Tag: history

Recommended music: Ella Fitzgerald – Winter Wonderland

We’re staying up late this #SomethingElseSunday and still looking back at some photos from my California trip a few months ago. On that trip, I brought my Star Wars Legacy Collection R3-A2 along for the adventure!

I snapped about a thousand photos that weekend, for the remainder of the evening in Petaluma, R3 remained in my pocket at my main stop: Rancho Obi-Wan! Steve Sansweet established this nonprofit museum, which Guinness World Records recognizes as housing the world’s most extensive collection of Star Wars memorabilia. The museum and its storage facilities together contain approximately half a million distinct Star Wars items.

I won’t be able to comment on every detail in the photos, since the night was such a fun blur of Star Wars excitement. Honestly, I’ve already forgotten more Star Wars things than I can remember from that night.

This first photo shows a fully pneumatic, musical Cantina Band animatronic from a store display. There’s also an original banner with an early logo and font used to promote the first film at San Diego Comic-Con in 1976.

This bike was created by writer and Lucasfilm publicist Pete Vilmur. The basic bike was one used for years at Skywalker Ranch to take visitors and employees from building to building. Then Vilmur acquired the bike and gave it a Star Wars makeover with a touch of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure before auctioning it off for charity.

Rancho has a fantastic collection of fan-made items, such as this Chewbacca mask and a Bantha craft.

This unique centerpiece has 112 vintage Kenner Star Wars figures. It’s surrounded by 575 Hasbro Stormtroopers, making for an amazing sight right when you walk into the main room.

Props to these… props!

There’s a friendly group of plush porgs filling the space between display cases.

Here are additional screen-used props, such as droid hands and 4-LOM’s crotch piece.

That’s quite a crotch piece!

There’s a big piece of the Sarlaac Pit set here, along with other props.

The giveaway at Collector Stage panels for several Star Wars Celebrations has been these little Star Tots collectibles. They’re not the rarest items, but it’s fun to see so many of them on display in one place.

I don’t have a banana for scale (since no food is allowed in the museum), but those dolls on the ends are Barbie-sized. That gives you an idea of how large the prop figures from Robot Chicken are in real life.

Vintage model kits.

Candy, trading cards, and other miscellaneous items.

There’s a very complete-looking collection of merchandise from George Lucas’ Super Live Adventure stage show, which toured Japan in 1993.

A nice collection of Star Tours theme park merchandise, both new and old.

I’m really going to try and wrap this up by the end of the year. 😄
More to come…

@ranchoobiwan
#ActionFigurePhotography
#StarWars
#ToyPhotography

Recommended music: Chase & Status And Blossoms – This Moment

For this #SomethingElseSunday, I’m taking another look at photos from my trip to California a couple of months ago. On that trip, I brought along a Star Wars Legacy Collection R3-A2!

Over the weekend, I took about 1,000 photos, but for the rest of this day in Petaluma, R3 stayed safe in my pocket because I had finally reached my destination: Rancho Obi-Wan!

Steve Sansweet founded this nonprofit museum, which holds the world’s largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The 9,000-square-foot building and off-site storage now hold about half a million different Star Wars items.

I forgot to get a photo of the main gate and a simple sign in the neighborhood when I arrived at Rancho, but I started taking pictures right away. Along with rare, official Star Wars merchandise, I was excited to spot random items with Star Wars themes, like R2-BQ shown here.

If seeing poultry seems strange, they actually fit right in because Rancho was originally a farm. The main building once housed chickens instead of collectibles.

There were plenty of open doors and things to see, but some areas at Rancho Obi-Wan are off limits to day guests like me. ROW is also the real-life home of Sansweet, museum President and CEO Anne Neumann, and others.

When you enter the main building, almost every space is decorated. Even the staircase is lined with Star Wars-themed license plates from all over the country.

The theming even extends to the restroom, which features dozens of household items collected over the years, including vintage Star Wars toiletries and fan-made pieces.

It looks like you can fit at least four Star Wars fans in the restroom at once to check out the memorabilia. 😄

After leaving the restroom, I passed through a smaller hallway lined with display cases of loose vintage figures, including some rare ones.

Next on the self-guided tour is the library, which has countless publications starting with this original Star Wars promotional piece. Released a year before the first film, the logo seen here with a pointy W was later redesigned before we ever saw it on the big screen.

In the library, I enjoyed browsing style guides for various Star Wars projects.

There were also many international versions of publications. Some looked familiar, but all were translated into other languages.

The library had plenty of other decorations besides books, which made it feel more like home.

Not wanting to spend all night in the library, I headed back into a hallway lined with Original Trilogy film posters before making my way to the main room. More to come…

#ActionFigurePhotography
#StarWars
#ToyPhotography