| Big-Ass Ugly Sign | |
| I've taken to calling this item the Big-Ass Ugly Sign. I don't know how else to refer to it. Presumably it's a store display of some kind. But for what type of store? And what kind of product or service might the folks pictured on the sign have offered to their clientele? Guesses have ranged from a car dealership to an insurance firm. But since the Big-Ass Ugly Sign refuses to provide us with a company name or logo, its origin remains shrouded in mystery. About the only thing we can say for sure is that it's magnificent.
As you can probably tell it's made of wood. That photo has been attached via some kind of lamination process. It's quite large; you can get a sense of its dimensions by referring to the dime in the lower right corner.
Here's a closer look at the group. One of the weirder things about the sign is the vehicle: it looks a lot like an A-Wing Fighter, a contraption specific to Return of the Jedi. Yet the look of the sign screams "seventies." By the way, let's take a second to admire all the effort that went into staging this photo. The vehicle, the costumes, the background, the floor . . . nicely done, my mysterious and unphotogenic friends. Okay, now let's move on to making fun of these people.
The costumes are a weird mix of the awful and the terrific. That's a pretty convincing Chewbacca, no? On the other hand, no costume could help that Princess Leia; she looks uncomfortably similar to Jonathan Winters. Hey, "Mork" was sort of Star Wars-ish, right?
C-3PO is obviously wearing a medieval knight costume that's been spray-painted gold. As for the jawas . . . if you're at all like me, you've often wondered what might be lurking beneath the jawas' adorable little hoods. And yet not once have you found yourself thinking, "Hey, maybe they have mustaches."
The last image just defies explanation. Who is that guy trapped inside R2-D2? And why is he so darn happy about it? And why in the world does he have silver paint smeared on his nose and forehead? What have you done with Kenny Baker you maniacal, silver-smeared freak!? As for the guy to the right of R2, I'm just assuming he's the dianoga. UPDATE
Well, over two years after posting this entry, the mystery has been solved: The Big-Ass Ugly Sign is actually a calendar that was trimmed and laminated on wood. The calendar was created to promote a company that did electronic plating. I'm guessing that the laminated version was hung in the office of that company . . . because it would have been somewhat odd for a random person (i.e. someone not affiliated with the company) to go through the trouble of doing that. But who knows -- maybe someone really did like it that much. |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ron Salvatore |
| From the collection of: | Ron Salvatore |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Unlicensed |
| Year: | 1977 |
| Category: | Store Displays / Miscellaneous |
