Unidentified Found Objects revisited: Late Nineties Star Wars bootleg ships???

 

As I write this, it's time for a weekend post and still actually the weekend, and it happens that I still have a loose end from  previous post on Star Wars ships. I mentioned in the course of that post that I had recently acquired certain kind-of bootleg ships from that franchise. This will be my follow-up report, which fell under a feature that never got off the ground: Unidentified Found Objects (see the first and last posts), dedicated especially to the realm of strange and often all but untraceable "generic" and bootleg/ knockoff spaceships. This lineup in particular might be the most egregious case of all. To get into things, here's another pic of the core group in full, ah, glory...

As usual, my experiences with these begin a long time back, though still pretty late in my life. Right at the end of the 1990s, when I was just out of high school and beginning to experience public transportation, I wandered into a dollar store near the site of a long-defunct mall and saw something odd that I did not buy at the time. They were cheap pullback toys (also the genre of the Spiff ship and its Gobot-adjacent adversary), at least some of which were clearly based on Star Wars. These had been a fairly routine sight in my experience from the 1980s through the '90s, with something of an increase in the Nineties. These, however, were a bit different. For one thing, they were actually pretty good, both in faithfulness to the franchise sources and overall quality. For another, they covered a wider range than usual, with several that had been portrayed relatively infrequently, like the A-Wing seen here, and certain others that didn't appear to be Star Wars ships at all. (I will get back to that...) Finally, several of them still had very odd features, and not just the kind that would be thrown in as a defense against being sued (my area of expertise, in theory). To give a frame of reference, here's one more pic of the group.

"George Lucas's lawyers are incoming, prepare to retreat!"

And an extra A-Wing in the lot...

Inevitably, one issue that can't be avoided is where these fall in the bootleg/ knockoff/ ripoff spectrum. As I have said before, I prefer to avoid the "ripoff" designation as negative and usually useless. The vast majority of the time, "knockoff" and "ripoff" can be used interchangeably. Furthermore, for toys in particular, the issues that I would see justifying the "ripoff" label are issues that can apply in any line: Poor or entirely dangerous quality; misleading packaging and advertising; and especially prices that far exceed the overall value of the product. The last is obviously not an issue when you are down to this level. The "bootleg" label, by comparison, is not "judgmental" but still can be problematic. By the strictest definitions, it means an unauthorized and direct copy of an original product, like the infamous Turkish "Uzay" line (see the Star Wars Collector Archive page). It can broadly apply to a product that is made to resemble an authorized product, which these do come close to. Sure, the X-Wing is simply cartoonish, and the Millennium Falcon has a second cockpit and other extra junk, but it's quite obvious what they are based on and that the designers imitated them in ways far beyond general inspiration. In a crowning irony, the case for a "bootleg" is strongest for the A-Wing, specifically because the size and quality is actually competitive with authorized toys at the time. And that brings us to the crown jewel, a Rebel/ Mon Calamari cruiser.

"It's a- actually pretty good toy???"

Now this is truly a weird pinnacle of knockoff/ bootleg toys. It's an accurate representation of the ship to anything but scale-model standards (even there, I've definitely seen worse), and it's big to boot. In fact, it could very well be the largest representation of any of the Mon Cal ships I have encountered, definitely bigger and in many ways better than the 1990s Micro Machines versions which were otherwise the only game in town for secondary Star Wars capital ships. Then there are a few things only obvious on inspection that turned out in the toy's favor. Even after this much time, the friction mechanism works when tested. Also, though the sculpt and paint look like they belong on a cheap toy, a good part of it is made of diecast metal as advertised on surviving packaging. Here's a few more pics of the awesome.

Naturally, there are plenty of mysteries around this line (investigated most thoroughly if at all by Youtuber Mighty Jabba's Collection), which have contributed to the cost and difficulty of collecting. It has been confirmed that these ships were sold under the name Star Force, though only specimens in original packaging are particularly likely to be listed under that name. No reports have confirmed their first or last production, beyond the general 1990s-early 2000s range. A significant proportion of surviving specimens are from the UK and/ or Europe, which may mean they were sold in greater numbers there. The most significant datum is that they were sold both on card like the ones I encountered and in boxed sets, the latter still under the Star Force name and with the brand name Knight. These sets, in turn, give our best clue to the full extent of the line. From pictures and listings, there were additional ships based with wildly varying accuracy on Darth Vader's TIE fighter, Jabba's sail barge, the speeder bike, Cloud City (!) and Slave One. For maximum confusion, I have encountered several pictures of boxed sets that include completely prosaic military planes, which I suspect means that these were a late attempt by the manufacturer or an intermediate distributor to sell off a substantial quantity of backlogged stock in one go.

Then, of course, there is one more twist. Do these look familiar?

If you haven't placed these, I will admit that I can't remember for sure if I recognized them back then, either. If you got it or just aren't sure, these are indeed the escape craft Narcissus and the freighter Nostromo (or part of it) from Alien. The striking thing is that notwithstanding the plastic junk on the underside (Mighty Jabba theorizes these were meant to be an "action" feature...), these are probably the most screen-accurate and well-done of this whole motley group. Given that fact, these are also definitely the ones that definitely push furthest into the actual "bootleg" zone. One might wonder why anyone thought they could get away with this. One fairly obvious consideration is that this franchise's merchandise was always centered on the monster rather than the ships. Another is that Fox had already faced controversy whenever franchise merchandise that appeared aimed at kids came out, so there was tactical sense in presenting themselves as disinterested in the toy scene. The bigger picture is that the Eighties and Nineties were simply a different and mindboggling time, where any number of litigation-worthy antics were tolerated or ignored, as witnessed by any number of the films in my Space 1979 files (see Deep Space egregiously). While I'm at it, here's a few more pics.

"I don't care if you aren't technically in this movie, PUNCH IT, BISHOP!!!"

So, that ends this tour of my memories. All I can say is, if I remember something nobody else seems to know ever existed, never put the odds against me. I will also admit, even as proof of my own sanity, I'm glad I got these for as low a price as I did. That's enough to wrap things up. To better things ahead!