Secrets of the Force

by Edward Gross

  * * *

  In 1972, Swearingen had started working for Kenner, a midsized Midwest toy company that was begun by two brothers in the 1940s. By the 1970s, prior to their producing action figures, they were the creator of products like Spirographs, the Sit ’n Spin, and the Betty Crocker Easy-Bake Oven—a big seller for them.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  They had built up a pretty good small toy company. The thing that started them in licensing, at least in the Boys Toys line, was that they got the rights to do The Six Million Dollar Man in ’74 or ’75. By that time, I was in the preliminary design department, which was kind of the advanced concepts area. So, we looked to develop our own product, but we’d also look to license properties. So, the license for The Six Million Dollar Man came by, and the marketing department decided we should take a look at it.

  * * *

  Once that decision was made, the company would start reading scripts and looking at visuals that had been provided by different studios to try and get an idea of what could be done in regards to toys. In essence, this was Kenner’s first foray into licensing Hollywood properties.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  My claim to fame for The Six Million Dollar Man was giving him his bionic eye. There was a bunch of other people who put skin on his arm and gave him power grip—it all came from different places within the department. We saw the show before it went on TV and it ran for a number of years. We had The Six Million Dollar Man and then we had The Bionic Woman, so it was a couple of years. I think we introduced them in ’74. That was the big foray into licensing properties. We did it at the twelve-inch scale to be competitive with G.I. Joe.

  That was what got Kenner on the list of, at least, TV properties. We looked at Man from Atlantis, and a couple of other things. At that time, TV shows were more relevant to the toy business, because they generally dropped in September—that was when they premiered new TV shows—and then they ran for thirteen or twenty-six weeks, which usually got toy companies through Christmas.

  * * *

  As Swearingen describes it, once a product was given a “go” order, it took about a year to go from his desk to production. In other words, concepts would be presented to marketing and management, and once approved they would be turned over to the production design and engineering groups. From there the plans would be sent to China or the Far East for production. But with Star Wars, tooling was done in Asia, while injection molding was done in the United States. The action figures were produced overseas, but the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Millennium Falcon were manufactured in Cincinnati.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  I got to be the liaison between Lucasfilm and Kenner for the first, probably, six months. I was kind of on my own for at least the first few months, and then the marketing people were still trying to figure out if they could do the thing or not. So, I got to go back-and-forth with the people at Lucasfilm and ask for stuff—trying to get more information from them. Because really, all we had was the script we saw, and the snapshots of the X-Wing and the TIE Fighter, but neither were very good pictures. So we were kind of figuring it out as we went. We put together all kinds of stuff, action figures, games, and puzzles and all of the things that we could do. Dave Okada and I flew out to California, and the first presentation we did was to 20th Century Fox in March of ’77. We went out to try and convince 20th Century Fox that this little Midwest toy company could do a job on it. And at the same time, we were trying to convince the Kenner management that they should do it. About that time, we did our presentation in March, they were kind of talking money, deal points, and such. Which I wasn’t involved with. We presented to Alan Ladd, and Marc Pevers and a bunch of 20th Century Fox guys. Lucas didn’t see that presentation; I don’t think he was there. But they were doing the release and licensing on the movie, so they had to see everything first.

  * * *

  Because Lucas had played things so close to the vest due to fear of his ideas being ripped off by others, there was no way Kenner could have the first wave of action figures ready for a May 1977 release and, frankly, not even Christmas of that year. Instead, they came up with an innovative plan to placate what had become a growing legion of fans hungry for anything Star Wars: they created and sold what was described as an “Early Bird Certificate Package,” which featured a certificate that could be mailed to Kenner and redeemed for four Star Wars action figures. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and R2-D2 were the first four figures to be distributed. Also, a part of the box was a diorama display stand, stickers, and a membership card for the official Star Wars fan club.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  We sold the empty box/envelope at Christmas of ’77. Also at Christmas of ’77, we had a board game that was all paper and I think we did Dip-Dots and some paint stuff that didn’t require any retooling. Then the first four figures shipped in February or March and the rest of the line picked up from there. We went to Toy Fair in ’78 with a full line, including the X-Wing and TIE Fighter.

  In terms of the design process, the way we did it then was, I went through the script, picked out the characters, and made a presentation board, which is basically black line drawings with marker renders of the characters. That was the first presentation with the characters. From that point, I’d start modeling the first kit-bashed figures.

  There’s a quaint story about the 3 ¾-inch-size action figure and Bernie Loom from Kenner is saying, “Make them this big.” But in reality, which is often a little different, I needed something to model these things—and I’m not a sculptor—but we needed to do figures, so I happened to find “the Adventure People” from Fisher-Price. We used that as the principal base for the kit-bashed models, and they just happened to be 3 ¾ inches tall. Bernie may have said, “Make ’em this big,” but it turns out that just by chance the Fisher-Price Adventure People were the right size. So those early models were basically, I took [the Adventure People] and used body putty and an X-Acto knife and made most of the figures that way.

  * * *

  These figures were turned over to engineering and they would take it from there. A sheet was worked up with a breakdown of what material the arms would be made from, what material the body would be made from, the minimal paint operation, and a rough estimate of what the expected cost would be.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  The X-Wing and TIE Fighter was a similar process. First thing was taking what little information we had, early on, and do a simple rendering, black line again with marker. Then, we stepped up from that to an articulated board where we could see the wings opening in the X-Wing, and we made a TIE Fighter where a panel would pop off. And in the next step up from that, I did layout drawings and the model shop—preliminary designs had their own model shop—and they did what they needed to do to make their own models. We had an engineer working with me to figure out the mechanisms, the wings opening, and all that stuff, and then we made the model. They weren’t fully accurate, because we didn’t have any blueprints or anything, but it looked fairly similar—and then the same process, we’d do a cost sheet, and then the engineer would take over and do a hard cost sheet, and figure out how to actually make it work. The figures are all done with ABS [acrylonitrile butadiene styrene], the ships were injection molding styrene—the models we did for those ships were pretty close, but done with cut plastic, so none of that was done with injection molding.

  For the lightsabers, at the model shop, we experimented with different ways to make them. The original model had a monofilament fishing line and a spool in the back of the character’s body, then we’d cut a channel in the character’s arm, and it’d come out through the hilt in the hand, and pulled the monofilament out, and then reeled it back in. That was the original solution, but monofilament has a natural bend to it, so it was always coming out in some different direction. We didn’t have the material that would coil up and return straight. Maybe we could do it now.

  Those models were probably presented in April or May [of ’77] and once the movie d
ropped, we were in a big hurry. So, what got turned over was, we had this monofilament line with the spool in the back—when it went to engineering, it didn’t seem to be a practical solution, so that was when they did the telescoping lightsabers, and then the fixed ones. That all happened in production design.

  * * *

  Even with the time delay, there was no denying the impact that Star Wars ultimately had on Kenner, transforming the scope of the company.

  JIM SWEARINGEN

  We staffed up pretty well. I mean, the company had to grow. When Star Wars was out and taking off, shortly after it was on in theaters they took everyone in Kenner to go see it. The Boys Toys group and designers had to staff up some, because they had a lot to do very quickly. They did bring in some freelancers, but a lot of people got pulled into Star Wars that may have been working on other projects. For the first couple of years, it was the biggest thing that was happening at Kenner. And it changed us. We were no longer at the bottom of the list for movie and TV properties. Suddenly, we were at the top of the list when it came to looking at new projects. I looked at Alien (1979); I went to England to see the film’s sets. I came back from looking at the sets and monster and recommended we not do Alien. But they did it anyway. They wanted to keep the relationship up with 20th Century Fox. It was a good movie, but I didn’t see it as a toy for kids.

  And part of our deal with Lucasfilm was that Kenner had first right of refusal for any product that had the Star Wars license on it. So, if Lucasfilm wanted someone to make bedsheets, we had to say okay. I got to critique anything that they were going to do. If I’d kept all the samples I’d gotten, I’d be a rich man right now. I got a sample of every product for a couple of years. We weren’t going to let anyone do any toy product, and George was very set on keeping things close to the movie, so things like Funko Pop! and some of the other kind of things going on now, would never have happened until George wanted to make more money.

  BRIAN VOLK-WEISS

  The first check that Lucas got from Kenner was seven figures. I think it was three million. They went to lunch and they gave him a check. Lucas opens the check, closes it, puts it in his pocket and doesn’t say anything. And the reason is, he’s calculating: if 2.5 percent is worth three million, what 18 percent looked like, what 20 percent looked like, and so on.

  GLEN OLIVER

  (pop culture commentator)

  I think this happened for one chief reason: when many people encountered Star Trek and Space: 1999 and Apes toys, it was somewhat posthumously; the future of those franchises was essentially unclear. Their times had more or less passed or at least fallen into a protracted stasis. What was unique about Star Wars, in my circle at least, is that the toys represented a “buy-in” to a larger experience of an ongoing franchise. We knew there was going to be more Star Wars. Its toys were a means of not only celebrating a film we loved and were deeply impacted by, but carrying us towards future movies as well. That felt relevant. It made us feel like we were a part of something holistic. The Powers That Be were, and remain, very aware of this dynamic, hence the various high-profile, highly publicized merchandise reveals … Force Friday events, and whatnot. Yes, they are all capitalistically motivated, but they’re also very much geared towards keeping us adherent to the franchise and stoking our sense of wanting to be connected to it. Shrewd? Absolutely. Negative? Eh. There are probably a million salient arguments against Star Wars commercialism. In a very strange way, though, I can’t conceive of Star Wars without it.

  ANTHONY DANIELS

  (actor, “C-3PO”)

  Yeah, I’ve done some really stupid things like the C-3PO breakfast cereal; a truly disgusting product, it tasted so sweet. I have the last remaining box on earth … unopened … and one day, when I get really bitter, I will go to a high place and open it … [with a deep, dark voice] and destroy the planet. The world will crack when I open it. The box is beautiful, what’s inside is, well … C-3PO has lent himself to many products, some good, some bad. My proudest thing is that I have been in an anti-smoking commercial.

  BRIAN JAY JONES

  (author, George Lucas: A Life)

  Prior to Star Wars, there weren’t a lot of sequels out there, there weren’t a lot of film franchises, especially in science fiction. So I think the main thing the people looking at toys and merchandising, and toy sellers and department stores that sold the toys—and it’s hard to believe nowadays—were just like, “There’s no shelf life for this beyond just the life of the movie.” You couldn’t move merchandise, because people were like, “Well, the movie’s going to be out of the theaters and then we’re going to be stuck with a whole bunch of C-3PO figures and no one’s going to care in five months.” But he very brilliantly gets the rights to both of those. I don’t know that he necessarily knew what he had with that, but, again, there’s a lot of control going on there. He wants the sequel rights, because he doesn’t want to leave those with Fox, makes the movie and if, God forbid, it does well, he doesn’t want them handing the rights of the sequel off to somebody that he doesn’t approve of, which is the card that they played on him with American Graffiti. He almost got stung by that. Universal was like, “Well, we actually have the sequel option on this, so you can either play or don’t.” And so he does get involved in that, but that stung. So I think part of getting those sequel rights is to ensure that if something happens, he is in control of the narrative again.

  RAY MORTON

  (senior editor, Script magazine)

  Once Lucas decided to go big, his creative thinking for the sequel was as bold and unconventional as it had been for the original picture. Lucas’s most striking creative choice in devising his sequel was to eschew doing a traditional follow-up. Instead of making the new film just another stand-alone adventure of Luke Skywalker in the same way that each new Bond movie is just another stand-alone adventure of agent 007, Lucas decided to make Star Wars the first part of a much larger overall tale. Star Wars would now be act 1 of an epic three-part saga and this first sequel would be act 2.

  * * *

  Star Wars would not be the first cinematic series to tell a single, unified tale. The Planet of the Apes series had also presented an ongoing narrative, but it had done so accidentally. The original Planet of the Apes told a self-contained story that was not meant to continue. The tremendous success of that film motivated the studio and the producers to make Beneath the Planet of the Apes, another (mostly) self-contained tale. Since Beneath ended with the planet blowing up, obviously no continuation was intended at that point either. However, when Beneath was also a sizable hit, 20th Century Fox and producer Arthur P. Jacobs decided to make a second sequel. In his script for Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Paul Dehn, the series’ primary screenwriter, gave the archaeologist/historian chimpanzee Cornelius a speech that detailed how apes supplanted man as the rulers of Earth. When the success of Escape prompted Fox to request yet another follow-up, Dehn then dramatized that backstory in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and then continued it in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the final film in the original series. Dehn went to great lengths to tie the events of the last two movies to those in the first three, thus transforming the five separately made movies into a single saga (albeit one with lots of loose ends and continuity issues).

  Star Wars would, however, be one of the first movie series to deliberately and purposefully tell a single story in multiple parts. The notion of creating a trilogy of films that told one unified tale—something that is commonplace now—was strikingly original and innovative at the time.

  DALE POLLOCK

  (author, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas)

  The success of the first Star Wars gave Lucas, for lack of a better term, “fuck you” money, and that was really important to him. His father, I believe, had incorporated into him the idea that a small businessman, the person who acts on his own instincts and runs his own company and has his own vision for what he wants to do, that is the secret of American succe
ss. The thing is, American Graffiti made him rich, but now he was wealthy in an entirely different way. And his response is to get completely out of L.A. and build a base where L.A. can’t touch him; where he’s separate from the industry and shows them how it should be done. Wealth, as opposed to simply being something he could accumulate, brought with it this idea of true independence and the concept that he would own his own work. He was a good businessman, as it turned out, and that isn’t true of most creative people. Look at Francis Ford Coppola or Charlie Chaplin. [Look at] how much money Chaplin pumped into United Artists and it ultimately failed. So there’s a long line of these kinds of figures in the entertainment industry. But Lucas was something different. Number one, he’s separated himself from Hollywood. And number two, he bet only on his own vision. Wasn’t interested in market research, wasn’t interested in what the fans wanted. He knew what he wanted and he finally had the money to do that.