Woman’s Day and the Vinyl-Cape Jawa
Published in 1982, the hardcover Woman’s Day Book of Best-Loved Toys & Dolls* collects several articles from the Woman’s Day magazine. You may think it’s a little unusual that I’m directing your attention to this book (which is quite cheap; I paid $4 including shipping for my copy), but once you see this photo I think you’ll understand why you need to see this.
That’s right, those are Kenner Star Wars action figures from the seventies. As discussed at theswca.com, the November, 1978 issue of Woman’s Day magazine included an article helping parents construct an “Outer-space station” playset that kids could use with their Star Wars action figures. And the above photo shows a total of nine vinyl-cape Jawa action figures!
And as theswca.com post tells us:
“But, to today’s collector, the Jawas are interesting for another reason. Namely, they are all of the rare vinyl-cape variety. As most collectors know, the vinyl- or plastic-cape Jawa was available only briefly at retail before being replaced by the much more common cloth-cape type.”
That’s thousands of dollars worth of toys (today), and all so Woman’s Day could properly populate their photos. Awesome! The Woman’s Day book* is one you should definitely grab if you want to see more.
For that little something more the book also includes an article showing how to build a “Supercity” for use with Mego action figures. See, I told you $4 was worth it!
Related articles
- 1979 Battlestar Galactica Toys in the Heroes World Catalog (battlegrip.com)
- 1979 Star Wars Action Figures Newspaper Ad (battlegrip.com)
- Themanwhoshotlukeskywalker Shared My Project!!! (battlegrip.com)
This has been a real favorite among Micronaut fans over the years too, given that it also featured a fair number of Micronaut toys mixed, just as at home, if not more so. A friend of mine had the original magazine article back in my childhood and in more recent years I tracked down a copy of this compilation book for my own reference. I’ve yet to find someone with photos of a set they built themselves, though!
Mixed feelings about the SWCA article. It gets points for mentioning the Micronauts appearance, but minus points for making the common mistake of incorrectly identifying Micronauts as something that came after Star Wars or was copying it. Sure, it benefited from the boom immensely, being out on shelves around the time the movie came out and about a full year before the Kenner toys, but it was in development at Mego in 1976 (possibly even earlier), and based on the 1974 Microman line from Japan.
Not that I need to tell you that, of course, just a very old pet peeve…I often have seen Star Wars toy historians try to retcon Micronauts as a knock-off series, without checking their facts. 🙂
“mixed IN” –first sentence typo