Collect These Figures and Accessories is an 8.25″ x 8.25″ square 96-page unofficial look at the Kenner Star Wars newspaper ads of the seventies and eighties. Each advertisement in the book started as a digital newspaper archive that I captured as multiple screenshots and then reconstructed and assembled in Photoshop. Locating, capturing, and rebuilding the advertisements in this book took hundreds of hours and fifteen months from start to finished layout.

Once the advertisements were assembled, I then started constructing the book in InDesign. To keep the book from being nothing more than page after page of gray and black images, I also tracked down toys, packages, catalogs, and assorted other materials and used those items to add some color to the pages. The above sample page spread, for example, shares an advertisement that includes the Anakin Skywalker free figure offer. I chased down an appropriate carded action figure and photographed the front and back of the packaging so that we could see both the newspaper ad and the associated offer as presented on an action figure package.

Over two hundred images fill this book and show us the sales, the clearance prices, and the popularity of Star Wars from 1977 to 1986. I was constantly surprised as I worked on the book, and I believe that everyone will find something new and entertaining between the covers of this hardcover. If you’re at all a fan of Kenner’s classic Star Wars action figures and vehicles then you need this book in your collection!

See more sample pages at Flickr.