Chewie gets some much needed attention in this third activity book from Random House. It's the usual blend of mazes, crosswords, magic tricks and recipes, all with a vague Wookiee slant ..read more

I don't usually do obituaries for Star Wars folks or anybody else for that matter. Other people do them much better than me. Star Wars is a massive family that began 40 years ago so it's natural that we will lose people along the way and we have - Peter Cushing, Kenny Baker, Christopher Lee are just some the actors who come to mind and we've lost plenty of crew members too. Also, 2016 has been brutal, we all know that.   But this one hit me hard. Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) has died. I was worried by her recent heart attack and, for a moment, thought she might pull through, but she ..read more

I've touched on the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special before and, apart from a never produced line of wookiee action figures by Kenner, there was never really any merchandise for it. Apart from this. Random House did several kids books based on Star Wars including four activity books and a couple of stories - The Maverick Moon and The Rebellious Robot. This one is in a different format (hardcover) but the style is more or less the same. Tying in with what we saw of the Wookiees in the Holiday Special, Chewbacca's son Lumpy, heads down to the lower levels of the forest (against his mother ..read more

The border of the stickers in series 3 changed to a black film strip ..read more

Shaun Cassidy is the mug on the cover for this issue but there's no article on him, just a series of photographs. There is however, an article on the mechanical shark of the upcoming Jaws 2 which was pretty sweet. I like that movie. Not a patch on the original of course, but as far as sequels go it's not bad at all. On to the Star Wars strip, and I've not really any clue as to what's going on story wise having not read the previous installments. Luke, Leia and the droids seem to be escaping from some high tech planet with the aid of 'the keeper'. I'm looking forward to getting all iss ..read more

Here is series 2 of the stickers included in Topps trading card packs. Quite similar in style to series 1, they are mostly portraits with a couple of nice spaceship shots. Again, I have lost the border on one of them, leaving it white, but at least it's just one card this time ..read more

Now isn't that just the coolest cover ever? Linda Rondstadt backed by Dr. Strange on lead guitar with Captain America on bass and C-3PO on drums. Linda Rondstadt was the cover story for this issue and boy was she hot stuff in the '70s. Widely regarded one of the top stars of the decade, she was regularly alluded to as 'The Queen of Rock' with sell-out shows and chart topping albums. This year she is seventy. Just let that sink in for a while. No teen mag is complete without an 'agony aunt' column and some of the old ones can be pretty hilarious. In Pizzazz's case it's 'Write Wendy' who, wh ..read more

Well, it's been over a year since I blogged last - apologies to anybody keeping tabs on this site. Life has been hectic with kids, work etc (usual excuses). I have a little more time now and have a few posts lined up so I'll kick off with the first of Topps's sticker sets. Each wax-sealed pack of trading cards contained a sticker and there were eleven stickers for each series. Series 1 was more or less a collection of character mugshots against a starry backdrop with the occasional spaceship. You can see in the photo above that some of the backgrounds are white. This means, unfortunately, t ..read more

Starlog really is one of my favorite magazines from this era. It's not just the Star Wars stuff, but this issue alone spotlights a ton of other stuff I like such as Battlestar Galactica, Roger Corman and Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings animation. Not many magazines are such a joy to read from cover to cover. This cover really has gone down in history as it's one of the few pieces of memorabilia connected to the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. The dreaded show went out a month previous to this and the article doesn't give much away regarding public reception. It's really more of a set o ..read more

Here's the fourth series with the green borders. 1 more to go! The puzzle of Han and Chewie is surprisingly tall and pretty hard to put together.   We have 'movie facts' now instead of official descriptions and I like the one showing Lucas's influences like Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars. I have to feel like they were groping a bit for new images to use on the card fronts. 'Luke's secret yen for action' made me laugh. Also cool; 'The Empire Strikes Back' way before there was a movie by that name ..read more