kemple.us

Free Jawbone Icon

Lastweek Jawbone held a contest on their fan page for two free Jawbone Icon bluetooth headsets. They wanted you to go to a store that sells them and take a picture of the Icon headset on display. Shortly after reading about it Sarah wanted to go to Best Buy, so I figured I would take a picture and enter for fun. We went to Best Buy and they were actually sold out of the Icon headset. I decided to go ahead and take a picture of the empty rack and still give it a shot.

The drawing was planned for Monday, but for some reason they delayed it a few days, but it ended up being worth the wait. They only had about 12 entries and the were giving away 2 headsets, so my chances were pretty good. By some miracle I was the 2nd name drawn and won! I’ve been doing some reading up on the Icon and they have a special app for the iPhone and all sorts of other features that I’ve never seen on a bluetooth headset.

I was asked which Icon model I would like and I chose the rouge which is a dark red color. I thought that would be nice instead of the traditional black of most headsets. A video of the drawing can be seen on their fan page.

Here is the picture I used to enter the contest and a picture of the rouge model.

Vintage Rocket Firing Boba Fett Coming

This weekend was the annual Toy Fair show in New York and there was quite the surprise. Hasbro announced that the mail away later this year would be a remake of the vintage Boba Fett figure. The thing that makes this special though is the fact that it is going to have a rocket firing jet pack.

Now for the history lesson. In the late 70′s Boba Fett was offered as a mail away figure and one of the features he was supposed to have was the rocket firing pack. Before the figure was released, a 4 year old boy, choked and died because of a simular missile on the Battlestar Galactica vehicles. Because of this event, toy laws were changed. Kenner at the time tried a few different style launchers, but it was still deemed unsafe. In the end they removed the rocket firing feature, glued the missile, and when kids received their figure it included an apology letter. They even offered kids a replacement figure if they weren’t happy with the situation.

Several prototypes with the firing launcher did survive and made it to the collector market. They are considered Holy Grail collectors items as they come with roughly a $15k+ price tag and in limited numbers.

The new figure comes with a longer rocket in order to still comply with safety laws, but it is a great nod for the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes back.

Here are pictures of my original mail away version with the apology letter, the slide shown at the Hasbro Presentation, and some official photography for the figure.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Or in this case the Star Wars figures. This has been on my want list for a very long time and I finally got one and a steal of a deal. Here is the story behind this piece. Kenner Toys got the Star Wars license to make the toys roughly a month before the movie was released in theaters. There was no way to get the toys out in time, so they did a few things like puzzles and repackaged a few of their earlier toys and slapped the Star Wars name on them to hold people over. By the Christmas season of 1977 they still did not have any toys ready, so the President of Kenner Toys, Bernie Loomis, decided to sell this “empty box” known as the Early Bird Certificate Package. It was a way to remind people that the toys were coming and it also provided a way for kids to still have something Star Wars under the Christmas tree that year.

For roughly $12 you got a cardboard stage, some detachable cards, and a sheet of stickers. Pretty exciting huh? Now comes the best part though. Also included in the package was a form to mail away for the first 4 Star Wars figures as soon as they were ready and receive them before they were in stores. The kits were sealed up very tight, so it is really hard to find an open one without any damage to the opening flap. This was done to prevent people from being able to steal the form out of the kits in the stores.

According to the Steve Sansweet Book, Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible, 600,000 of the envelopes were sent out to stores and about half of them sold. The rest would have been sent back to Kenner after December. Even though only half of the enevelopes sold, it was still considered to be a successful promotion as it kept the idea of Star Wars toys in the public mind and when the figures were finally released, retailers couldn’t keep them in stock.

Okay so here is where the good deal I got comes into effect. This one showed up on ebay a few days ago with a buy it now of $65.00. An envelope and stand in this condition will normally sell for $160-$200, so without even thinking about it, I clicked the buy it now button. The nice thing is that it also included another playset cardboard display. I should get roughly $30-$50 by flipping it, so when you take that into account, I basically got a vintage early bird envelope for the original 1977, $13 retail price in 2010. The other nice thing is that it came with the mail away form for the mail away display stand in unused form and the original toy booklet. Collectors pay a pretty penny just for these pieces of paperwork. The booklet features pictures of the actors rather than the toys like later booklets. These two pieces of paper weren’t included in the envelope, but with the set of figures when they arrived in the mail. I hope to add the followup figure set sometime in the future.

Below are some pictures of the Kit I bought, the followup figure mailer from another collection, and the original 1977 commercial. Also, here is a link to a video of Steve Sansweet talking about the Early Bird Kit and showing the one in his personal collection.

Here are a few good online resources about this.
Bernie Loomis Remembered on starwars.com
Early Bird Certificate Package on theswca.com
Mail Away Offers: Early Bird Package on theswca.com

New Sonic 2D Side scroller

Last night Sega officially unveiled Sonic 4 which was previously known as project needlemouse. After 16 years a direct sequel to Sonic 3 is finally coming and it is in the same style as the games that made Sonic famous. Sonic has been one of those games that just hasn’t really translated well after the switch was made to 3D, so it is great seeing him go back to his roots. The game is going to be download only, but from what I can see it will be available for all the major consoles. There is only half a second of actual gameplay footage here, but it is a good teaser. The game will be out this summer.