Toys, Lies & Videotape - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

 

 

  

I once picked the backing card from a Star Wars figure out of a bin.  

I was only 5. I wouldn't normally dive into bins*, but this wasn't just any Star Wars backing card. It was tatty and a bit smelly - but it had come off a brand new figure, a Power Droid!

 

 

This was the first sign that new figures were in the shops. And it was in a local bin, one that I passed every day on the way home from school - so they might even have the new figures in Hardings, the only toy shop in Newton Aycliffe! The card had pictures of all the other new figures on the reverse side! Heaven.

It's impossible to overstate how much Star Wars meant to me when I was a kid. Princess Leia was my first crush. Han Solo was my first man-crush. I had a Star Wars Play-Doh set so I could make squidgy Darth Vaders and R2-D2s. I had the Geoff Love Star Wars and Other Space Themes LP (there were only two Star Wars tracks on it, but I still had it!) And Star Wars figures were the greatest toys ever invented. 

 

I was allowed to pick one new figure so I went for R5-D4. I ended up with two of them, because my parents weren't on speaking terms.

 

I only saw Dad at weekends and he'd taken me to see Star Wars early in 1978, not long after The Divorce. Going to the pictures was one of our Saturday things to do - and it was usually a matinee in Sunderland or South Shields. We'd see whatever was showing; that brilliant 60s Batman film, At the Earth's Core, The Wilderness Family or anything Disney. Star Wars had stood out as something a bit special, so we'd been to see it twice. Dad also bought me my first ever Star Wars Comic (he managed to miss Issue 1). 

 

 Dad also used to take me to Granada Services near Washington - it was the only Motorway services I'd ever seen, and it was on the way to my Grandparents house. This was decades before Motorway services were overrun by branches of Burger King, Subway and Costa. We'd sometimes go for fish fingers, chips and beans in the Granada cafe and there was a little shop that sold American Marvel and DC comics. There was also a brilliant walkway over the top of the motorway.

 To me (and my Dad) that walkway was a Death Star corridor - just like the one Han, Luke and Chewie had to rescue Princess Leia from. We'd run up and down, pretending to shoot Stormtroopers.

 

By the time The Empire Strikes Back came around in 1980, I wasn't seeing my Dad very often. He had a new family and things were getting awkward.

 

He did turn up just before my 7th Birthday. He took me to a toy shop and told me to pick a present and not surprisingly I picked something Star Wars related. And since it was my birthday, I wasn't just going to ask for a figure. I wasn't a cheeky kid and asking for a toy in such a big box felt a bit strange. But Darth Vader's TIE Fighter had a flashing light and it made a buzzing noise! It was my first Star Wars spaceship. The batteries weren't included and Dad didn't buy any - he left that to somebody else.

It's a good job I got a decent present out of him, because I didn't see Dad again for another 7 years. At the time, I think I was a lot more upset about not getting to see The Empire Strikes Back. With Dad off the scene, I had nobody to take me to the pictures.

 

The little town we lived in didn't have a cinema. The nearest one was in Darlington - and that was too far to go on my own. So I lied to all of my friends. I told them that my Dad had taken me to see The Empire Strikes Back.

I used to make up all kinds of things - I was always jealous when I heard about the great stuff my friends did at weekends with their Dads or older brothers and I didn't want to feel left out. As far as my friends were concerned I saw my Dad every week and he didn't just take me to the pictures - we went fishing, swimming - he even took me to Sunderland matches and I got to sit really close to the pitch because my Dad was a copper and he 'knew' people. I don't know if my friends believed every lie I came out with, but it made me feel better. For a bit. 

It was easy to lie. Thanks to Marvel comics, poster magazines and the junior tie-in novel, I knew the big Empire Strikes Back plot twist without seeing the film. 

 To be fair, the bad guy turning out to be a member of your own family wasn't that much of a surprise to me. But I did end up with a very strange idea about what Yoda looked like.

Later on, I found a storybook that came with an audio version on a 7 inch single. I thought this was great - it told the story with sound effects and music from the movie - I got to hear Yoda's Theme and The Imperial March for the first time. I ended up playing my Empire Strikes Back single just as often as my Adam and the Ants albums.

 Somebody has very kindly put the whole thing on youtube.

Empire Strikes Back Readalong

 I went through a similar process when Return of the Jedi was released in 1983. I was 10 years old at that point and still not allowed to go to the cinema on my own. I was too scared to ask the grown-ups in my life if they could take me. Mam had a new partner and all they talked about was how little money they had, and how much of a struggle bringing up (ungrateful) kids was. I used to get told off for buying comics, books and Star Wars figures with my pocket money instead of saving up. What was I supposed to be saving up for?

I remember finding a brand new Return of the Jedi figure at Hardings toy shop - it was Luke Skywalker in his black outfit - and without thinking I paid £1.50 (one and a half week's pocket money) for it. As soon as I left the shop I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. Mam would hit the roof. I went back into Hardings and begged the staff to give me a refund. I lied and said it was my birthday and I'd get into trouble for buying a toy in case I got the same one as a present. Thankfully they took pity on me and I got my one and a half week's pocket money back.

I knew it was £1 to get into the ABC cinema in Darlington and maybe if I showed Mam that I could save up some pocket money they might let me go. Maybe I could muster up the courage to ask. But I never did. Mam and her bloke were always arguing (often about money) and it never felt right to ask for anything. 

When I finally saw The Empire Strikes Back in the Autumn of 1984 it was on video. I got lucky - I found a leaflet for a Star Wars competition in our local Woolworths and I won a Betamax tape of Empire. It was wonderful. It was a real CBS Fox tape,  complete with artwork and a grey case (just like the ones in the video shop!) and it dropped through the letterbox addressed to me. It felt like fate - I'd never been able to see the film at the cinema but it hadn't stopped me from loving the story, the characters, the music, the toys... So maybe I was meant to win my own copy.

 I was 7 when it had first been released at the cinema - I was nearly 11 and a half by the time I got to see it. I turned the lights down and watched it in the dark - trying to replicate the cinema experience... And I have to be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed. Maybe it was seeing it on a small screen or maybe I'd been expecting too much. Every scene, every line of dialogue, every great moment just seemed to skip by too quickly. Maybe I knew it all a little too well. I'd spent 4 years deliberately spoilering myself over and over again - just so I could lie to my friends.

 I'd spent too much time with the comics, the posters, the music and the toys. The comic version even had bits that hadn't made it into the film. In my mind, the scenes were all longer, the explosions were all bigger and the music was much louder. And obviously, Yoda looked completely different. I watched that Betamax tape over and over again, trying to savour every moment and burn each image into my memory - just in case my competition win had been a mistake/joke/dream and it was taken away from me.

30 years later I was (briefly) back in touch with my Dad. I asked him if he'd ever seen The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. He said he hadn't - he said he didn't go to see them at the cinema, rent the videos or even watch them on TV. He said he'd tried to avoid anything to do with Star Wars. It was too upsetting for him to talk about it. He said he couldn't even drive past Granada services near Washington without feeling sad. Oh, Dad.

*There was only one other occasion when I jumped into a bin (as a kid) : somebody on our street had thrown away a 'War of the Daleks' board game and I saw the box sticking out of a rubbish bag.

 

 

I was too scared to take the whole box in case anybody noticed it was missing, so I just took the little toy Dalek figures. They weren't quite the same scale as my Star Wars figures, but they were close enough. I used one of my R5-D4 figures as an Emperor Dalek and the liberated 'War of the Daleks' figures were his army (Han Solo was The Doctor and Princess Leia was Romana). They had big fights with the Cybermen (stormtroopers, snow troopers with an AT AT driver as their leader). It was better than anything they ever put on the telly.