- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 633
Snaketibe said:bosk70 said:I must admit that at the time the only clue you had to the more obscure items in the UK was the glimpses we had on the back of the odd kenner card we would find on the peg mixed in with the many Palitoy, in the early days and I always wondered what it would be like to have access to some of the playsets that we just never seemed to have in the shops over here, the sandcrawler play set , I never ever saw that over here or even the sandcrawler ever with the limited advertising you have access too as an 7-8-9 year old these small pictures on the back of the kenner cards were very interesting . As a kid you had no idea of Palitoy /Kenner market supply divides or anything like that. It was always the sandcrawler that interested me the most of all the items you never, ever saw in the toy shops in the UK. Don't know if this was any different for any of the other UK , 50 year olds on here ??
My then local toy shop in the small town of Ware in Hertfordshire carried the entire Palitoy Star Wars line in 1978-79. It was actually a tiny shop, but I still managed to get all of the following there (but certainly not all at once!): Palitoy Cantina, Droid Factory, Land of the Jawas, Death Star, Land Speeder, X-Wing Fighter and Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, plus most of the figures (the ones I didn't manage to get there being because they had sold out). I too saw the occasional Kenner cardback (although not in Ware Toy Shop, which seemed to carry exclusively Palitoy branded Star Wars toys) showing the Kenner versions of the playsets, but of course the Sandcrawler proper was never featured on the back of a figure card, only the Land of the Jawas version, and hence I was blissfully ignorant of its existence until the 90's.
In the early days I think the most exotic it got at my local toy shop was Darth Vaders Tie which I eventually got for Christmas, never ever saw a Death Star Play Set, (Palitoy), think I would have remembered that, a few years later I saw a Y Wing and was amazed at it, but that year I think i got the At-At, not disappointed at all that was my fav SW item ever, which seems to be the case for many one here, and as stated here and on previous threads not cheap in the hard pressed early 80's, said it before but hats off to my mum and dad for what they did get for me, never got me the y wing thou :lol: