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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here

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The Nostalgia Awakens is an exhibit featuring every action figure toy made by Kenner

Toys from 1978 to 1985 based on the original three Star Wars movies.

The Star Wars Toys on Display are from Jared Rohl, enthusiast and museum curator from Wisconsin.

He and his brother Kevin owned many of the toys when they were children.

As an adult, Jared collected the rest of the original toys.

In part one of this two-part story, we learned that Star Wars was released in May of

1977 to just 32 theaters nationwide and how George Lucas's movie revolutionized movie

merchandising, licensing, and even how kids play. Here's Jared Roll with the rest of the story.

One thing that toys allowed us to do is that we could carry on that story.

We could relive that story.

You know, we could be in control of that story that we saw on the big screen that one time.

I mean, this is before the days of VHS. This is before the days of any way to replay this. I didn't have any means of replaying this movie. If you wanted to see Star Wars multiple times, you had to go to the theater. And being a five-year-old kid, I didn't have any power over that. But the other thing to consider, too, is that it was only at my theater for two weeks,

and then it was gone, and then it came back in 78. During that summer, it was back again for two

weeks. So we needed ways to stay connected to Star Wars when we weren't seeing the movies. And how

did we do that? Well, the best way was with action figures. Because now I can

take Luke and Ben and Walrus Man and I can recreate that scene in the cantina. You know,

when Walrus Man tries to attack Luke and Ben steps in and cuts his arm off, I can do that. And then I

could take Walrus Man and I can have him be some other guy and he could have his own adventure.

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