Staedtler x Star Wars
Merchandise from TV series and movies is all around us and is also pretty common in the stationery world, but a lot of the licensed stationery doesn’t actually show the manufacturer and quality is sometimes dubious.
In the Eighties and Nineties Staedtler used to produce quite a lot of licensed pencils with designs linked to TV series and movies. Most of these were unbranded, i.e. as a consumer you weren’t able to see these were actually made by Staedtler. It seems that this is down to the fact that in most cases Staedtler didn’t purchase the licence but produced the pencils according the customer specifications. This seems to be still common: the manufacturer is not the licence holder which might also explain the poor quality of a lot of licensed stationery as the company holding the licence might just get the cheapest factory to produce the pencils as the products get bought because of the licensed characters, not because of the quality.
I had a big collection of licensed pencils made in Staedtler’s Pontyclun factory in Wales but decided to let them find a new home as I just have too many pencils.
The printing on the pencils included some globally well known trademarks, like Lion King and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but also a lot of UK specific brands that are not well known outside the UK and Ireland, e.g. Beano and David the Gnome. To my surprise one type of pencil was particularly popular, the MASK pencil, based on an animation from the mid-Eighties. Even though I watched a lot of children animations in the mid-Eighties I was not familiar with this series and rather surprised by the popularity. The same is true for another series I wasn’t familiar with and that seemed to be very popular: Bravestarr.
The collector who took these pencils made me aware of Star Wars stationery that Staedtler used to produce and that I want to share with you today.
You can find the original information and more at Star Wars Spanish Stuff.
Thanks to Eberhard Rüdel and Andrea Plässer for additional information used in this blog post.
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