“Kenner Figures Right”
2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of Kenner’s Star Wars: Power of the Force 2 action figure series (Amazon.com search*), and as I wrote back in 2013 today’s collectors are far too quick to judge the old line as substandard.
People point at the overly-muscular sculpts of the first waves, ridicule the collector mentality regarding the weird variants, and generally don’t give the line the respect I feel it deserves. I suspect that as many start to realize that these toys are now twenty years old we will see a renewed interest and respect in the first year of releases, and my own interest in the line has been sparked by revisiting some old marketing materials and articles.
Today I’d like to share this 1995 article from issue #4 of Topps’ Star Wars Galaxy Magazine (Amazon.com search*). This six-page article gave us an early look at Kenner’s plans for the Star Wars first wave in 1995, and despite the article opening with a mention that Mattel passed on Star Wars in favor of Battlestar Galactica it’s a great read. How the author thought that Battlestar Galactica came before Star Wars is a mystery that will eat at me for the rest of my life.
It’s interesting to read how the line was planned from the beginning as on that would seek to capture both kids and collectors, and after reading this article again I went back and reread the 1996 article about the line that was also published in the magazine (shared here). I’d love to read more articles about the Kenner Star Wars figures from 1995 and 1996, so if you know of magazines or newspapers from that time that include articles please list title and issue number in the comments.
I LOVED the Power of the Force line — sure, some of the sculpts weren’t so great, but it was an extremely broad line and offered up loads of great characters. First Star Wars toys I ever owned.
It’s not just “today’s collectors” who ridicule this line. Pretty much anyone who wasn’t six-years-old when they first came out held their nose over these dollar-store-quality figures.
This line was awful when it came out and remains awful today. The only thing that makes it even vaguely decent is viewing it through the eyes of nostalgia.
Six out of ten figure lines in 1994 were of a considerably higher quality than PotF2, but Kenner knew it didn’t have to set the bar very high, since everyone would buy any miserable garbage that said “Star Wars” on it, at least for a few years.
Love the cover of that issue!