When I was two, my parents took me to see a movie at The Ritz movie theater in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Halfway through it, I choked on a piece of hard candy, nearly died and had to be taken to the bathrooms so that I could hack it out onto a heating vent. My parents being new to parenthood were naturally freaked out. But, common sense prevailed and we re-entered the theater to watch the rest of Star Wars: A New Hope. As my parents recall it, “we didn’t want to miss the rest of the movie.”

This is my first memory. I’m a pretty lucky guy.

From that point of near death on to today, I have adored Star Wars a great deal. I’m not some wacky and obsessed fanboy. I don’t go to conventions dressed as Yoda. I haven’t built a light saber or construct a Darth Vader outfit. … But I’m jealous of those who have.

In the fall of 1994, my then new friends Ryan and Jaime lived in a cozy little house in Belpre, Ohio. I was living in Columbus, Ohio and had just discovered the World Wide Web! I was surfin’ up the emails and looking at very stark webpages on Mosaic (Netscape had just emerged and I didn’t trust it quite yet).

One of my favorite ways to kill time after sneaking into OSU’s computer labs was to hit the newsgroups. I’d hit some Hare Krishna ones (alt.rel.vaisnava, I think) and the star wars one (alt.starwars? – I have no idea). But it was there that I found one of the first scripts that Lucas churned out. I also found “The First Partial List of Kenner Star Wars Prototypes Which Failed Miserably” by Micah Wright.

Fourteen years ago, I printed it out on a noisy dot matrix printer, tore off the edges and took it with me to Ryan and Jaime’s on my next visit. We got giggles galore.

Last night, for Christmas dinner, I was over at Ryan and Jaime’s new place (we all now live in Seattle) and I remembered this “partial list.” We couldn’t remember more than a handful of figures, so I took it upon myself to refind this list.

Long gone are my days on Usenet, but Google came in quite handy. Within minutes, I was transported back to 1994 Columbus, sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, emailing kids on the straight-edge listserv. I’m sure I posted it there (since Star Wars and straight edge go together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong).

I found it here. And here are some highlights…

11) Darth Vader Funeral Pyre. They couldn’t figure out how to make a
character who had been 4 inches tall and thin into a character 2.5
inches tall and fat as a slug once you removed his helmet. Also a
problem with the fact that it only worked once.

13) “Real-Guts” Tauntaun. Also referred to as “The Visible Tauntaun.”
Once you pulled off the skin, you could see all the internal organs.
Much like real tauntauns, it stank to high heaven. Other problem:
Like similar toy “The Visible Man,” Visible Tauntaun’s organs never
went back in right and you were always left with an extra organ or
two.

14) “Learn the Force At Home” Kit. Included self-hypnosis training tapes
and rocks to lift. Recalled after thousands of children with no
strong parental figure turned to the dark side, killing their parents
and saying things like “You are part of the Rebel Alliance and you
did not make me the type of sandwich that I like!” while strangling
them from across the room.

17) Pimp Lando Figure. Lando as a loc-ed out pimp daddy. Long brown
leather coat, straight razor, huge afro, gold tooth, etc. Actually
molded, packaged, and ready to be shipped when the makers of the Shaft
figures sued for copyright infringement.

20) Voices of the Dead Driving Headset. The voice of Ben Kenobi helps You
drive around town. “Watch out for the brown van, Luke!” “The light
is about to turn green, Luke!” Actually a great help for drivers,
but failed on the market due to the fact that not very many people
are named Luke, and no one likes a back seat driver.

Oh the fun! There are tons more, go see!

During this search, I also stumbled onto a similar, though more photoshoppy, idea. McMorran’s Star Wars toys that never made it.

The Smoldering Moisture Farm Playset and The Force action figure are my two favorites…