Packaging Concepts for Electric Toothbrush
Kenner's Star Wars electric toothbrush was packaged on a blister card featuring a photo of a child using the product (click here to see it). But these conceptual prototypes for the toothbrush show that several other packaging alternatives were explored. The above photo depicts a couple of design ideas, which suggest that two different versions of the product were considered for release-- one aimed at boys (the Luke design) and one aimed at girls (the Leia design).

Here you see yet another design idea, this one focusing on several different Star Wars characters. This one is actually similar, in a way, to the design that was released to stores.

Obviously, these blister card images were generated from hand-rendered artwork. Note the early version of the Star Wars logo that appears at the top of the blister cards. It features a 'W' that has pointed rather than flat lower extremitites. This logo was dropped by Lucasfilm prior to the film's release. Since the toothbrush was one of the earlier Star Wars products released by Kenner, and the tooling used to produce it was recycled from the Six Million Dollar Man line, it's entirely possible that these pieces date from a time prior to the release of the film, when Kenner's action figure products were still only on the drawing board.

 

Here are two additional shots of the Luke and Leia pieces. Just for the heck of it.

Unfortunately, none of the items seen in these photos are known to currently be in existence. These images come from a batch of slides unearthed by Chris Fawcett, web master of 12back.com.

Description by: Ron Salvatore
Photo: Chris Fawcett
From the collection of: Anonymous
Country:United States
Film:A New Hope
Licensee:Kenner
Year:1977
Category:Prototypes / Product Concepts


  


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