On Jan 22nd 2022, from a galaxy far, far away comes an absolute must see for fans of Star Wars and the silver screen…
One of the UK’s finest collections of vintage Star Wars toys and original cinema posters is going on display in a stunning exhibition brought to you by The Hub.
Back when the movie Star Wars broke box office records in 1977 no one could have predicted that the merchandising would go on to earn even more than the film itself. The toys of Star Wars took the world by storm and became the must-have playthings for an entire generation. From 1977 – 1985 an estimated 300 million action figures were sold, allowing children to re-enact the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo.
May The Toys Be With You is both a celebration of the now highly collectable vintage toy line and also of the iconic design work and art of the Star Wars movies. From X-Wing Fighters to lightsabers, these fantastical designs have fired our imaginations and stamped their place on our cultural landscape. For kids of every generation, this unmissable showing of many rarely seen Star Wars treasures has broken visitor attendance records at museums around the country, and we’re excited for its first visit to Lichfield!
While The Hub at St Mary’s in Lichfield in the heart of Staffordshire might not immediately strike you as the most obvious location for a Star Wars exhibition, there’s more of a Star Wars connection to the area than one might think. The nearby Lichfield Garrick (formerly Lichfield Civic Hall) was host to the Hiss and Boo pantomimes run by Ian Liston, the actor behind Wes Janson in The Empire Strikes Back and where future BB-8 performer Brian Herring would perform in his younger days. Just 25 minutes along the A-38 and you arrive in Birmingham, home to a number of GFFA actors including Marc Silk from The Phantom Menace, Felicity Jones from Rogue One and the legendary Kenny Baker (and incidentally I’m based just a few minutes up the road in Burntwood) but more than any of those connections, it’s here because St Mary’s is the perfect home for an exhibition of this kind.
While the Dyott Chapel remains for occasional services, St. Mary’s is now better known as the city’s library, with over 200,000 books housed in the former church. With the current Gothic revival building standing since 1870 replacing older churches dating back to 1150, it’s an ideal location to celebrate the earliest days of the saga, and entering the building you walk past the library and up the stairs to the newly developed messanine level where a cafe and this fascinating exhibition are housed.
Matt Fox has done this type of event before, taking his amazing collection around the country and here he once again gives focus to the arguably most beloved aspect, the toys. Original Palitoy sets are interspersed with their Kenner cousins, Early Bird sets sitting next to variants showing the subtle differences between figures made in other countries. Casual fans will certainly feeel a buzz of familiarity at seeing these venerable toys in their natural environment, mixed in as they are with one of – if not the – best collections of original trilogy UK Star Wars posters available to the general public.
The alure of the exhibition is undeniable. Quads (UK posters are ‘widescreen’ rather than ‘portrait’, the only country to do so) reveal the excitement of Star Wars (no A New Hope here), the promise of The Empire Strikes Back and the satisfying conclusions of Return of the Jedi, while promising a thrilling double bill and a unique triple bill in the days before the whole saga was available on home video in 1986.
In the next room lie the familiar playsets and vehicles of the original trilogy, set up in exciting dioramas evoking those much-loved box images from the early 80’s. There are 12″ figures, boxed blasters, die-cast Star Destroyers, remote control Sandcrawlers (many of the sets and figures will be very familiar to younger, more recent converts to the GFFA from The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett) and table top games. We catch a glimpse of workers constructing Millennium Falcons at Coalville, 40 minutes east of Lichfield and smile at Darth Vader signatures handed out to kids at store events and appearances. It’s a tonic, a dip into a simpler time.
Accompanying the displays and posters are video screens running content from the time, as well as more contemporary topics including Rancho Obi-Wan, the permanent big brother to wandering siblings such as this, and as the looping walk comes to a close with a look at some sumptuous Return of the Jedi posters, fans old or new, casual or hardcore can’t help but smile at the memories these items evoke.
For me, Star Wars will always be Wednesday afternoons, racing as fast as I could run to my local newsagents to grab my Star Wars Weekly, a breathless sprint to slap down my 10p and grab a weeks worth of reads and re-reads before the next adventure arrived (and maybe a Texan Bar and a 5p mix while I was there).
Star Wars has a unique power to excite, layer on new adventures that enhance the old but always notching them up in the memory banks. May The Toys Be With You does that with style, and if you’re within driving distance of Lichfield – or even if you’re not – it’s well worth a visit to a beautiful three-spired cathedral city with – until 20th March 2022 – a heart of Kyber.
You can listen to our chat with event organiser Matt Fox on episode 124 of Making Tracks, and stay tuned for more from May The Toys Be With You and future Star Wars related events at The Hub at St. Mary’s.
