| Remedial Reading Multi-media school kit | |
| Everyone knows that the best way to get a kid to learn something is to bribe him. Hence the existence of this remedial reading kit based on Star Wars. I'm not sure if the idea worked--few kids are dumb enough to be rooked into studying by the likes of Chewbacca and R2-D2--but for collectors it represents a pretty interesting item. What's more, it's rare, especially in complete condition--so much so that Steve Sansweet compared it to the Holy Grail in the second edition to his collectibles price guide. It was produced by Pendulum Press in 1978 and came packed inside a briefcase-like box made of flimsy printed cardboard.
Contents included a filmstrip and two cassettes. Those of you who were kids in the '70s and '80s surely remember watching this type of filmstrip. Whenever a "beep" sounded on the cassette, the audio-visual nerd of the class would have to advance the filmstrip to the next frame.
There were also five miniature comic books. As kids read these things, they would presumably get smarter and more literate as each page was turned. Many terms, such as "civl war", are marked with asterisks, so that kids could expand their knowledge while thrilling to galactic adventures.
The interior art is all in black and white. Sadly, there are no ads for sea monkeys in the back pages. These must surely be among the rarest of all licensed Star Wars comics, but I've never heard of comic collectors going crazy for them.
Contents also include a folder that's chock full of learning goodness. Here you see the teacher's guide from the set as well as a strip of gold stickers that have "Goal Achieved" printed on them. The stickers would have been way cooler had they employed an image of the Death Star exploding.
Remember these mimeographed worksheets? Ah, the days before photocopiers. Fortunately, these have never been used.
Here's a shot of the interior of the teacher's guide. It displays all the correct worksheet answers in red ink.
The most frivolous item in the kit (i.e. the least edifying) is a nice folded poster showing our favorite Star Wars characters dancing about while Obi-Wan Kenobi plays whack-a-mole with Darth Vader's head in the background.
Lastly we have a shot of the vinyl case that all this material came in. This wasn't standard to the kit; it was utilized by the media company that once owned this particular set. I believe this company loaned these items out to educational institutions, much like a library. I normally stick to collecting toys and related material, but I'll occasionally go for a weird item such as this one, especially when it's in this sort of condition. Plus, I need to brush up on my reading skills. |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ron Salvatore, Juliana Jenkins |
| From the collection of: | Ron Salvatore |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Pendulum Press |
| Year: | 1978 |
| Category: | Books / Educational |
