“From small things mama, big things one day come…
-Bruce Springsteen
I’m an original trilogy era kid who saw Star Wars for the first time with my brother and aunt in the summer of 1977. I was nine and a half at the time and like so many other kids I was all in when in came to Star Wars and all the merchandise that went along with it. By the time Empire Strikes Back hit theatres in 1980 i was almost 13 years old and although I loved the movie, I wasn’t playing with toys any more and had moved on to punk rock, Maple Leafs hockey and girls. It wasn’t until the Power of the Force launch in 1995 that Star Wars toys became a part of my life again.
We had a office-style room where my Star Wars collection was first displayed. This then became a nursery in 1998 for our second child. My collection was small but still on display in my son’s nursery:
In 2001 I moved my small collection into a spare room and the rest is history. You can see how the room started out as a tv room where I was given explicit instructions by my wife and my mother in law that certain items had to remain. Things like lamps, photo albums, a couch. I dutifully nodded my head in agreement and then slowly (over a few years) I removed all of these so-called “must have.” The last thing to go was a leather recliner that wouldn’t even recline because it had to be pushed against a wall. The only non-displaying furniture in the room now is a small desk I use to podcast, run this site and work on projects.
These photos are from around 2010 to maybe 2012 and are a good example of how my collecting slowly began to grow. I wish I had photos of when I first set the room up in 2001 but I didn’t start documenting it until social media began to take off. To see my Star Wars room how it looks today, click here.
Mike Tarkin.com 