Monday, September 15, 2008

Star Wars Holiday Special TV Guide Ads

The Scrapbook opens this time on:
The TV Guide ads for the "Star Wars Holiday Special."
(Click on images to view full size.)

Yes, Virginia, there really was a Star Wars Holiday Special. I don't care what your little friends at school say, or what George Lucas says, I was there when it aired on Friday, November 17, 1978 and I saw it. I clipped these ads out of the TV Guide to prove it. I even taped it on audio cassette.
And yes, it was as bad as the legends say. Possibly even worse. However, we did get to see Christopher Lee as an imperial baddie decades before he showed up as Count Dooku on the big screen. And yes, we did get our first glimpse of a cartoon Boba Fett before he was seen in "The Empire Strikes Back" some years later.

I know, little one. You find it hard to believe. So did I once I saw it. Yet, like a fossilized dinosaur dropping, it is viewed by some as a rare sample of excreted waste from a studied creature; and as such is sought after and prized by devotees of the Star Wars religion.

However, not everything rare and sought after is worthy. And if you ever feel the need to seek it out and view it, remember my warning that you will never be able to forget the illness it causes. I know, you won't listen... I probably wouldn't either. But I had to say it.

1 comment:

  1. I was lucky (?) enough to see it during its one American broadcast. Being about 5 at the time, I didn't know it was bad - just that it was Star Wars, and that was enough for me. I wonder if people who've seen it in years since realize that television was really ever that bad and on a regular basis? AND that there were only three channels, so there was no escaping!

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