Global Promotional Items
Frank Mewes
Chihuahua
Chihuahua
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
During the life of the toy line, many baggies were offered in a variety of formats, some to reduce costs for the collector on a budget, some to promote other products for sale & some just to get rid of overstock, this is IMO one of the most interesting areas of baggie collecting & also some of the rarest baggie related items available or should I say unavailable, it would be killer to add some of these items to the collection in the coming years, sadly I know many are out of reach to us mere mortal collectors & the playground of the rich & famous.
Meccano red sticker baggies
Not much I know about these TBH bar they were offered as a free “gift” for customers who bought a vehicle & were displayed in a counter top box (as shown below) over in France I believe in the ROTJ era as most of the figures that have been seen in them appear to be from the later issued ROTJ line, they came in a cardboard counter top filler box with catalogues, these are quite rare to say the least, some great info from Joe on these – thanks buddy!
Close up of the sticker.
Rather insane run of vehicles & play sets put together by Peter Meteenp. I felt the file really needed to be shown large to appreciate it.
Couple of promotional items up next, firstly the free figure offer from the glue manufactured UHU, all figures offered as far as I am aware to date were Ewoks & there were a few figures available, most came loose in the blister pack, but at least the Teebo has been found within the pack still sporting its Kenner baggie.
Next up this has to be the rarest of the rare items known to exist & from what I understand (to date) there is only the one complete example in existence which is owned by Steve Sansweet, oddly enough when speaking about this piece he admitted he has no recollection of how it came into his possession, it has a Bib Fortuna in it, though it is not quite clear if it is bagged or lose, due to its rarity & no other known examples having surfaced it is unclear if all the figures available on the back of the pack were available through this Colgate offer over in Spain or if they were all in baggies or loose figures, though I have a hunch they would all have been bagged due to the weapons & accessories coming loose otherwise, 1st image above shows a repro box flat photo of ones they gave out at the Spanish talk over at CE2 in Essen (2014) which I was lucky enough to get one of as I attended the talk, I hope to make this up & add a baggie to it in future, which I will post photos of if I ever manage to get round to it (2022 – still not got round to it yet, oh procrastination).
What I think is Steve Sansweet’s one, but can not confirm this.
Another (empty) example that’s turned up since the above & for a different type of toothpaste, it is speculated that 3 different toothpaste types were included in the Colgate free figure promotion, no example of the 3rd type has surfaced as far as I am aware.
Woolies 8 figure 99 pence offer bags, these were overstock bought up by the Woolworths chain directly from Palitoy right at the end of the the toy line when production ceased & Palitoy were looking to offload their remaining stock, it is not 100% clear if they were bagged up in store by Woolworths but it is the most likely option with the large plain black & white offer sticker which is very similar to the 49p mini rig offer price tags & large vehicle 4.99 offer stickers, they usually came with a total jumble of figures, some with weapons & accessories, others with just the lose figures, some with figures & incorrect weapons & accessories, some but few still turn up with individual baggies in them (Palitoy issue baggies frequently Palitoy-i’s) but have been found with many Palitoy baggie types like the ones pictured below, some have even cropped up with every figure in a baggie, though I am highly sceptical about these after the Bill Rodgers scandal, he was known to have faked these so be very cautious if looking to buy one, he used overstock brand new Palitoy-a type baggies, so if there are baggies in the pack or all baggies in the pack & are all Palitoy-a ones, I would avoid them at all costs. An interesting side note these are the only known source of POTF figures in baggies, bar the few know Kenner examples. All examples to date of these have been in Palitoy baggies.
Additional after the Woolworth baggies investigation thread by Laurence Dyer – after a lot of searching & trying to track down any/all known examples of sealed & open (fake & authentic) Woolies baggies it was deemed that only 4 authentic examples that are still factory sealed have been recorded, only the 2 examples shown in the images below can be located, 90% of them out there have been confirmed fakes thanks to the likes of the fakers, I know of at least 3 individuals who have faked multiple ones, each fakers bags have some fairly obvious red flags & do not conform to known authentic examples, so in essence we can say these are among the rarest of the rare in terms of numbers known to exist for a an officially released item of the toy line.
We would assume the 2 bag styles (in line & off set fonts) are due to there having been 2 runs for the Woolies baggies, one in the summer & then later a further offer in the winter.
Image included of both confirmed authentic examples of the Woolies 8 packs below (empty bags). Please note the 2 sealed packs also show both known types – inline & off-set fonts.
(Quote from Shawn) “Something sent out by Kenner direct to children to help renew interest in Star Wars when the line was starting to die”. I could not really have worded it any better, thanks Shawn.
Above is an example of a pre sale sample pack of the young jedi mailer which from what I gather are more commonly available that the standard production ones, though neither are what one would call easy to come by.
Well I have been on the hunt for one of these for many many years, having first seen something similar when I first started collecting, like the Woolies 99p 8 packs these are something I presume would have been out right towards the end of the toy line in an effort to get rid of remaining stock, its a simple cardboard hanging strip which would have had 12 baggies stapled to it, 6 on each side with a special price, initially 99p per figure, but later examples were further reduced to 49p to clear stock, from what I know they were available through the Woolworths chain, but may well have also cropped up in other stores with the super group header not from what I understand being a brand specific to the chain, most I have seen have been just the Emperor figure in Palitoy-a baggies, but some came with a mixture of ROTJ era figures, to date I have heard of a few other figures being offered on these strips including Rancor Keener/the ever popular Klaatu & Lando Skiff, but I am assuming they would have at the time had quite a wide selection of other figures which had not sold well, I have also seen similar cardboard backing strips with 3 maybe 4 rows of figures on, again in baggies & stapled to them but without any kind of header to them, I am still not sure to this day what exactly the larger backers were for, if for onward sale in stores or for on the production line for carding I assume the latter, but I have seen enough examples turn up over the years to convince me of their authenticity, IMO a bit of a grail item for any baggie collector & one of the rarest of rare things to find in baggie collecting, infinitely rarer than say “most” multi packs.
It has been confirmed these were more dead stock items sold on after the toy line had bombed & general sales had pretty much dried up, the company based in Sheffield were a clearance wholesaler who deal in all manner of dead stock items not just toys, they’d literally buy anything going cheap in bulk & cheaply rebrand it & distribute it to pretty much any retailer willing to buy, so these strips ended up all over the place from bric-a-brack stores to local corner shops & clearance outlets.
Below are 2 updated images of the strip I own (same one as shown above) which I have since put back together / completed, all baggies are sealed & correct & the only non vintage part of it are the staples used to put the baggies back on the strip, it was a tough choice in all fairness, either leave it as is or try to make it as it should be, I am happy with my choice though I am sure some purists will think otherwise, sadly these are so damn rare that I doubt there would ever be another opportunity to add a complete example to the collection, this was a real labor of love & not an easy fix, but I am really happy with how it displays now.
Special thanks to these contributors for their knowledge and image contributions:
Laurence Dyer, Arnaud Heyser, Andrew Neo, AJ, Snaggletooth, Kevin Bletsoe, Brett Meyer, DEL, Gary Borbidge, Edd Grant, Chris Eddleman, Vince Hely, Nathan Maunder, Jamie Woollard, Niels Pit, Andrew MacLachlan, cantina_patron, Franck Gadal, Joe, Richard Temple, Sven Schneider, Steve Savory, Shane Carter, Chris Fawcett, Andy Clarke, psybertech, Jake Neilheisel, Alex Pardi, Marc Caraway, Spookedhippy, Frank Ferro, James Body, Jonathan Freeman, Grant Criddle, Chris Arbizzani, RobbieZombbie, Narayan S. Naik, Mark Yeo, SHAWN_K, Andy Raymond, MOMIKE, theguiltyone, Sublevel Studios, Mike Silver, Mr Palitoy, Ronny Anngren, Willem-Jan Bos, Robert Heron, Darren H, REBELALLIANCE, Uncle Ron, LandoSkiff (Dan), Mike Horn, Pat O’Brien, Benjamin, Samir Krim, Pete Fizke, Final Frontier, Mike Heel, MR KENNER, John Kellerman, Paul Naylor, Matthieu Barthelemy, Stéphane Faucourt, Yogi, Chris Simmons, Stormtrooper37, Thomas Derby, Todd G, Sheldon Wagstaffe, Derek Ho, Broc Walker, Adam Marks, James Gallo, Charles Jones, Darrell Johnson & Brendi Burton, Christian Somma, Johnpaul Ragusa, Jesse Cedar Soberman, Dorothée Drouin, Dennis Hall, Javier Ruilopez, Enric Rovira, Matthew Carlise, Stephen Tzaras.
Photos in the guide galleries below are compiled from a number of photo sources. It’s not been possible to find credits for each one, however, if you own one of the featured images and want to have your credit added, or don’t wish to have your photo included, please let me know and I’ll arrange.
Thanks, Chihuahua.
