How a miniature Slave Leia made me a lifelong Star Wars fan
I am seriously nerdy about a lot of things. But perhaps none more so than Star Wars.
My mom had been a Star Wars fan since 1977. She often told us about how she got goosebumps in the movie theater the first time she saw the Star Destroyer fly over the audience in pursuit of the Tantive IV. As the girliest of girly girls, I had no interest in her attempts to coerce me into watching Star Wars. It was grey spaceships and a lot of boys running around with swords and guns. No thank you, Mom.
All that changed on a visit to Toys ‘R’ Us in the mid-90s. We only visited this mecca of playthings for very special occasions, and while roaming the aisles to choose one toy to take home, I found a Micro Machines Tatooine playset.
Now, bear in mind that I had rejected Star Wars up to this point. Grey spaceships. Boys with guns. But as I scanned the Star Wars section, this tiny playset stuck out to me. The artwork on the front of the box depicted a brunette woman in a gold bikini silhouetted behind some slug monster. If I glanced inside the little plastic window, I could see that this playset even came with the woman in the metal swimsuit and that her name was Princess Leia Organa! A princess, dressed like that? I was intrigued.
Now, sure, we can get Freudian and unpack all that went into a 7-year-old seeing this sexy space Polly Pocket and thinking, “I would like to learn more about these Star Wars, please.” And I will freely admit, it’s a little curious that Slave Leia was what drew me into this galaxy. But whatever the reason, the Micro Machines Planet Tatooine got me in the Star Wars door.
So there I am, a 7-year-old who has never seen a Star Wars movie in her life, really pleased with her toy selection. The playset came with very obscure Tatooine residents Sy Snootles and Max Reebo in addition to itty bitty Jabba, Boba Fett, and Leia. I also remember loving the teensy Han Solo in carbonite and the desert skiff. You could pull the top off the castle to play in the interior, then take the skiff up to the Sarlacc pit and use a little mechanism on the side to make the jaws snap. Not that I knew what any of this meant. I can’t even imagine the horribly non-canon storylines I must have been playing out up to that point.
A few days later, my Mom decided to take my sister and I over to our best friends’ house to play and – obviously - my super cool toy came with me. Our best friends happened to be boys the same age, and I figured having a Star Wars playset would get me some major street cred.
False.
The second our friends Jeremy and Levi saw Planet Tatooine, shade began to be thrown. “I hadn’t even seen Star Wars” and “that’s a hovering spaceship, not a car” may have been tossed around. The matter needed to be rectified immediately. So that afternoon, in a peacefully dimmed playroom in Colorado Springs, Jeremy and Levi introduced my sister and I to Star Wars.
But not just any Star Wars. Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
That’s right.
In their infinite-albeit-childhood wisdom, Jeremy and Levi decided we should just skip to the third movie, from the playset I already owned. So my first step in a lifetime of adoration for the Star Wars franchise began painfully out of order.
Thinking back on it now, starting with Episode VI may have been the best thing for me. I was already invested in this Princess Leia person and her sparkly outfit. I vaguely knew the settings. And unlike Episode IV’s grey spaceships and blaster fire, Episode VI opens with a colorful desert and a castle. It looked an awful lot like a Tin Man (C-3PO) and a Cowardly Lion (Chewbacca) in a dusty version of Oz (Jabba’s Palace). It checked so many fantasy boxes for my girly girl brain.
Concept art by Ralph McQuarrie. Property of Lucasfilm, Ltd. All rights reserved.
By the time I met Leia Organa on screen, I was in awe. Here was a Princess I’d never seen before: she was sassy and strong, had amazing costume changes, and actually helped lead a military. She didn’t get rescued by the man she loved like other princesses I knew, she actually went into the castle to rescue him! And then later was gifted a new dress by teddy bears! The movie delighted me, and paved the way for us to watch A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back in quick succession.
Star Wars became an obsession pretty quickly after that. And my mom was eager to fuel that fire. By year’s end, my sister and I began collecting the sweet Legends of the Force action figure line, wore Star Wars Halloween costumes, and had the GI-Joe-equivalent of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker to play alongside our Barbies. We were hooked.
At some point in our early weeks of dating, I must’ve told Alex my crazy Micro Machines origin story, because he surprised me with a still-in-the-box playset for my birthday this year. It was bizarre seeing the figures again and admiring all the detail that used to go into these adorable choking hazards. It was a whiff of nostalgia that 2020 desperately needed.
Looking back on it all, it was the perfect whirlwind of events that led to my fandom today; it was a confluence of untraditional heroines, iconic art styles, and a whisper of peer pressure. But I like to think that the real catalyst for my nerdom was that mid-90s Star Wars toy line from Micro Machines. It transported me to a very tiny galaxy far, far away.
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Seriously Nerdy always strives to provide recommended reading and outside viewpoints so you can chase your own fandoms and form your own opinions. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, we’d recommend: