While the present and future of Star Wars is incredibly exciting, it’s never a chore to look back to the recent or the distant past and here, we delve right back to the earliest days of the saga as Star Wars came to the UK in December 1977.

Britain, May 25th 1977.

The Queen is in Edinburgh on her Silver Jubilee tour, Rod Stewart is number 1 in the charts, and Liverpool FC win the European Cup.

In the USA, Star Wars is released…
but unlike today’s simultaneous international releases it was normal for the UK to get movies six months later, and that included Star Wars.

Kids were still largely unaware of Star Wars at the time. With no internet they found things out from TV programmes comics, and word of mouth in the playground. Instead they were thrilling to the Saturday night adventures of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who.

But as the months went by, marketing for Star Wars increased. News articles started to appear and interest steadily grew.

Finally, on December 27th 1977 the wait was over….
Star Wars was released at the Leicester Square Theatre and the Dominion Tottenham Court Road in London…

The film remained at these two cinemas for over four weeks until 29th January 1978 when it broadened to twelve major cities around the UK.

1978 brought with it a big demand for merchandise as well as other sci-fi and space related toys and books.

The world would never be the same again.