It’s been a while since I posted my Burger King Star Wars glasses, so I figured it was time to get the second series for The Empire Strikes Back up here…
For the 1980 release of The Empire Strikes Back, Burger King came out with a new set of collectible glasses. For the original glasses, BK sold them for 59 cents, but this time out, inflation (or probably just corporate greed) must have taken hold, because the price for the glasses seems to have varied regionally. I’ve found advertisements that say the glasses were as cheap as 79 cents and some that say 88 cents. Even the TV commercial for the glasses just says they’re available “for a special price” so they could price markets differently.
As you can see, a lot of the merchandising doesn’t mention an exact price, either.
However, there are a few items that got more specific…
Whatever the price, fans thought it was worth it, because these at least some of these glasses were in everyone’s kitchen cupboard at some point.
The design of the glasses changed this time around. Previously, the glass had a pedestal base, but for the second series, they were more rounded at the bottom…
There are a few design details that remained for the second series, though, most notably the fonts used for the names on the back of some the glasses…
However, the rest of the artwork was revamped and given a little bit more detail compared to the almost watercolor-esque artwork of the original glasses.
Like my Star Wars glasses, these were given to me and my wife as a wedding gift almost 20 years ago. They are unused, coming from the personal collection of someone who once owned a Burger King location in northern Illinois.
Of course there were collectible glasses for Return of the Jedi too, but I’ll get to those another day.
Seeing Luke Skywalker’s name in that script made me think that was his signature—if Luke Skywalker actually wrote his name in the movie.
Darth Vader’s name is also in script, but it has a much heavier, grunge look. The long line above his name looks like some sort of blood streak. Every time Darth Vader signs a check, he streaks a line of blood across the top of his name.
Too bad Lando’s name doesn’t look like a signature. Instead, it’s just some 70s font. If Lando did have a signature, I imagine it to be in some sort of really exquisite script.
C3PO and R2D2’s names are in some computer font. That’s fitting. If C3PO would sign his name, I can’t imagine it being legible. His hands and arms wouldn’t be dexterous enough to write his name. Maybe they would sign their name in some sort of dot pattern. Hmmm, that would make sense for R2D2, because he speaks in beeps. C3PO speaks in words so that he wouldn’t sign with dots. He would have to sign with words. Oh, the dilemma for C3PO—how would he sign his name?
I always interpreted that as being Luke’s signature when I was a kid. But then I guess Galactic Basic doesn’t follow the same form we do for our alphabet, so it doesn’t really make sense.
Oh snap! Good point. They would have signed their names in Galactic Basic. Whoa. Thank you for that link. I never realized there was a Galactic-to-English letter-to-letter translation.
I thought Google Translate had Klingon in their list of languages. But it’s no longer there. Just now I was hoping Google Translate would include Galactic Basic. But it doesn’t. That would be so cool to point your phone at any Star Wars image with Galactic Basic, and get a live English translation.