5 Star Wars Exclusives That Will Remind You That You’re Old

There have been some very strange Star Wars exclusives since 1995. The productsthemselves are not particularly strange, but each of these exclusives reminds us that our hobby has persisted through a changing retail landscape and a series of bizarre cross-promotion strategies.




In the nineties, Hasbro had much more of a social conscience. Back then, the children of America were not getting their recommended daily allowance of high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes. To remedy this crisis, Hasbro partnered with Kellogg's to make the first ever Han Solo in Stormtrooper disguise figure available as a mail-away redemption. You only had to eat two boxes and fifteen thousand calories worth of Froot Loops and you would get your mail away figure. It was Gen-X's version of Little Orphan Annie's decoder ring. Hasbro would continue to tackle the malnutrition epidemic by later partnering with Frito-Lay to make the Spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi figure your reward for eating a lot of potato chips.

That Froot Loops Han Solo actually flew pretty far under the radar for adult collectors. Unless you were a Saturday morning cartoon devotee, or one of those weirdos who ate cereal for dinner, you probably didn't find out about this promotion until it was too late. It rocketed in value on the secondary market and was the first "hot" figure from the early days of POTF2. You might be saying, "What about the adult collectors with kids? Surely they would have known about this promotion." You would be correct, but you're forgetting this was the nineties. Americans weren't comfortable straying too far from their assigned stereotypes at the time. So collectors had to be childless weirdos who lived in their mother's basement. Thankfully times have changed and we're now allowed to pursue lives of religious fulfillment (but we still need a special dispensation to procreate).

This was a bizarre pairing back in 1995. Today it seems nearly unbelievable. We almost have to remind ourselves that this happened, this literally happened. Of course today, Saturday morning cartoons are extinct, and I don't think children eat cereal anymore. I think they get their breakfast from an app now. But for you Mandela Effect wackos, the cereal was always called "Froot" Loops and not "Fruit" Loops. See, you can't call a product "Fruit Loops" when no ingredients remotely resemble fruit, even at the most basic, chemical level.

I don't see any collector value in the figure itself, so I'm not going to provide a shopping link. I do think the "vintage" cereal box pictured above has a lot of collector appeal as a time capsule, but I could find no samples on Ebay.



If the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld opened a retail chain, it would have been Service Merchandise. It was the oddest retail business model I can remember. While they have only been defunct for 13 years, chances are if you're under 25 years old, you have no idea this store existed. Service Merchandise was a catalog showroom store. Do you get that? Their showroom displayed samples of items that were in their catalog, not items you could actually pick up and carry to the register. It would kind of be like looking at a TV in Best Buy but then ordering it from Amazon, except Service Merchandise was fully self-contained. From the showroom, you would take a slip of paper indicating the items you intended to purchase. You would then take that slip to the cash register and pay for it. Next you stood in another line and waited until your purchases appeared from the back room on a rolling conveyer belt. You see, for years scientists were trying to figure out how to introduce more lines and waiting into the retail experience. Service Merchandise cracked that nut. When you're five years old, seeing your purchase magically appear from the back room was fun, but you were a fat little idiot. For the next twenty years after that, that process became unnecessarily tedious. Truth be told, this didn't usually apply to the store's toy section. That operated like a traditional retailer, but it's hard to imagine there ever existed a shopping pattern like this.

Despite the oddness of the chain and its relatively small footprint in the retail space, they rated an exclusive from Hasbro in the form of the 12" Collectors Series AT-AT Driver in 1997. This is actually the product that broke me of my early completism. It was rumored, though I never did confirm, that this 12" AT-AT Driver fell into that "catalog" pattern described above, and you often had to beg an employee to get one. I didn't care to find out. At the time, the 12" AT-AT Driver commanded up to a fivefold premium on the secondary market (which was mostly some usenet message boards and print ads). This clearly indicated that people were willing to pay $80 to not go into Service Merchandise.

If you want to own this relic from when retail was weird, there are actually a few samples on Ebay (sponsored). Just make sure you get the one in the box with the flap. The window box is the later, general release.




Fan clubs used to exist. They were such a big thing that they were not unlike labor unions with both national and local branches. This is evidenced by television's first reality show, The Brady Bunch. Marsha Brady was the president of the local Davy Jones Fan Club. They were social and cultural forces. That is, until the internet made human contact obsolete, and fan clubs largely vanished. Star Wars used to have an Official Fan Club that took many forms over the years. Up until recently it was the official site's Hyperspace membership. In 1998 I believe enrollment in the fan club consisted of subscribing to the Star Wars Insider magazine.

This poorly researched background is immaterial. The important thing is that the Fan Club used to get exclusive figures. It's hard to believe this today, but the Oola with Salacious Crumb 2-pack was the first of many. But this tale gets even more archaic. You had to call the 800 number to order. Yes, you actually had to call and speak to someone and verbally relay your information. Then they would verbally confirm your information. It took an eternity. At least five minutes. If you were really lucky and managed to accurately dictate your mailing address, your figure showed up in six to eight weeks. The Fan Club also offered early access to the general release Freeze Frame Removable Helmet Darth Vader. Do you remember that? If so, then you're old.

As with the Froot Loops Han, I see no collector value in this item.




Some of our readers don't know that FAO Schwarz was a thing. They used to be a force in retail toy sales and manufacturing. While they had many locations, they were mostly known for their flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It was where fancy people went to buy fancy, ridiculously priced teddy bears for their son, Spalding, to drool on. Even if you don't remember the time when physical FAO Schwarz locations existed, you might know the flagship store from the movie Big. It's where Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia played "Heart and Soul" on the floor keyboard. FAO Schwarz is now just a brand name that keeps getting resold. Robert Loggia is no longer with us, having passed away in 2015. In 2016, Kevin Meaney, who was also in Big, passed away. All the things I know no longer exist, and it's freaking me out, man.

Despite being a largely regional retail outlet, FAO Schwarz was the exclusive retailer for many Hasbro Star Wars products, the first of which were 2-packs for the 12" line (complete with that fancy Manhattan premium price). For the 99% of us who didn't have access to one of the physical stores you had to order through their phone catalog. As with the Fan Club, you had to actually call and speak to someone. She was usually named Shirley or Betty. It was the nineties after all (see above). Here's the fun part. About a week or so after your chat with ol' Shirl, you got a postcard in the mail that appeared to be generated by a dot matrix printer. This was your order confirmation. "Nuts to the instant email order confirmations of today," says I. That post card had instructions for cancellation, which of course was a phone number. A few more weeks or months would go by and the mailman would leave a box on your porch that was roughly the size of a VW bus. These were the days before thieves realized that boxes on porches contained things. The list of significant FAO Schwarz exclusives is actually pretty long. They were also the exclusive retailers of the first ever Imperial Shuttle in the modern line and the very cool Fambaa from the Episode I line.

That Fambaa is neat and regardless of how you feel about The Phantom Menace, it certainly exudes a "toyetic" quality. Samples are plentiful on Ebay (sponsored) and can be had for less than the original MSRP.

I feel the 12" 2-packs have collector value as packaged items, and at of the time of this article, a limited supply of all three are available on Ebay (sponsored).




Boy, we're really taking the 12" Collector Series to the woodshed, aren't we? It's not our fault. It seems like Hasbro's requirement for an exclusive retail partner for the Collector Series was a pulse. Heck, we didn't even get to the JCPenney's exclusive Greedo. It was a very confusing time. It's a minor miracle Caldor didn't rate its own figure. When these exclusives were announced, the community kept checking the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st. Now, Kay Bee Toys was a nationwide retailer, so it's not odd they received an exclusive. In fact, they were even a clearance house for other retailers' exclusives. FAO Schwarz was like the rich kid in school who got all the awesome new toys right away. Then he would get bored with them and just give them away to one of his classmates. The classmate was Kay Bee Toys. Almost every single FAO exclusive would end up on deep clearance at KB to include the aforementioned Imperial Shuttle.

So why did an exclusive for a well known and nationwide retailer land on our list? Well, it's basically because of economics (and it's a little dry, therefore we buried it here at the bottom). What makes Kay Bee a callback to times past is that they were a mall-based toy retailer. For those unfamiliar with commercial real estate, mall leases are by far the most expensive leases per square foot. In today's Amazon and big box dominated landscape, it's unfathomable to think that a nationwide chain of mall based toy stores could survive. You will never see that again. The concept is now as archaic as the main street general store. Stopping at malls used to be a regular part of our toy hunts and I'm talking the interior of malls, not the occasional Target or Toys R Us anchor store. Now the only reason toy collectors go inside malls is to be bored out of their minds while their wives take FOR-EVER at the Bare Minerals store.

As with the FAO Schwarz 2-packs, I think this Kay Bee exclusive has merit as a packaged collectible. There is a limited supply on Ebay (sponsored) and once again, some can be had for less than the original MSRP.


Here are five canceled exclusive cross promotions that we totally made up.

• Ex-Lax Sim Aloo redemption: Post a picture of your dated Ex-Lax receipt to social media with the hashtag #SimAlooMakesMePoo to get a free figure. This was cancelled for the obvious reason: Sim Aloo is better suited as a general release figure.


• Cast a WNBA All-Star ballot and get a free R2-D2: Okay, this one was real, but no one claimed a figure.


• Build-A-Droid parts randomly inserted in boxes of Grip-Rite galvanized nails: They attempted to bring in the Band-Aid people for maximum corporate synergy on this one, but like most three-team trades, it died on the vine.


• The Kingsford Charcoal charred Owen & Beru exclusive figures: It was quickly realized that the figures would be indistinguishable from the charcoal briquettes, so this was cancelled for safety reasons. Maybe this can be resurrected as a redemption figure like the rocket-firing Fett.


• Walgreens gets multiple exclusive figures: What's that now? This is for real? Yeah right. Shut up! What are they going to do, put the figures next to the epsom salt? I'm not falling for it.

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