Star Wars Vintage KENNER Commercial - Early Bird Certificate

Kenner Toys was the only company that George Lucas could afford to hire to produce toys and games for Star Wars at the time. But when Star Wars became the runaway success it was, Kenner, being only a small toy company mind you, was caught completely off guard and wasn't able to make enough toys to meet the Christmas deadline, so they came up with this clever "Early Bird Gift Certificate" scheme to buy them time to make enough toys to meet up with the demand. And the rest is history.

i have the early bird certificate package and the sears cantina adventure set the two cardboard stands kenner offered in 77/78

My dad bought all the 77 star wars action figures.... he was 20 years old then he told me he only bought it because he thought it would be worth something someday, but my mom made him get rid of it..... JEEZ!

where the figures cheaply made?

I have the vinyl cape jawa and double telescoping "early bird" luke. Not cheap but pretty rare! It was a good marketing ploy to children instead of waiting til they could put out the figures. Here's a display kids now wait for the figures lol

They basically ran out of figures during the '77 Christmas season, so they had to put these certificates out to get them in April or May.

It goes to show what a marketing explosion Star Wars was.

It would have seemed like an a eternity waiting for those figures to arrive. The were and still are amazing.

I'll never be as excited about anything like I was about Star Wars figures.