Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace TOYS!!!

I heard legends about the toys released during the original Star Wars trilogy. I was born right after The Empire Strikes Back was released, so all I had in regard to the OT toys were a few scraps from the tail end of Return of the Jedi's merchandising. Sure, the late 80s and entirety of the 90s featured great Star Wars toys, including Expanded Universe and video game tie-ins. But the really valuable and cool stuff were the items released with the films between 1977-1983. Adding to the legend, my older cousin Rhett had all the best toys from that period, including the full-sized Millennium Falcon, and his mom gave them all away. He frequently lamented about their current monetary value and his nostalgia for them. So when Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace released in 1999 and I was working a nearly full time job that summer leading up to my senior year of high school, I used multiple paychecks to purchase as many Phantom Menace toys as possible.
I bought most of the toys pictured here without the intention of ever opening them, with the expectation that one day they'd be worth the big bucks. Well, like many things in my life, things didn't work out the way I'd hoped. Millions of people had the same idea that I did, and Hasbro made millions upon millions of these toys, ensuring they'd never be worth more than I paid for them, even less I guess considering the staggering inflation of the last four years.


In fact, 25 years later, there have been limited edition, updated re-issues of Phantom Menace figures by Hasbro and those jerks at Disney that are worth 20 times what the original figures are. Ah, well. C’est la vie. Maybe I should pick up an old Hasbro CommTech reader, finally take these out of the boxes, and play around with them.


I did take some of these toys out of the box back in 1999, though. The most spectacular of these was the Darth Maul double-bladed lightsaber. I tried to keep it in the box too, but it was just too cool to gather dust. I set it free and had a lot of fun goofing around with it, pretending I had any idea how to wield a staff weapon. My little brother, wielding a wooden yardstick, engaged me in some epic duels, but eventually, just like Obi-Wan in the film, chopped the Darth Maul lightsaber clean in half. Like a true lifelong South Louisiana resident, I tried duct-taping the lightsaber back together, but it was never really the same. I told this story on the 90s Movies Podcast, so anyone who heard that and thinks I'm full of beans, just look at the photos below.




If it looks like those last two pictures are from my parents' attic, it's because they were taken in my parents' attic. That's where all of these were, but I didn't feel like taking the busted lightsaber down for a photo shoot with the other items, given its fragility. I am planning on moving all this stuff to my own place soon, given that my age is the same as Douglas Adams' answer to the question of the universe, and my poor old parents need a cleaner attic. While I was up there, I also found this random rubber Boss Nass figure. Who knows where it came from.

And finally, there is one other item that I took out of the box in 1999. I really loved the color scheme of R2-A6, an astromech droid who makes a brief appearance in The Phantom Menace and survives the final battle, as his pilot, Ric Olié, doesn't get blown to smithereens. I bought this droid, promptly opened it, and placed it on my then young and fairly empty Expanded Universe shelf. That shelf eventually filled up, and also needs to make its way from my parents' house to my place. As of now, R2-A6 is still there, guarding the tomes (along with Mexican Ewok and a second Darth Maul...so apparently I opened THREE of the things I bought), though his box lives in the attic...for now.