PLASTIC GALAXY: THE STORY OF STAR WARS TOYS (2014) ***

My family and I have been eating up The Toys That Made Us on Netflix.  After watching the entire first season, we’ve been jonesing for more documentaries about toys from the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Plastic Galaxy:  The Story of Star Wars Toys helped to scratch that itch for a little more than an hour or so.

If you’ve seen the episode of The Toys That Made Us on Star Wars toys, a lot of the information will be familiar to you.  It follows the rise of Kenner, a small toy company in Ohio that became an overnight sensation when they created toys for Star Wars.  Since they didn’t have the toys ready for Christmas (the deal wasn’t inked until two months before the movie came out), they had to gamble on an “Early Bird” special, which essentially sold consumers an empty box, along with the promise of actual toys in the months to come.  Well, the gamble paid off and Kenner became a powerhouse in the industry for the next decade.

Even though the episode of The Toys That Made Us was shorter than this, it feels like they did a better job at telling the ins and outs of the company, the various production lines, and how the toys continued to evolve to this day.  That might be because of Plastic Galaxy’s tendency to feature fans who are only too eager to show off their toy collection.  As a collector myself, I enjoyed seeing all the cool toys (especially the old displays from the toy stores), but they ultimately get in the way of Kenner’s narrative.

That’s a minor qualm, really.  There’s still plenty of cool figures and neat info here, even if a lot of it was regurgitated on The Toys That Made Us.  The sixty-seven-minute running time flies by, and the short and sweet approach is appreciated in the long run.  Any Star Wars collector worth their salt will want to check it out.