Who Wants The Rancor Keeper Anyway?

***WARNING: GEEK-HEAVY POST AIMED SQUARELY AT
STAR WARS FANS 'OF A CERTAIN AGE'***

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians, 13:11

...and then I got the childish things back out of the loft and wept with nostalgia because it was bloody great being a child in 1983 when the only thing that mattered in the world was Return Of The Jedi.

I've been sorting through a lifetime of junk in my house so I can discover what colour the walls are, and this post represents some of my findings. Hopefully these pictures arouse similar feelings in fellow geeks out there. Brothers, it's OK. You're not alone.

I've got dozens of Return Of The Jedi comics taking up space where Mrs The Incredible Suit wants to put her shoes, but this is Issue #1, in which a young Robert Redford plays Luke Skywalker. Worth a fortune on eBay, surely? Nope. Not without the badge, and I think the cat ate that.

My first Star Wars figure was Boba Fett. I couldn't believe how brilliant it was. There's a messy hole where the words 'Boba Fett' were because those bastards at Palitoy made you cut the names out of the cards and send them off to get figures you couldn't buy in the shops, like the Rancor Keeper. Who wants the Rancor Keeper anyway? The biggest girl's blouse in the series, he should have been happy when Luke brained his pet. It would have saved him a fortune in Gamorrean Guard steaks.

Obviously I was a member of the Official Star Wars Fan Club. Despite being eight years old, I got my Mum to write my name on the membership card in case I buggered it up. Still, there's proof right there that I am, as I suspected all along, a Jedi. I've got a Force Number to prove it and everything.

'Bantha Tracks' was the Fan Club newsletter, and I didn't read a word of it at the time. Reading this issue the other day, I learned that Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam and the cameraman who shot the astounding tracking shots in The Shining, shot the background plates for the speeder bike chase in Return Of The Jedi, and if you're still reading this and haven't died of boredom, you are an amazing human being.

Possibly the coolest thing in 'Bantha Tracks' was the chance to get your pre-pubescent scribblings printed for all the world to ridicule. I don't know who was taking the piss more in this instance, Adam Tomar of New Jersey for sending this picture in, or the staff of 'Bantha Tracks' for publishing it:

I think the 'D.V.' after Darth Vader stands for 'Dick Visible'.

Apologies for the self-indulgent post. I promise I'll say something mean about Shia LaBeouf and post an insane foreign Star Wars clip tomorrow.



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