Star wares

There more to the new Star Wars than just a movie, y' know. Russell Baillie looks at the other side of the Phantom Menace business - the toy story.

There's a three-guys-in-a-bar joke here somewhere.

"So why the long faces?" the bartender asks the trio.

Says the first guy: "I was an unknown actor and I got offered the Han Solo part in Star Wars, but I turned it down. Just look at Harrison Ford now. Me, I haven't worked since."

Says the second guy: "That's nothing. I was the first studio exec to read George Lucas' Star Wars script. I chucked it in the bin and later got fired. I haven't worked since, either."

"Yeah, I remember that guy Lucas," says the third guy. "He offered me the manufacturing rights to Star Wars toys. I laughed him out of the office."

The bartender and the first two guys fall silent. They look at each other and together turn to the third man: "Get outta here, buddy. We don't drink with losers ... ."

Yes, if you had been one of the many toy manufacturers, comic publishers or T-shirt makers back in 1976 who turned down going into the Star Wars souvenir business with George Lucas, you'd probably still feel like the record company boss who passed on the Beatles.

And about now, with the franchise blasting off once more with The Phantom Menace, you'd be kicking yourself all over again.

The notions of licensing and merchandise meant next to nothing in the movie industry back then.

Lucas changed all that. It was all part of his original business plan, having got 20th Century Fox to leave him the merchandising, musical soundtrack and sequel rights on the first film as a trade-off against his modest directing-writing fees. It happened before Rupert Murdoch's time, but giving Lucas those rights cost his Fox empire a lot.

Especially as since the first film the paraphernalia just kept selling. It's estimated that the "Star wares" have made Lucas more millions than his films have.

Now here it comes again with the first of three "prequels", Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace.

Only this time, the merchandise isn't a spin-off to the movie, it's a whole parallel universe.

One with its own timeframe - the hardware has been on sale here a Lucas-dictated month before the movie's June 10 release - and its own hype machine.

We ruthlessly manipulated the marketeers into lending us a couple of boxloads of Phantom Menace stuff so we could ponder the designs behind latest chapter in the trans-generational pop culture phenomenon.

Or more importanly: Is the new stuff as cool as the old stuff? Can you ever top the Vader mask and helmet, the X-wing, the Tie-fighter, the light sabre?

The answer seems to be you don't have to, because they'll still be on sale anyway.

Instead, the Lucas merchandise machine is plugging some gaps in its own market, and generally thinking younger.

There's the Lego tie-in for a start, which aims at the under-10s with its brick-by-brick kits of pod racers, Naboo fighters (which, with its Flash Gordon curves, is like an italic version of the later X- and Y-wings) and droids. Verdict? Cute but finicky. Expect a lot of time looking for that really important bit down the back of the couch.

Surveying the Hasbro plastic characters - 30cm-tall dolls or figurines of just about anyone who has a speaking part in the movie - the thought occurs that some characters might have been designed to appeal, and sell, to particular demographics.

That's not just wee Anakin Skywalker and his pod racer (think the fourth member of Hanson on a jet-powered kids trolley). The reptilian Watoo and Jar Jar Binks are dinosaurs crossed with muppets. The young Queen Amidala rendered in plastic looks like a kabuki-faced china doll but with extra girlpower.

While the evil henchman Darth Maul (middle name, Shopping?) with his tattooed face, horns and scary eyes looks designed to appeal to moshpit teenagers. This Marilyn Manson from outer space comes with a double-ended light sabre ($130 to you) which has just got to be better than the old single model, hasn't it?

The Hasbro miniatures (about $20 each) also come with a chip which, when combined with the Commtech Reader (about $60), allows the figurines to "talk" to each other. Neat enough, just a pity about the dialogue. Something that's apparent, too, with the film's hardback novelisation by Terry Brooks (in a choice of character dustjackets), just the first of 25 titles Lucas Films has licensed to Random House.

And let's not forget the new batch of video and board games, the Sony soundtrack (John Williams revising That Theme followed by a listenable, stirring incidental score), the yo-yos and something called the "Destroyer Droid Animated Room Alarm".

Yes, never mind the quality, feel the merchandise.

Actually, there's another possible ending to that joke we started with. After the third guy confesses to his business mistake, the bartender says: "Gee, I may be Mark Hamill but you I feel sorry for."