It all started when I was about 4 years old. One of my favourite pastimes back then was staring in amazement at the drawings on the covers of the books in my dad's huge sci-fi library. One day I got my chubby little hands on a "Making of Star Wars" book. As I was just a toddler, I didn't have a clue as to what was going on (I even thought the X-Wings were bad guys since they had red lasers), but the pictures and drawings in there (by McQuarrie and the Hildebrandt bros.) were even more awe-inspiring than all the other covers in the library together. Somewhere along the road we watched the movies on TV and I was completely sold. Some time later I inherited my cousins' vintage Star Wars toys (by which I mean "begged, begged, and then begged some more 'till I got them").
It was a sorry bunch: Han solo with old-chewing-gum-molded underpants, Boushh minus the helmet and through wear and tear also minus facial features and a wingless, sailless sailskiff. Still, I was as happy as a wookiee with a piece of raw meat that's hung upsidedown in a tree. From thereon the collection started growing. Here and there old figures were on sale and my parents bought them for me, others were discovered at yard sales and some were even traded for Playmobil with my classmates. Then the movies were re-released in their Special Edition formats and slowly but certainly all sorts of merchandise cropped up around me. Slowly becoming the collecting-crazed geek I am today, I bought it all. Then the internet came and trading started with people from abroad. Slowly but steadily, the collection was growing, and the release of the prequels didn't help either. Soon the collection was bursting out of my room, spreading to the attic, even forcing my mother to vacate some of her linnen closets to make room.
And it's not just Star Wars either. It's everything mr. Lucas does. THX-1138, Willow, Labyrinth, American Grafitti and it's sequel, the Indiana Jones quadrilogy, Radioland Murders and so on and so on. It's like the man has tapped into my head from before I was born and pulled out a list of things I like and then proceeded making movies about them. I even watched that awful Star Wars Holiday special several times in bad bootlegged quality!
When a friend bought me a Marc Ecko shirt for my birthday last year that said "Star Wars changed my life", we all joked about how much that was true since most of my savings go to Star Wars merchandise and most of my friends won't even watch the movies with me anymore because I can't keep myself from muttering the whole soundtrack along (including score and sound effects). In retrospect, I think the T-shirt would have been more accurate if it said "George Lucas changed my life".
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