I have all the annuals, and they're the original ones from my childhood. Unlike the toys which I decided to sell aged 11 (age is a feeble excuse, but it's my only defence!), the annuals were easier to hang on to, worth a lot less and took up a good deal less space. My favourite by far was ESB #1, despite the McQuarrie Yoda appearing in all his screen-inaccurate purple glory! We saw what we saw on screen, a few bits that didn't make it on screen, and the thing was in glorious colour throughout. As a 5 or 6-year old child, the black and white beginning and end sections of the original Star Wars annual went completely unread in favour of the full colour centre section
That problem didn't arise for ESB #1!
Although I also have the non-film annuals (Star Wars #2, ESB #2 etc.), I always regarded them as the poor relations! Even as a child, I was primarily interested in the films and reading about what I had seen on screen. I was never tempted to read 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye' because it wasn't a book of a film and hence (although I didn't know the word back then) wasn't canon. I didn't read the Marvel comics, because it was just 'made up stuff not in the films'
, and so I disliked the non-film annuals... even though I bought them!
I must say, that's a rare example for me of buying non-canon stuff. As a child, I was utterly contemptuous of the mini-rigs because they weren't in the films, and to this day I have never bothered buying them and never will. These days I totally respect the right of others to buy, own like, love or loathe them of course (tolerance is a wonderful thing, folks!), they just aren't for me. As a child, I didn't want the 'Imperial Attack Base' because it wasn't in the film (I was a 'Turret and Probot' boy all the way!), and although as an adult collector I did relent and finally buy an IAB, it's never going to be a favourite of mine. My favourite toy, then as now, and by about a million miles, is the Palitoy Death Star. A quite brilliant toy with superb play value, loads of potential for recreating scenes straight from Star Wars, and with a working trash compactor complete with figure chute to quite literally drop them in it! THAT'S what a toy should be like! :mrgreen:
I seem to have drifted somewhat from the subject of annuals! So to conclude then, if you don't own them, grab them from your nearest second hand shop, Forum member selling them, Amazon Marketplace or eBay. They are great to own and read, and even if my favourites will always be the 3 from the films, the other ones have their own charm as well, and as Cymonguk quite rightly pointed out, the artwork is fab!
