The Collector's Guide to Star Wars' Droids and Ewoks Cartoons

Star Wars action figure collectors have hundreds of figures, both new and old, to add to their collections. However, there is a unique group of Star Wars figures, unlike the others, that have their own particular history. They are the figures based on the short-lived Star Wars cartoons of the 1980’s, and present their own collecting challenges.

1985 was a dark time for Star Wars toy collectors. It had been two years since the final Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, had been released, and kids had moved on from the popular Star Wars toy line to collect things like Transformers toys. Sales of Star Wars merchandise were so bad, toy maker Kenner had ceased production of the popular action figure line. Even though over a quarter of a billion figures had been sold in less than ten years, the party for Star Wars toy collecting was over.

George Lucas and the folks at Lucasfilm relied heavily on merchandising revenue, since there was no such thing as home video sales to spur income. Lucas had already produced two Star Wars spinoff movies for ABC based on the Ewoks, the teddy bear-like characters from Jedi. They were so successful, ABC negotiated a deal with Lucasfilm for two cartoon series. Lucas turned to Canadian studio Nelvana to animate the project. Nelvana had created a short cartoon for the Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978, and Lucas liked the result. Lucas created two series, one for older boys built around R2-D2 and C-3PO called Droids and one for younger audiences called Ewoks. Marvel comics signed on for a comic book series for each cartoon.

Although it had ceased making Star Wars figures, Kenner jumped at the chance to make figures based on the cartoons. The figures for both the Ewoks and Droids series were modeled after the cartoon characters, as opposed to the original Star Wars figures, which had a more realistic look. However, in a few instances, Kenner took some shortcuts.