Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on November 1st, 2017 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
It’s becoming difficult to remember a time when we weren’t constantly being bombarded with electric advertisements. The websites we visit, the applications we use, the television shows we watch, and the digital billboards on every corner display images and pitch products 24 hours a day. These printed Star Wars catalogs from Kenner seem old-fashioned in comparison. Kenner included one of these catalogs inside every Star Wars vehicle and playset sold. The catalogs were updated to reflect new toys in Kenner’s toy line, and the covers were updated with scenes from the most recent movie. If you wanted to know my… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on July 19th, 2017 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
By the time Return of the Jedi left theaters, Kenner saw its cash cow begin to fade. Ostensibly to squeeze every last cent out of the trilogy’s fan base, Kenner began releasing action figures for any character who appeared on screen for more than a second, including this one: Sy Snoodles. Sy Snoodles was the lead singer of Max Rebo’s band, the house band in Jabba the Hutt’s palace. The band’s performance lasts just over a minute in the film, with Ms. Snoodles appearing on screen for approximately 20 seconds. As a kid who loved both Star Wars and movie… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on January 25th, 2017 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
One of the more interesting and occasionally frustrating things about Star Wars collecting is that sometimes you run across something that is as mysterious as it is enjoyable. A few years back, a friend of mine who buys, fixes, and sells arcade games found this sign in a warehouse and gave it to me. He didn’t know anything about the sign’s history, and neither do I. The sign is not actually blue. I took the above picture with the sign resting on the hood of my car. It’s actually clear plexiglass. Inspection of the artwork reveals halftone dots in a… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on December 28th, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
When Carrie Fisher suffered a heart attack two days before Christmas, I decided that I would honor her by writing about a Princess Leia toy for this week’s “Star Wednesday” entry. What a shock it was to read on Tuesday that she had passed away. Rest in Peace, Carrie Fisher. What a doo doo year this has been. As I combed through my shelves in search of the perfect tribute, I found a definite absence of Princess Leia toys. I have a few action figures, but not much more. I have entire shelves in my Star Wars room dedicated to… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on December 14th, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
A few years back my dad bought me the movie posters for, at that time, all six Star Wars films. My wife framed them. I hung them in our movie room when we moved into our new house. They’re pretty awesome. When you collect “a little bit” of something, space isn’t an issue. Everyone has room on their desk or nightstand for a couple of small items. If you’re really into something, maybe you’ll hang a shelf and fill it up with trinkets. In my Star Wars room, which is approximately 10′ x 14′, every square inch of wall space… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on November 30th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I have never been a comic book guy, neither as a kid nor as an adult. I can easily count on one hand all my childhood memories involving comic books. My great Grandma Brown had a small stack of them in her living room that I used to flip through each time we visited. One time, at a garage sale, my mom bought me a stack of horror-themed comic books. My dad had a collection of Star Wars comic books that he kept in his bedroom. That’s pretty much it. Many years ago, my dad bequeathed his collection of Star… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 28th, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I showed this picture to a coworker once and he replied, “That looks like your kind of store!” Then I had to tell him that this was not a store, but rather inside my house. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed by this or simply thought I was insane. Probably a little of both. In the mid-90s, after having been dormant for over a decade, the Star Wars machinery began to turn once again. Return of the Jedi, the final film of the original trilogy, was released in 1983 just as I was wrapping up fourth grade. By 1995,… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 7th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
The first electronic version of Chess I ever saw was Video Chess, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979. It still amazes me that the code to Video Chess program was 4 kilobytes in size — that’s less characters than this post contains, and that includes all the graphics and eight difficulty levels contained within the cartridge. On the easiest setting, the console was limited to ten seconds of thinking between moves. On the most difficult level, the Atari could spend up to ten hours between moves. You could almost smell the smoke at that point. As computers began invading… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 17th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I don’t own many autographed items. I have one Atari 2600 cartridge signed by the programmer (Yars’ Revenge, by Howard Scott Warshaw), a show brochure I had autographed by David Copperfield in the mid-1980s, and three books signed by their respective authors: hacker Kevin Mitnick, magicians Penn and Teller, and my writing professor, Deborah Chester. The only other autographs that I have belong to people who appeared in Star Wars films. I have five action figures autographed by the people who played them in the films: David Prowse (Darth Vader), Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0),… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on July 27th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
Every time the word “Commodore” appears on my local Craigslist, I receive an email alert. Sometimes the alerts link to people selling cars or boats, but most of the time, it’s the computer. I received one such alert last Friday night, informing me about a computer for sale at a garage sale. I need another Commodore 64 like I need a hole in the head, and the one pictured in the ad looked pretty sad (incomplete and with a few mismatched parts), but where there’s smoke, as they say, there’s often fire. Sometimes literally. I didn’t make it down to… (read more)
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