Via Ew.com:
Mark Hamill launched the first major panel of Star Wars Celebration in London with a one-man Q&A show and single promise: Sorry, no talk of Episode VIII.
So while next year’s sequel to The Force Awakens stayed relatively under wraps until near the end of his discussion (see below), the Luke Skywalker actor began his appearance by urging fans not to do the same with their toys. Even though he’s a collector himself, he says he encouraged his own children to rip open their action-figures rather than keep them pristine on the shelf.
“When we were doing the [original] movie, I was reading this thing and thinking, ‘It reads like a toybox!’ There are floating cars, there are fire-swords, and robots,” Hamill recalled. “So I said to George [Lucas], ‘Can I get on a list where I get one of everything?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ I thought there’d be a poster, there’ll be a comic book, and a t-shirt maybe or a record album.”
He compared the avalanche of merchandise to the endless marching brooms from Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “The toys just start coming to your house. Bum-bah-bump, bah-bump…,” he sang. “Every day, more toys.”
Hamill said one of the earliest words his kids said was “Kenner!”
“I gave all those toys to the kids, and they grew up later and said, ‘Oh my God, Princess Leia in the box is $1,400 in mint condition! Why’d you let us give her a Sinead O’Connor haircut with cuticle scissors?’ I said, ‘They were your toys!’”
He said his own obsessions inspired his new VOD series Pop Culture Quest, which debuts in the fall and features him exploring other people’s collections. “There’s no more room in my house for stuff,” Hamill said. “When I start putting my collection in storage, that’s no fun. … We want these things to share and look at. So Pop Culture Quest is a way for me to have an excuse to come to your house and look at your collection.”
Breaking into a Darth Vader voice, he extended a hand to the audience and intoned: “May your collection be with me …”
Click below to read the full article.
