In the Christmas of 1977 there were few Star Wars products available to satisfy the demands of children, but Kenner moved into rapid production gears around Feb/Mar 1978 and the rest as they say is history. Although Kenner acquired the Star Wars toy licence to manufacture and package these figures, to distribute their figures to a global market they needed help from other companies such as Palitoy, Meccano and Harbert.
To highlight the differences that the different licensees took I thought it would be pretty interesting to look at one particular figure – the iconic Luke Skywalker, or Luke Farmboy as he now seems to be known, as he was available on all of the early 12 back cards. Some of these carded figures are incredibly different to find and photographs online are limited.
Kenner USA
As you’d expect, Kenner released more vintage Star Wars toys and accessories than any other licensee and the brand is the most famous worldwide. 
Here we have the standard template design used by most of the other licensees. The card measures 6″ x 9″ and proudly displays the Star Wars logo and font incorporated into a racetrack design. On a side note, anyone interested in how this design was developed then Mattias Rendahl’s definitive book “A New Proof: Kenner Star Wars Packaging Design 1977-79” is a must read. The Hildebrandt logo from the movie posters covered the top right with the top left displaying a stock code (SKU) and space for a pricing label. The nameplate of the character is displayed centrally in a vibrant colour made to stand out with a matching background for the character and bubble below. A carefully selected and often edited 35mm movie still made the cards more desirable and helped children identify some of the more obscure characters to come later. Completing the front is the classic LP logo featured on Kenner products at that time, although this disappeared fairly soon after, together with copyright information. It is an amazing use of space and it’s no wonder that most others followed this template with minor tweaks for the duration of the toy line.
Palitoy UK
Reaching across to Europe and sales Kenner needed a licensee to help with assembly and distribution. A meeting was arranged between Kenner, Palitoy and Meccano (France) executives chaired by Kenner CEO Bernie Loomis. It seems a bit hard to believe that the contract was awarded to Palitoy due to the French team bungling their presentation and dropping a carousel of slides on the floor to the annoyance of Bernie, but the story has been repeated many times by employees of Palitoy. What is widely recognised though was that Bernie was no fool and had little tolerance of them! As you can see from this image, the SKU and price box information was removed and the Kenner copyright information was covered by a large Palitoy logo.
Kenner Canada
Kenner couldn’t directly distribute their original products to their neighbours as Canadian law required the products to be bilingual to cater for both of their national languages of English and French. Although the first Star Wars action figures mostly looked like their Kenner counterparts from the front, bilingual age information aside, later cardbacks included the French translation “La Guerre Des Etoiles” covering the Kenner LP logo and copyright information which was moved to the card reverse. On the cardback it is interesting to note that although the Kenner US cardback referred to the Tatooine sand natives as “Sand People” they have been named “Tusken Raiders” as on the original Kenner proof cards on these cards.
Dutch Clipper
Clipper were responsible for distributing Star Wars carded figures across Netherlands and Belgium. The front of the card features a large rectangular Clipper sticker but the reverse of the card is where it gets really interesting with all characters and vehicles featuring bilingual information as shown. Despite this they still managed to get most of the features on the rear of the Kenner cardback incorporated in the reduced space.
Toltoys Australia
You can see on the Toltoys card above there is a blue Toltoys logo over the placement of the Kenner one. The bubbles are also different to the Kenner distributed ones as they are much wider. It is interesting to note that the reverse of the very early Toltoys cardbacks included stickers which displayed all measurements in metric rather than Imperial values. These were printed direct on later cardbacks. There is evidence to show that these were also sold in New Zealand although Toltoys NZ adapted their own stock from the later 21 back run.
Meccano France
The French 12 back card is often overlooked when compared to the uniqueness of the square 20 back cards but it is also a beauty in its own right. Apart from being written in French, the black and white Meccano logo and having the “La Guerre des Etoiles” movie title and font, the other point of note is the cut out area in the top left. This was for a very early mail in promotion whereby for sending in 4 proofs of purchases you could receive the Meccano equivalent of the Kenner Early Bird display stand.
The reverse of the card had interesting translations, hypothesised that they sound phonetically better, for R2-D2 (D2-R2) and C3-PO (Z6-PO).
Harbert Italy
The Harbert Italian carded figures are often a favourite amongst fans with the beautiful Italian language and logo in full prominence. Like the French cards, the Italian Harbert cards also had translations for all figures including D-3BO (C-3PO) and C1-P8 (R2-D2).
Takara Japan
For the Japanese market Takara had the first run of Star Wars figures. I was very surprised to discover that other than the sticker on the front covering the Kenner logo, the rest of the cardback was identical to the Kenner one including American information on the mailaway action figure display stand. I wonder if any Japanese kid tried to claim this offer from oversees!?
Other countries?
I’m sure many readers will be asking, “what about Germany? or Spain? Or…?” The figures did become available to other countries but mostly as imported Kenner figures initially. Although a mock-up of a Stormtrooper in the German “Krieg der Sterne” logo once existed (see left) it wasn’t until later lines that these countries produced their own cardbacks or just applied appropriate national stickers to cover Kenner or Palitoy information.
Photos (c) theswca.com, StarWarstracker.com, Mark Yeo, starwarsforum.co.uk
Many thanks to Jason Smith, theswca, Toltoys FB group and Toltoys NZ website for the information contained on their pages.
- Hardcover Book
- Williams, Billy Dee (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 288 Pages - 02/13/2024 (Publication Date) - Knopf (Publisher)
