May 2007 marked thirty years since the original theatrical release of Star Wars. In May 2008, Return of the Jedi reaches the quarter-century mark. John Booth, who at age six converted his thumbs and index fingers from cowboy shooters to Han Solo-inspired blasters, is raking together his memories of the saga in a series of essays for Field's Edge.The series begins here.

I may not have seen the whole thing, but I did come away from that first Empire viewing with the two-dollar “Marvel Super Special Magazine” comics adaptation of the movie, since there was a special counter full of Empire merchandise set up there in the Mellett Mall theater lobby. I read that comic until its cover came off and then some. I tracked down a copy within the last few years and was surprised at how the full-color pictures took me back and reminded me of all the differences between the comic and the movie: Luke’s post-Wampa plaster face mask; the ice creatures attacking inside the Hoth base; the Jedi training on Dagobah where Luke tries to slice up a metal bar; the silhouette of Vader’s bare head that actually makes it seem like he’s got curly hair. (I’d also forgotten about the full-page black-and-white ad in the middle of the book: A scantily-clad space-warrior-princess flanked by a couple snarling Yeti-gorilla things advertising a new Marvel Masterpiece – Bizarre Adventures 2! What this had to do with Star Wars, I had no idea.)

I still have the Kenner cardback from my first Empire action figure, which I was absolutely spastic to find for $2.38 on the pegs at Click’s. I remember standing in front of this huge array of figures and digging through them, looking for some – any – of the new guys. Han Hoth, maybe, with that ultimately cool holster where you could actually hook his blaster; or the Bespin Luke with a lightsaber and a gun, and no more of this sword-embedded-in-the-arm goofiness. Or maybe even that almost-scary new Stormtrooper that looked like a ghost.

I have to be honest: I can’t remember if I saw these figures before I saw the movie or not. Looking at this cardback, it was early enough in Kenner’s run that Yoda’s not pictured on it, and I remember dying to see what his action figure was going to look like.

So, you know what figure I wound up with? You know what the only new Empire figure Click’s had was? FX-7. Oh, I was excited as hell just to have one of the new guys, but man, what a sucky figure. No feet. Zero play value. Screen time that makes IG-88’s role look like Hamlet. Freaking Power Droid kicks this guy’s ass.

But he was mine. Brand-new, Empire Strikes Back ecstasy mine.

In late third grade or early fourth, our class made “book plates.” Little cards that said, “This book belongs to ____________.” I designed mine specifically for my Scholastic copy of The Empire Strikes Back Storybook. Two felt-pen TIE Fighters and an orange fireball. It's still tucked in there, even though there are only a couple brownish stripes where the scotch tape holding it used to be. Speaking of the storybook, how big a rip-off was it to get this thing and find out it didn't have a single picture of a Snow Walker in it, unless you counted the close-up shot of Luke hanging underneath it? No bald Vader head, either. It was neat, though, that the picture of Luke and Leia staring out the window at the end shows a big pink and white nebula instead of the galaxy they showed in the movie. I remember that painting from the World magazine article, too.

I got not one but two Kenner mail-away toys during the Empire era: The Bossk figure, with his lumpy head and red eyes and a rifle that rested along his scaly forearm, and the Survival Kit that came with oxygen masks for spacers exploring giant slug innards, some Hoth-style backpacks and a knapsack for Luke to carry Yoda. Seeing those little white packages show up in the mailbox was pure joy.

For my birthday that year, my parents threw me a surprise party – Mom sent me to the basement before dinner to get a loaf of bread from the freezer and a bunch of my friends were down there waiting. We watched some short eight-millimeter movies from the library on the screen my Dad had set up, stuff like clips from the moon landing and maybe, I think, one of those seven-minute excerpts from Star Wars. Among the stuff I got was a Twin Pod Cloud Car, and my friends and I took turns flying it in front of the screen and noting that if you held it sideways, it looked kind of like one of those weird double-barrelled blasters from “The Black Hole.”

One of my friends’ parents had wanted to get me a Tauntaun, but they couldn’t find one in time for my birthday. A couple days later, before school one morning, I saw the Tauntaun box poking out from beneath a jacket on our kitchen table, and it took all my willpower to pretend I hadn't noticed it.

And while the original Death Star playset was never to be surpassed, top-to-bottom, Kenner outdid itself with the Empire toy line. It was that sugar-rush giddiness of the first “new set” of Star Wars action figures all over again, times a hundred.

Besides the Empire figures, there were new ships: Boba Fett's Slave I (never had it); the Snowspeeder (had it – awesome pulsating laser guns and working harpoon/tow cable combo); Rebel Transport (never had it); Scout Walker  - never had one (my brothers got the Return of the Jedi version a couple years later) but who gave a flying freighter about it because it was actually a laugher onscreen, dwarfed by ts big brother terror machine, the Snow Walker. This beautiful four-legged monster (yeah, it's called an AT-AT, but “Walker” just sounded meaner) was Empire's version of the Death Star, and I wanted one so freaking bad. Never got it.

On the other hand, I was lucky enough to get the two Hoth playsets Kenner put out: The Turret/Probot set ruled because it was the only way to get your hands on an Imperial Probe Droid, and the Imperial Attack Base was packed with levers and gadgets and clickers that did everything from turn a command center to rubble to collapsing a snow bridge. (The Rebel turret that came with the Probot set also had a detachable top that you could sit a guy in, and sometimes we used it as a mini-ship all by itself. Hell, if Kenner could make up an Imperial Attack Base that never existed in the movie, I was free to send my guys hovering around on miniature gunboats.)

I remember taking my Probe Droid apart and sneaking it to school in my jacket pocket one winter day, and me and Mike D. and Jake spent a whole recess making a little snowball “pod” to recreate the droid's plunge to the Hoth surface, and then playing with the robot in the piles of snow behind the chain-link kickball backstop.

Even the Twin Pod Cloud Car, which had about as much actual screen-time-related play value as FX-7, was great because it looked like nothing else in the Star Wars galaxy.

A couple years later, fifth grade was the last year before middle school, so it was the last year we did stuff like have Halloween parties and Christmas gift exchanges in our classrooms. The Christmas spending limit was about three dollars, but since my best friend Mike S. had drawn my name, I was surprised with an Imperial Commander figure, which had cost at least four dollars.

One of my favorite Empire-age presents, though, wasn't from the toy line at all.

I spent a lot of time in the fall of 1980 in the Belden Village Mall Waldenbooks coveting the shrink-wrapped stack of Ralph McQuarrie's The Empire Strikes Back portfolios. Made no secret of the fact I wanted this thing for Christmas awfully bad.

And I remember without a doubt that my mom had pretty much assured me that she and Dad wouldn't be shelling out the bucks for it. I seem to remember price being a sticking point – no way was Mom coughing up close to ten bucks for something I couldn't even play with.

As it happened, my mom's brother, Uncle Rob, spent that Christmas at our house. A little background: Uncle Rob was the youngest “grown-up” that I knew, which made him – no offense to my Dad's older brother, Uncle John – you know, cool.

Uncle Rob, for example, had bought me the a boxed set of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” books when I was in first grade. (I got through “The Hobbit” pretty easily, but I'll admit it was probably fourth or fifth or maybe even sixth grade before I got through LOTR. As a little kid, those chapters about “Many Meetings” and “The Council of Elrond” seem like they go on and onnnn.) I remember Uncle Rob being stoked about the then-new Lord of the Rings cartoon movie, and taking me to see it at the theater down by the Gold Circle store. He was going to buy me one of the Gollum posters they had for sale in the lobby, but we wound up seeing the last show of the day, and when we came out of the theater, the concession stand was closed.

And I remember going to Uncle Rob's college graduation and seeing the house where he lived at the time. They had a fish tank with a piranha in it and some record album cover set up behind it as a backdrop. (They also had a black-and-white cat that we'd given Uncle Rob as a kitten. He had wanted to call it “Felix,” but his roommates had overruled him and gone with “Moon Puppy.” This was the seventies, after all.)

So when Uncle Rob came to stay with us that Christmas, I knew things were going to be fun. He camped out on the floor of my room and we stayed up late talking, and he told me stories about growing up with my mom on the farm over in Upper Sandusky.

Christmas morning, I open up my present from Uncle Rob, and it's that Empire Strikes Back portfolio, and I was just crazy excited because I had completely put it out of my mind, since, after all, Mom had shot it down. There weren't as many weird and different pre-production ideas in the Empire paintings as there had been in the Star Wars edition, but these prints were bigger, and the 25-picture collection came with an extra sheet of paper that had information about each one. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor looking through the whole stack again and again.

Uncle Rob, naturally, earned himself a permanent spot on my Cool List.

Here are the links to the rest of Remembering Star Wars:

Part I: Summer, 1977
Part II: The Droids We Were Looking For
Part III: Perfect Hibernation
Part IV: Into A Larger World
Part V: Collect All 21!
Part VI: A Certain Point of View
Part VII: A Pack-A-Day Habit

Part VIII: Size Matters Not
Part IX: Along A Different Path
Part X: There is Another

FieldsEdge.com is an online magazine with a wide-angle lens. Click on one of the topics below to see our offerings related to specific subjects, or browse the main page and see what catches your eye. Got a story idea? We'll listen. Drop a note to writer/editor John Booth or photographer/writer Jim Carchidi.

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