New Footage from the Palitoy factory Circa 1983
- Thread starter Clawrence
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Excellent! Who knew that Darth Vader's TIE Fighter was built by your nan? 
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Insane footage, all those inserts! Thanks for posting.
The Darth Vader's TIE Fighter had quite a long production run, relatively speaking. The box was updated in later issues to include Bounty Hunter tokens, which certainly didn't exist in its first release for Star Wars. That in itself places it as still being issued (and in a Star Wars box) at least during the ESB toy period, which is of course also confirmed by 1:47 in the video where we see both Slave 1's and DVTF's on the conveyor belt simultaneously
.As for 1983, I cannot see any ROTJ toys in the video, but that doesn't mean they weren't there, or perhaps that the video isn't from early in 1983 before the ROTJ toys were released.
walkie
Sith Lord
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I remember those batteries and I was born in '76 so must have been around in the early 80's
Really interesting, most of the factory workers look to be in their 50s so are probably no longer with us, but the girl at the end assembling Slave 1's seems to be in her 20s, so possibly still around (although over 60 which is a scary thought!) I wonder what the chances of tracking her down are? After all the guy who put a paper note in a Millennium Falcon was found!
poncho
Grand Master
Great footage
sith-smith
Grand Master
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That was pretty cool
Wonder if we sent it to Bob Brechin he might be able to remember a name, or show someone who was on production. in 1985 they had 585 staff so might be a big ask.
Something really cool that I only recently found out is that the company i work for owned the same machines Palitoy used to seal the blisters onto the cards. Unfortunately the machine was sold off early 2000 as we moved production to China, but i do remember it being used as we used it to seal Electrical accessories under the Wellco brand (I designed the packaging). The machines used were from a german brand called ILLIG. Black & decker also used these machines and Palitoy actually visited there plant up north to see the ILLIG's in action and purchased them off the back of the demo. If my memory is correct there were 2 modulars a forming station that created the clamshell (blister) using a vacuum former and metal moulds then the other part would would seal the blister to the card. The cardback has a special coating of heat seal lacquer which when heated glues the card to the card.
poncho
Grand Master
Interesting clawrence
My original youtube video was took down due to copyright infringement ...but it can still be viewed here
www.macearchive.org
...but it can still be viewed hereCentral News: 03.06.1983: Palitoy and Star Wars
The boom in science fiction movies, has boosted the sales of Palitoy in Coalville and increased their workforce by double because of the demand for Star Wars toys.
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That machine is probably at Toy Tony's house now @Clawrence !
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