Childhood Star Wars Oasmosis

 Like a lot of people, I had a Star Wars phase when I was a kid. But unlike most people, I had this phase without actually watching any of the movies. Star Wars is such a massive cultural phenomenon that it's impossible to know how or when I would have first been exposed to it. I was a kid while the prequels were being made too, so it would have been relevant at the time, and it had a big marketing push. It being a series that originated in the '70s, it was influential and nostalgic for the artists that were in turn making the art that I grew up with, and there were tons of homages and parodies to be found. I suspect that I would have been exposed to such parodies before the real thing, but either occurence would have happened so early in my life that it's unknowable.

Zurg and Buzz in Toy Story 2

In 2005, Burger King had a cross-promotion with Episode III, where the kids' menu would come with a Star Wars toy. Pretty much all of the toys were based on the original trilogy. There was a C-3PO toy that, when you pressed down its head, its limbs would EXPLODE. I thought that was the most fun one. There was a Darth Vader toy that was holding a lightsaber, and when you pressed the button on its back, it would swing the lightsaber forwards and backwards. That one was pretty cool.

There was a Chewbacca. I did not like this one. There was an R2D2. It was kind of a flimsy plastic thing, I think its head would rotate? While on the topic of kids' menu toys, I'll break the chronology and talk about the 2009 McDonalds toys too. There was a pretty well sculpted Yoda toy among these ones. It's Yoda in some robes holding a walking stick, and on the bottom he had a magic 8-ball. There was a Darth Vader helmet that also looked pretty good, and it would open up to reveal a marble-maze game. There was a little flashlight-esque lightsaber. It would retract and extend and you could push a button to make it light up, I think it was blue. So you know, the whole gang was here! Not counting any of the protagonists, the whole gang was here!

One thing that I loved to do as a kid was to just surf the web and find random videos. On one such occasion I must have Googled something like "Yoda vs dark vader". That is what I thought his name was. I was also a big fan of Master Yoda. He was a cool little green alien. A wise old man, but super strong when it came to fighting. I was impressed with it in that childlike wondrous way, but I still think it's a cool character archetype, and a cool character. So, one day I must have Googled something of that sort, and I found this video of Yoda and Darth Vader fighting one another in Soul Calibur. I didn't know what Soul Calibur was, I just thought the fight was cool. I can't know, but it may have been this exact video, or something very similar to it:

There was this brand of playing cards called Top Trumps that would release licensed card decks based on movies. Star Wars was among these movies. I remember seeing the commercial for it, I think it had the trench run scene from Episode 4 in it. I very vividly remember seeing that one shot of the camera diving into the trench on TV. I think I had the cards, but I can't remember too well.

Kellogg's cereals had a cross-promotion in 2005 where the cereal boxes came with "saber spoons", plastic cereal spoons that were designed to look like lightsabers. I remember having one of those. I think the one that I had was blue. The hilt of the spoon is a separate piece from the saber part so you had to assemble them 

The Clone Wars cartoon went on air. I'm talking about the 3D one, not the Genndy Tartakovsky one. The series begins with an hour and a half long pilot film. I attempted to watch that film on VCD. It was a pirate VCD and did not work very well. It was in black and white, and the sound would cut out in some parts. I don't know why. I'm guessing the discs they had on hand didn't have enough storage space for the whole movie, so they did this to reduce the file size. Or maybe it just glitched out. The cartoon show would show on TV, I think it aired on Cartoon Network. I only watched a couple episodes, and I remember almost nothing. I knew who the characters were, Anakin being the protagonist. And I was obviously aware of the "I am your father" scene. It was constantly being referenced everywhere, in everything. It was like it was the one plot twist that everyone in Hollywood had agreed was fine to spoil. However, I didn't know who else was in the scene, besides Dark Vader of course. I assumed that the "son" in this scenario would be the protagonist of Star Wars, of course. So in my head, Dark Vader was telling this to ANAKIN Skywalker.

           "Anakin, I am your father"        |  "From my point of view, I am your father"

I actually did try watching the films as a kid. I wanted to watch all of the movies from the beginning, starting from the film that came out first. So I went on Google and found some pirate streaming website and looked up the Star Wars film that surely would have come out first: Star Wars Episode 1. I was generally aware that Star Wars was this really old film series, and I was aware that old films didn't have as advanced special effects as current ones. So I was very surprised and very confused when I started watching Phantom Menace and saw all the CG characters and environments. How did this film that was supposedly made 30 years ago have all of these special effects? Did they really have all of these effects back then? I watched it until just after the scene where Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Jar Jar dive down to the underwater city of Jar Jars. And then I gave up on it.

Years later, as in like 3 years ago, I would finally actually watch Star Wars. I watched the 4K77 series of fan restorations. I thought they were really good! I definitely understand why Star Wars became such a huge phenomenon. Even when it first came out, people were going crazy over it and making cosplays of it and bringing them to theatres. That totally makes sense, they're very good films! They're so well made and so imaginative, there's this mythic quality to them.

I am yet to see the prequels.

Sources:

1. Burger King toy images
2. McDonald's toy images
3. Cereal box image