Toys To Write By: Star Wars Gamorrean Guard

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Watch any child play with toys and you are witnessing a brand new world being created right before you that only they are privy to. Every single story begins behind the wide eyes of a mesmerised child.

People often ask what inspires me to come up with sci-fi or horror scenarios and aliens. I’ve written an article here on that very subject of inspiration and ideas. Read it by clicking on the link here https://timewarriors.co.uk/2023/04/03/to-sit-down-and-write-get-off-your-arse/ However there is one thing I actually forgot about and yet have surrounded myself with them all my life and will enjoy to the day I die.

As a child you are forever creating stories with your toys and when I was young it was the Star Wars toys especially that gave us our new Star Wars adventures and spin-offs along with the comic strip in Star Wars Weekly. I had a Tardis and a Star Trek transporter that could send my imagination anywhere and to any time. So when my Dad built a rockery in our garden it was the site for many new Star Wars adventures and with the plethora of figures released anything could happen and crossovers between shows were common long before it became popular. Luke Skywalker travelled in the Tardis and R2 was beamed to a lost dimension of Transformers characters. So in this series I will look at the toys that blew me away as a kid and helped spin new worlds in my head. Every single story begins behind the wide eyes of a mesmerised child.

Whether you like it or not Return of the Jedi was a tsunami of alien creatures. Fans all over the world would soon add them to their collections. But there was something special about getting those figures as there was no internet back then. The feeling of walking into a store and seeing a full wall of figures all hanging from pegs was a sight to behold. There was a certain magic in it that no longer exists today due to online shopping. To have the figures you wanted in your hands having fallen for them in the movie never fails to incite excitement. You can’t wait to get it home and open it to play with. Of course if we knew then what we know now, we’d have bought two or at least begged our parents to pay for two, one for play, one for the future.

Now, I’ve collected Star Wars stuff all my life but when I watched Return of the Jedi in the cinema the first monsters that made me sit up and stare were the pig like Gamorrean Guards of Jabba the Hutt’s palace. There was something about them that determined that this was going to be a figure I wanted badly. Now I don’t mean the awful tacky Gamorreans from the Book of Boba Fett which were simply rubber masks on shirtless larger men and did not look right at all. I mean the originals in full armour that Luke choked with a brush of the Force.

When one of them got eaten like a marshmallow by the Rancor monster, I was like “NOOOOOO!” I had gotten attached to them that fast. So when I finally got the figure I was delighted. He was big and burly with a hefty axe that could take a head off. He was green, big, beautiful and mine. I eventually got a second one which became the Gamorean twins working at Jabba’s palace to send information to both the rebel alliance and the Empire. Loyalty wasn’t an issue for them; money was to feed their families back on Gamor. The adventures they had alongside the rebels were endless like Waterworld or the log forests of the rockery. Damn I could write a book.

And that’s the point.

There are no barriers to a child’s imagination; only time when mum calls you for dinner, visit granny’s house or sleep. What you are subconsciously doing is creating storylines, sorting plot holes and creating new characters to populate the world the figure populates and seeing where it goes. If you are a storyteller then this is exactly what you will do when tackling a story. And not realising it you are training yourself to focus on what you like to see in a story and what excites you to write. Even we writers have to enjoy the story too or we end up leaving the story as a bad job.

I still have my Gamorrean Guard to this day but did have to get a repo axe to replace the original. So jump forward forty years to the anniversary of Return of the Jedi’s theatrical release.

A new series of 6 inch figures are announced and among them is the Gamorrean Guard. Only this time he is bigger and bulkier than ever with multiple weapons included. When I saw him on display with the others I just fell in love with him all over again. The packaging was bulkier than the rest but that was to be expected due to his design and size. It was the one that immediately caught the eye but was more expensive than the others. I was thrown back there and then to my Gamorrean twins fooling rebels and imperials alike beneath the very nose of Jabba the Hutt. I was back in the rockery, in Waterworld bath, the record player where an elastic band held Princess Leia to the central pole the record slid onto and Luke had to get past the Gamorrean to rescue her before the record ended. I thought of my Gamorrean in the house in dire need of a big brother. So when one arrived expectantly for my birthday I was delighted. Not that I open the packaging anymore. So he sits on my shelf proudly and that kid in me that never grew up looks at him and smiles. He winks back secure in the knowledge that his double agent life still continues and his family are safe and secure.

As much as I love this figure, it still doesn’t stop me eating bacon sandwiches with brown sauce.