B is for Basingrad Strikes Back!

And so to Basingrad, no superhero interactive figure/book combo's in TK Maxx I'm afraid, but I did run into a couple of Imperial Storm Troopers escorting a Carbonite'ed Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt's Palace!

All the details you'll need and well worth a visit of you happen to be in the area or passing through, the museum is right in the middle of town (five minutes from the M3 and A30), and the best thing to do it climb to the top of the one-way / circular and grab a space in one of the open-air car-parks there, then it's a couple of minutes walk, if you're on foot you probably know the place as well as me and don't need my wittering confusing you!

Link to Museum Site

I only took a few shots to give you a flavour of the exhibition, but will return and get some more later in the month. It's basically a very good collection of the first series figures up to 'The final 17', with a fair amount of Palitoy packaging, but there are also film cells, concept artwork, lots of photographs and publicity material, foreign packaging, lobby cards and adverts and such like; I'm no Star Wars nerd, but I know enough to recognise both high-quality and wide-knowledge in one place, when I see it and there's plenty here.

There's a little pohoto-booth 'corner' where younger fans can dress-up or be taken for Yoda!

"This is not the museum-goer you are looking for!" Your author doing a poor job of trying to look as menacing as a Storm Trooper, I think the Spanish have a phrase for this kind of shenanigans (so do the Irish!); Sombrero Loco! I only had five minutes or I would have squeezed into the full suit and arrested someone Tory-looking!

There are several of these stand alone cabinets with really rare stuff, absolutely mint stuff and rare/mint stuff! All of it is from that early three-film era of 1977 to 1983. With some of the rarest pieces on show being from that late '83 period, when; after seeing the toys get 'Toy of the Year' (again); the toymakers - thinking the movies were done - cleared the remaining figures, loose, in bulk packs through good old Woolworths!

There's a looped DVD display next to the generosity box (the exhibition is free to enter) with old promotional videos, TV toy adverts and contemporary news items on the Star Wars 'craze'.

And there's a smuggler! Under guard! Looking a little unwell!

The walls are lined with lots of these cases showing every figure (even the really rare ones - there are two different walrus-men for instance), although; if I have one criticism it's that the significance of each pair is not explained, so you have to guess whether you're looking at a Palitoy/Kenner pairing, or a Palitoy/Madelman pairing or a Kenner/Brazilian knock-off pairing?

I can see that level of nerdiness would be too much for little kids or casual browsers, a quick key by each cabinet however, would enhance the experience for some?

As is almost de rigueur these days - there are masks to cut out and take away after the show, and while I grabbed a couple for the flavour, there were all the main/favourite characters . . . good and bad-guys!

Both the local papers gave full coverage to the opening event which looks to have been fun with the usual gang of enactors (I don't think you can call them re-enactors when it's fictional!), an original commercial/poster artist and the collector himself - Matt Fox - all present.

A nice surprise to find on a particularly cold, grey, winters day, and I can heartily recommend it, I spent maybe five/ten-minutes getting a flavour of the event and grabbing the above shots and flyers, but if you read all the info-cards and take your time you could easily lose an hour, or two?