Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
It’s getting to be that time again… StarWars.com posted their own mammoth Best of 2009 this morning. Below is my personal list. Since it is personal, it’s clearly missing some things. (As always, I don’t speak for all of Club Jade. I just post a lot.) So let’s get to it: Continue reading “Dunc’s top ten Star Wars events of 2009”
Thinkgeek and their tauntaun sleeping bag has made the mainstream: A profile in The New York Times.
Mostly a retailer, ThinkGeek does very little licensing and manufacturing, and its attempts to get a meeting with Lucasfilm to work out the rights to make the sleeping bag went nowhere. “We’d really pretty much given up,” Ty Liotta, the company’s senior merchandiser, said. “We decided: ‘We’re not doing anything else with this, and it’s funny. Let’s make it an April Fools’ product.’ ”
And an internet phenomenon was born…
Both Thinkgeek and Star Wars Shop have the April Fools product made reality available for preorder right this minute.
A prank no more! ThinkGeek (newly redesigned!) will be selling their internet-famous Tauntaun Sleeping Bag for real come November. Or you could win one in their Geeky Pumpkin Template Design Contest Extravaganza.
My first inkling of this was a tweet from Lucasfilm’s Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper,) who also confirmed that a (licensed) lightsaber Wii remote will soon be available. Okay, so the Wii thing is old news, but my memory isn’t what it used to be… At least not for game peripherals.
L.A. Weekly checks in with the progress of making ThinkGeek’s April Fools TaunTaun sleeping bag a reality. Thinkgeek PR guy Shane Peterman says:
We are definitely trying to make it in to an actual item to be sold on our site. As of right now, it’s still an “if,” but it’s turning in to more of a “when.” Things are looking pretty good, we just don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. There’s certainly been enough of a demand, both from customers and from those of us that work here. Right now, we’re aiming to have it available for the holidays, or at the latest, the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back next spring.
But what of Lucasfilm?
We’re still working with Lucas to get approval for a final design. Again, it’s looking good, we just can’t say too much right now since it’s still in the works.
Well, we’re patient.
So it turns out that the maker of ThinkGeek’s most talked-about April Fool’s prank, the tauntaun sleeping bag, is actually a friend of CJ’s own Rach. She didn’t come up with the concept, but she did assemble it, and you can check out the photos at her Flickr.
And yes, in case you haven’t heard, the response was so positive that ThinkGeek is looking into licensing it for real!
In the hefty realm of Star Wars pranks, the big hit seems to be ThinkGeek’s Tauntaun sleeping bag. What kid wouldn’t love that!
Meanwhile, Wookieepedia has gone purist: “…the consensus of the Wookieepedia administrators is to only accept the Star Wars films as canon. Expanded Universe material will be treated as non-canon from here on. ”
And Firefox News has Diablo Cody tapped to Write Star Wars Episode VII; Get a feel for the concept by flashing back to If Diablo Cody Wrote Star Wars.
Big thanks to for the enthusiastic replies to Laurel K. Hamilton’s Jaded Conquest, and to CJ’s Heather W. for the title. We actually have a great run of title suggestions on the list, including Journey into Skywalker, Jedi in Chains, Under The Hand, and Hard Jade Knight. I think it might call for a poll…
Other EU tomfoolery: The Movie Blog reports that George Lucas is making a Legacy movie; TFN’s Lit forums celebrate the release of Bib Fortuna and the Rise of the Dark Falls and the announcement of Republic Commando: Tipoca Thunder, while there is mass outrage of Dark Horse’s decision to reshuffle the NJO timeline for Invasion.
As for the rest of the internet…