To celebrate Star Wars Day on May the 4th, we wanted to include some Star Wars food. Every Armageddon Expo, Sweet Rock Candy Artists has a booth full of fabulous candy including Star Wars inspired lollipops. At the recent Christchurch event, we decided to treat ourselves and get the biggest Star Wars lollipop!

It was a great way to incorporate some Star Wars food into our May the Fourth celebrations, and of course like all food, it couldn’t last, so we took some photos and a quick video before it was enjoyed. We just wanted to record this awesome Star Wars lollipop to remember

The huge lollipop features the Mandalorian’s helmet on the front, with bright text This Is The Way. It was quite heavy to pick up – and yes it was delicious!

One final photo of the lollipop unwrapped. It was quickly consumed afterwards, and it was delicious! A fun Star Wars themed treat for May the 4th – This is the Way.

May the Force be with you!

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It’s time for a new look!

We launched this blog in August 2016, and have used the same website theme since then. Our blog has evolved over the years, and recently we’ve been running into some bugs with our old theme, so the time was right to change it to something fresh and new.

For our own personal nostalgia and archive, here is what the original theme looked like –

And here is our new theme – lighter and brighter, ready for 2023. We can’t wait to share more adventures from our Star Wars life!

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Happy Star Wars Podcast Day!

We are excited to be participating in the third annual Star Wars Podcast Day, as hosts of the SWNZ Star Wars New Zealand Podcast. Our first episode premiered on September 7th 2018 – I can’t believe it’s been more than four years already!

From the Star Wars Podcast Day Facebook page –

Today is Star Wars Podcast Day 2023, the 3rd annual celebration of our Star Wars fan audio community. This year over 115 shows plan to take part, releasing episodes on February 7th or shortly thereafter. Why February 7? It is the day 24 years ago that Jedi Talk, the very first Star Wars podcast premiered, way back in 1999!

This is the first year that we have officially participated, with the SWNZ Podcast that we host together, as part of the Star Wars New Zealand website and fan community. We really enjoy chatting about Star Wars news and sharing our passion with other kiwi Star Wars fans.

SWNZ Podcast #80 –

In this instalment we celebrate Star Wars Podcast Day, and talk about the new Jedi: Survivor gameplay footage, Visions Vol.2 details, episode 6 of The Bad Batch, local store reports, and more.

Listen to SWNZ Podcast #80 on the SWNZ website or check it out on YouTube –

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Introducing – Our Week of Star Wars! A new regular series where we share our Star Wars fun from the past week. Star Wars is a part of our daily lives, and we love to share our Star Wars joy with other fans. Here we share Star Wars events, collectibles, gaming, and anything else that we enjoyed this week.

This week’s episode features new collectibles by Hasbro and Funko, Carrie Fisher’s birthday, SWTOR updates, and of course the latest episode of Andor!

Check out the full video and keep reading for a photo gallery below –

Check out this week’s events –

• Carrie Fisher’s birthday

• Hasbro Black Series Princess Leia lightsaber

• Glitter For Carrie – ROTJ Princess Leia inspired glitter hairstyle

• New Padme’ Amidala inspired outfits in SWTOR

• Micro Galaxy Squadron Razor Crest

• Obi-Wan Kenobi series Droid Factory 4-figure set from Shop Disney

• Star Wars mugs from Kmart NZ

• Micro Galaxy Squadron mystery boxes

• Spoiler chat – Andor episode 7 – SWTOR Tatooine

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Here at Villa Varykino, we believe in and follow the philosophy that Star Wars is Joy. Our content is all about celebrating the fun, positive, and joyful aspects of all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars hobbies.

We believe that everyone should be free to participate in or be excited by whatever Star Wars content or Star Wars-related pastime that brings them joy, without fear of being corrected, derided, or otherwise brought down by other opinions.

Every piece of Star Wars content was someone’s first exposure to Star Wars. Every Star Wars hobby or collectible was someone’s first encounter with a touchstone for their favourite franchise. Everyone is allowed to enjoy any aspect of Star Wars without having to justify why it is important or meaningful to them.

Star Wars is for everyone. Star Wars is forever. Star Wars is joy.

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It’s a great time to be a Star Wars fan.

From a short-notice interview via Zoom, the local current affair show The Project (on NZ’s channel THREE) pulled out a couple of quotes that I made about the positive aspects of having so many Star Wars live action and animated series coming through on Disney+ these days. The hosts portray the phenomenon of spinoffs and reboots across many franchises as an interesting consequence of competitiveness and capitalism… whatever the motivation, we love having interesting stories from around the galaxy to feed our passion for Star Wars.

We always love any opportunity to promote and share our love of Star Wars with a wider audience, so appreciated this chance to voice our perspective. Check out the video on The Project‘s Facebook page below.

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You can now follow us on TikTok!

We have always enjoyed sharing our love of Star Wars online – we first found each other online, through the local Star Wars community. Starting with websites and forums in the early 2000’s, then on Geocities and LiveJournal, Tumblr, and then on modern social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we love to share our passion for Star Wars with other fans. We joined TikTok a while ago, to explore and enjoy (and got a bit sucked in, as one does on TikTok…) but it took us a while longer to sit down and start creating videos.

For our first TikTok, we started with a quick introduction – our Star Wars story. Over time we’ll be sharing more of our Star Wars life and adventures together – collecting, costuming, gaming, travels, and everything else!

Follow us on TikTok – VillaVarykino

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We are saddened to hear of the passing of author Dave Wolverton. While we never had the opportunity to meet him, it is always sad when someone who contributed to the Star Wars galaxy passes away.

Dave Wolverton wrote five stories for the Star Wars expanded universe, but he is best remembered as the author of The Courtship Of Princess Leia, which was first published in 1994. It was in this book that the planet Dathomir was first introduced, along with the witches (now also known as Nightsisters), a popular location and culture that are still used in Star Wars storytelling to this day.

The Courtship Of Princess Leia is one of the few Star Wars novels that we own three copies of. To be fair, each one feels like quite a different collectible –

• hardback version with white dress artwork (US, 1994)
• paperback version with white dress artwork (UK, 1995)
• paperback version with Return Of The Jedi artwork (US, 1995)

Drew Struzan did the cover artwork for both versions as seen here – I always wished there was a full-length version of the original hardback artwork, so I could see Princess Leia’s wedding dress. I wonder what the inspiration for the dress design was?

In my early Star Wars collecting days, I went through a phase of trying to track down a copy of every Star Wars novel. A mission I have yet to complete, but The Courtship of Princess Leia was one of my earliest acquisitions, and one of the first Star Wars novels I read. As a big Princess Leia fan, I was eager to know how her story unfolded after Return Of The Jedi. It has been many years since I last read the book, but it is one I remember fondly from those early Star Wars stories.

Thank you for your contribution to the Star Wars galaxy, Dave Wolverton – May the Force be with you.

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Happy New Year from Matt & Kristy at Villa Varykino! We hope you have a great year that is filled with fantastic Star Wars content and hobbies.

As we mentioned over on the SWNZ, Star Wars New Zealand website, there is an unprecedented amount of content coming in 2022, spread over games, comics, books, and, of course, Disney+ streaming series. We’re fully looking forward to absorbing it all, and sharing it with other Star Wars fans on this blog, and on our YouTube channel. At a minimum, the following are the bits & pieces we are excited about and are counting down to – it’s looking like it’ll be nearly back-to-back weeks of galactic highlights.

• The Book of Boba Fett (7 episodes), streaming now
• Star Wars The Old Republic: Legacy of the Sith (update 7.0), Feb 15th
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (6 episodes), TBC (possibly starting second quarter)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, second quarter
• The Bad Batch season 2 (16 episodes), release date TBC
• Andor season 1 (12 episodes), streaming Jul-Sep
• The Mandalorian season 3 (8 episodes), streaming late 2022 (possibly starting Oct-Nov)

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Merry Christmas and all the best for the Festive Season!

We took the time to put up our Christmas tree this year, fully decked out in our collection of Star Wars ornaments. This year we added two new characters… a Grogu Hallmark ornament that showed up at our local Countdown supermarket, and a Din Djarin, also Hallmark, via EB Games.

It’s certainly been a year of ups and downs for many of us, but we look forward to a 2022 full of Star Wars entertainment and hobbies. Stay tuned as we celebrate Star Wars over the next 12 months; looking forward to so many new titles and stories from the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

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