Via Starwars.com:
This article is part of a special StarWars.com series in honor of Star Wars‘ 40th anniversary on May 25.
With Star Wars celebrating its 40th anniversary this week, fans all over the world have been reflecting on how this incredible space saga has impacted their lives. And for many fans, one of the biggest impacts came from the toys. The original toy line from Kenner, which hit in 1978, was massively influential, changing the way figures from any fiction would be produced. Today, Hasbro continues the tradition with an ever-expanding line from that galaxy far, far away.
Mark Boudreaux is the senior principal designer on Star Wars toys at Hasbro, and has been working on the property ever since the early Kenner days and the very first Star Wars toys. StarWars.com spoke with Boudreaux about Kenner’s decision to make Star Wars toys, why he thinks they resonated, and how Star Wars became his life’s work.
StarWars.com: Let’s start at the beginning. The original Star Wars toy line from Kenner was innovative. There hadn’t really been anything like it, and it practically reinvented the way many toy lines would be treated moving forward. How did you and Kenner decide to do it, and what was your role in the process?
Mark Boudreaux: It was a very interesting time. Certainly, very exciting for all of us. I was a co-op student at the time, working in the Preliminary Design department, and it was our team who had gone out to California to be able to read the script and come back to report to management that this is something that we, Kenner, really needed to take a look at. Kenner was becoming a company that I thought Hollywood would really start to court. They were doing a very successful line called Six Million Dollar Man. That was something that I thought was a really good synergy between the toy companies and studios; something that was a great way of advancing the knowledge of toys and the entertainment experience. I think that’s something that Kenner, and Hasbro over the years, has really excelled in the entertainment industry.
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