have, and it’s in perfect condition I might add, is the Jabba the Hutt glass from the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi. This was always one of my favorites of the glasses anyway because Jabba was just such a strange character. He’s basically a intergalactic crime boss who happens to be a giant space worm. That’s just awesome! This glass show’s him in all his glory with his annoying sidekick Salacious Crumb seated in front of him.

Turn the glass a bit and you also get Princess Leia in the famous gold bikini being groped by a Gamorrean Guard. The gold bikini was, after all, one of the highlights of the film so it was awesome to have it on a drinking glass. Keep turning the glass and we get that band of space Muppets, Sy Snootles and the Max Reebo Band. This is the original three-piece version of the band, before the special editions turned them into a much bigger act.

It’s great when fast food establishments still bring out the plastic tie-in cups, but how I miss the days of the glasses. Since we kids wanted to actually drink out of Jabba the Hutt’s head, most of mine didn’t last. At least this one has survived.

The First Time I Saw – Star Trek: The Motion Picture

There are those who say that you must choose one side or the other. Either you’re a Star Wars fan or you’re a Star Trek fan. You can’t be both. I wouldn’t agree with that since I enjoy both. However, Star Wars will always win out in my heart. I was six years old when George Lucas took us to his galaxy far far away for the first time and it had a huge effect on my childhood. I was certainly aware of Mr. Roddenberry’s universe. I remember a friend of mine who lived up the block had a number of Trek dolls as well as the Enterprise playset, complete with the cool spinning transporter. However, I never actually watched Star Trek until I saw the Enterprise’s first big screen adventure in 1979.

I actually got to see the film a few weeks before it was released to the general public. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in December of 1979 and one of the film’s big promotional campaigns was with McDonalds. The Happy Meal, which had just debuted earlier in the year, became the “Star Trek Meal” in celebration of the film’s release. I remember very clearly commercials featuring a Klingon telling earth parents to take their kids to McDonalds for this special treat. At my local McDonalds there also happened to be a drawing to win two tickets to an advanced screening of the movie. You’ve probably figured out by now that I won.

So, on a cold Saturday morning in December of 1979, my father and I went to the movie theater outside of the Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard, IL to see Star Trek. I was eight years old. Now remember, I had never really seen Star Trek before. I think I knew who Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were, I knew the ship was called the Enterprise, and I knew the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty.” That was about it. I was still excited, though.

In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best way for me to start on Star Trek. This first film certainly has its supporters these days, but most people recognize that Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not one of the strongest of the Trek films. The main thing I remember is that the film was pretty boring. That and that there was this weird bald chick in a bathrobe. My Star Trek fandom might have ended up derailed for good after this weak first outing. To this day, it is the Trek film I have revisited the least. I would become much more invested in the series with the next installment, though. My memories of seeing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the first time will be coming soon.

Pennant Race: Museum of Science and Industry

Many people collect things when they travel. Postcards, spoons, snowglobes…all sorts of odd little things to remind us of the places we’ve been. When I was a kid, I collected pennants. You hardly see these at tourist destinations anymore, but these fabric triangles used to be everywhere. I had them all over my bedroom walls when I was a kid, before I switched to movie posters in high school. In the end, both hobbies became frustrating to my parents after I left home and they had to fill in all the little thumbtack holes before repainting my old room.

I still have all my pennants in a stack in my basement. Most of them are from the mid 70’s to mid 80’s. Since this blog is my place to dwell on all things retro, I thought I’d devote some posts to going through my pennants and sharing some of the memories associated with them. So, we begin the pennant race with this little beauty from Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and going into the city to visit one of the museums was always a treat. As a younger kid, The Field Museum of Natural History was the place to go. It was the one with the dinosaur bones. But as I got older, the Museum of Science and Industry became the cooler museum. I always loved the look of the building. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that the museum is one of the few remaining structures from the “The White City,” the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Oddly enough, this pennant features several famous exhibits that I usually avoided when I was a kid. First is the famous walk-through human heart. Many kids thought this was cool but I always thought, “Eww!” I’ve never been one for shows like ER or House. Those things gross me out! Don’t get me started on the Discovery Channel. So walking through a giant heart is not high on the fun list for me. The heart is still at the museum, though in a much different form that the museum describes as both “virtual and physical.”

The other exhibit that always scared me off was the German U-505 submarine. It is one of only two German subs captured during World War II and looking back, I probably would’ve thought it was cool back when I was a kid. But something in the imagination of a child got me believing that the sub would actually submerge and I wanted nothing of that. Hey, Lake Michigan is like right there! It’s not that wild an idea!

Even though I stayed away from the heart and the sub, the museum was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid. I still enjoy getting to visit when I return to the windy city to visit family.

Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys

I will never forget when I got my first Star Wars action figures. I had a grandmother who loved to spoil her grandkids, and I was her first. One night she took me to dinner at a Sambo’s restaurant (remember those?) and then she took me down to the mall just down the road. She informed me I was allowed to pick out a toy. I knew exactly what I wanted…a C3-PO action figure. This would’ve been early 1978, the Star Wars action figures were brand new and there were only 12 to pick from at this point. Threepio was my favorite character, so that was all I wanted. Expecting me to pick something more expensive, my grandmother informed me I could choose something else, too…so I grabbed and R2-D2 to go with him. Trying to help the situation, Grandma grabbed the Landspeeder and said, “what about this, too?” I informed her that droids don’t drive landspeeders, so I ended up with a Luke Skywalker figure as well. Little did my Grandmother realize what she had started, as she would spend most of the rest of the 70’s scouring the Chicago area for the elusive Jawa figure. She was awesome!

I recently had the opportunity to watch the documentary Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys. It’s not every day that you get to see a documentary that is about YOU! Much of the film consists of interviews with forty-somethings, like myself, who spent hour upon hour playing with Star Wars toys. Though, most of these guys have gone well beyond that and now shell out thousands of dollars for mint-in-the-box Tauntauns and Tie Fighters circa 1981, not to mention every new version of toys that gets released. I admit, it was a bit of a relief for me to see some of these hoarders displaying the toys they actually played with as a kid. I’m glad I’m not the only one who has an R2-D2 with the label ripped off his belly, or who broke two of the four wings off his X-wing.

The rest of the film details how a somewhat small player in the toy business, Kenner, took the licensing deal that none of the other toy companies wanted and ended up a much bigger fish overnight. Though the testimonies of the Kenner designers are a bit too clinical at times, the story is still intriguing. Especially interesting is seeing some of the designs and prototypes for toys that would eventually become favorites, or, in some cases, never make it off the page. We actually get to see a few prototypes of the rocket firing Boba Fett that we all sent away four proof of purchases for. Thanks to safety concerns he was changed and didn’t fire a dang thing by the time he arrived in the mailbox. He was still cool, though.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Plastic Galaxy is a fairly straightforward documentary. It’s not necessarily innovative in how it approaches its subject, but it doesn’t really need to be. For those who didn’t grow up with this stuff, it does an effective job of telling the story of the Star Wars toy phenomenon. For someone like me, the film was an absolute joy to behold. I spent 70 minutes going, “Oh, I had that” or “I wanted that one so bad!” Now excuse me, I’m off to the basement to find my box of figures.

Dan Aykroyd and “We Are the World”

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the recording of “We Are the World.” A group of popular American singing artists gathered together after the American Music Awards ceremony in January of 1985 to record the song which would go on to raise millions of dollars for relief efforts in Africa. They called themselves USA for Africa and you could say it was the ultimate supergroup. It featured the likes of Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, and more. I still have my copy of the single tucked away in my basement.

The video showed 44 artists crammed into a recording studio singing their hearts out. It was fun to try and spot people…”oh, there’s Al Jarreau…and that’s John Oates…what is Latoya Jackson doing there?” But then there was one really big surprise member of the chorus.

I imagine many people squinted at their screens and said, “Hey who’s that guy in the back with the glasses? The one right between Harry Belafonte and Lindsey Buckingham. It kind of looks like…but no, it couldn’t be.” Lucky for us the cover of the “We Are the World” single listed all the artists involved, and there we saw the name “Dan Aykroyd.”

Now I have nothing against Dan Aykroyd. In fact, he’s always been one of my favorite SNL alums. You gotta admit, though, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher how the star of Ghostbusters and My Stepmother is an Alien ended up singing on this huge hit record. Granted, Aykroyd has had some musical success as half of The Blues Brothers, but you can’t say that the man is known for his vocal stylings. What’s even stranger about the whole thing is that on the cover of the 45, the list of artists singing on the song was printed alphabetically. That’s only fair considering the large number of egos, uh stars involved in the project. That also means that A for Aykroyd got top billing on the song. He’s even listed above Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen!

I applaud Dan Aykroyd for having been a part of this historic effort to help those in need in Africa. And hey, he got to perform alongside a few dozen music icons! The dude rocks! He’ll have a harder time getting into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, however.