You know what I thought when I saw this commercial from 1978 for the first official lightsaber toy?
“I’m a grumpy old Star Wars fan! I don’t like things the way they are compared to the way they used to be! These kids today with their newfangled lightsaber toys! In my day, we had a flashlight with a balloon on it! And that’s the way it was, and we liked it! And we didn’t have lightsabers made out of solid plastic that could withstand impacts! In my day, we had a balloon, and if you hit something with it, the balloon would break, and you’d need to patch it! And eventually you couldn’t patch it anymore, and it was just a flashlight! And that’s the way it was, and we liked it! And we didn’t have sophisticated electronics in the lightsabers that made authentic sounds from the movie based on how we swung and hit things! In my day, we had to make the noises ourselves, and we looked like idiots when we did it! And that’s the way it was, and we liked it! And we didn’t have multiple lightsabers that came in different colors and shapes matching the characters! We only had one lightsaber, and it looked nothing like what we saw in the movie! Because it was just a flashlight with a Star Wars sticker on it! And it only came in one color – yellow, which wasn’t even a real color from the movies! And that’s the way it was, and we liked it! We loved it! ‘Cause we were ignorant, desperate Star Wars fans who’d buy a pile o’ dog crap if it had R2-D2 on it! Hey-oh, just a bunch o’ kids runnin’ around with flashlights, gluing our balloons every five minutes, making stupid -swooshing noises with our mouths, and that’s the way it was, and we liked it!” (Dedicated to Dana Carvey, the original Grumpy Old Man)
UPDATE: I don’t know why Blogger keeps deleting my YouTube embedding lately, but I’ve put it back in.
Do you long for the simpler days of Star Wars toys? Or are the modern Star Wars toys just way more awesome?
[Via YouTube]
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="40581 ">4 Comments
Your rant was hysterical!
Man have toys changed. Remember Lawn Darts? No way anything like that would be allowed now!
Man, that is a riot! I was one of the poor kids who made do with a stick with paint on the end LOL, but they have some really cool ones now. Kids today are so much luckier!
Theycallmevarmint- you had a painted stick? Lucky. I had a cardboard paper towel roll for my lightsaber.
Alex-Those lawn darts were a lethal weapon…
Me and my friends bought pvc pipes and painted them and put duct tape at the bottom xD owch