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 above 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!
And you could get it in green... years before we actually saw a green lightsabre in Return of the Jedi!
ReplyDeleteI also had a green knockoff lightsabre as a kid, from Zellers, if I recall.
That was the year my brother and I got a LASER SWORD. Which was this plastic glow in the dark K-Mart special. But we didn't care. We thought they were awesome.
ReplyDeleteHa, thanks for posting this. Brings back memories. Living in the UK, I had one of these (and remember the ad too). It wasn't the best Star Wars related toy I ever had - as you said, it was basically a torch with a long plastic tube attached - but I was still pretty excited with it at the time
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is the same product but my first lightsaber was an orange flashlight with a white plastic tube attached that my dad bought for me at a Star Trek convention in NYC in late 1977 or early 1978. It sure looks like it. Also got a tribble and the autographs of Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols at that convention. Unfortunately, I do not have any of those things any more.
ReplyDeleteI had one of the early knock-offs, but it came with a yellow filter on it, thus a yellow blade when lit up.
ReplyDeleteStrange that they could use the Star Wars logo and yet not the word 'lightsaber'. But I love the cartoony Luke and Leia. Especially as Leia is also wielding a 'force beam'!
ReplyDeleteI had a rip-off lightsabre for Christmas 1977 or 78. It wasn't this one though...it was a really short, stumpy thing with a tacky blue handle and an easily dented cloudy-white shaft. I think it was unimaginatively called a Laser Sword. This one looks much cooler! It's like a bad-ass Samurai Katana!
ReplyDeleteI had the K-Mart knock off one with the orange flashlight with a green "saber". Totally awesome
ReplyDeleteThe worst official Star Wars toy I owned in the late 70's was Kenner's inflatable Lightsaber. It was a total joke. The thing when waved around would flop about like a half erect penis. It was one of those Christmas gifts I got where at first I was "Oh, cool!!!!" but when I actually took it out of the box and put it together I was like "Oh, no..."
ReplyDeleteHere is a page about it: http://theswca.com/images-toys/misc/inflatablesaber.html
I totally forgotten about this toy! Like many of you I had one of these. A friend of mine had one too, and we had plenty of backyard battles bashing the tubes together. I have no idea if I still have mine. Time to start looking!
ReplyDeleteI had one of these as well, but it was a black handle and official lucasfilm version i think.
ReplyDeleteIt came with several gel filters so you could do red, green, blue and yellow.
I remember my older sister telling me it wasn't real and couldn't actually hurt people so I whacked her really hard with it to prove her wrong.
If yours was "official," it was a different toy. Still cool, though.
DeleteWhat's more, the first few issues of the "official" Star Wars poster magazine actually sold these (or something similar) through mail order, until the inflatable Kenner version became available. I had several cheap "flashlight" sabers when I was a kid, including one that said 'Space Sword' in Star Wars-style font on the bottom of the hilt.
ReplyDeleteThis advert appeared regularly on the back cover of the early issues of MARVEL UK's STAR WARS WEEKLY despite the fact that you'd imagine that 20th Century Fox's Soho Square offices would have oversight, and possibly sign-off, on copies of the weekly.
ReplyDelete