Over the years there have been a lot of Star Wars cards and stickers released exclusively in New Zealand, particularly in conjunction with food items and related promotions. I recently re-organised my collection of vintage, Original Trilogy-era, NZ-exclusive cards and stickers into new protective sleeves and a new folder, and have but together a quick video tour.

Sets covered include R2-D2 Space Ice stickers from the Tip Top Ice-Cream company (as well as the follow-up set of The Empire Strikes Back paper masks from the same company), Return of the Jedi ewok stickers from the Tip Top Ice-Cream company, Allen’s and Regina Star Wars and Return of the Jedi bubble-gum cards (the New Zealand equivalent of Topps trading cards), Twinkies Empire Strikes Back stickers, Kellogg’s Cornflakes Return of the Jedi stickers, Confection Concepts Postacards, and Quality Bakers bread cards.

You can also read more about each of these sets on the SWNZ, Star Wars New Zealand website.

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A new skateboard deck (and new wheels) means it’s time for a DIY Star Wars project – a vinyl Star Wars sticker montage for the underside of the skateboard (our daughter has inherited my previous board). Not a complex project, of course, but it’s hard to resist applying Star Wars deco to something like this.

The starting point is a 9.25″ deck with bold block colour, and minimal graphics. There are a good few options for bulk lots of vinyl, die-cut Star Wars stickers on eBay (affiliate link), all well priced given the expectation that they will inevitably suffer on the underside of a skateboard, and need re-doing or tidying up down the line. Overall, the amount of stickers needed to fill out the bottom of an adult-sized skateboard is less than $5, but I bought enough that I was able to separate the stickers out into duplicates and less favourite designs for the first, base layer of stickers, saving the more unique and interesting designs for the top, most visible layer.

The trick is really just to take your time, and work on maintaining a bit of symmetry – make sure the border of colour left around the stickers is fairly uniform. Plan the layout of the stickers in a stepwise manner (take photos with your phone for reference if needed), and then progressively apply them and make sure the edges all all smoothed down.

I’m really happy with the final look – it focuses on classic Star Wars logos, Original Trilogy graphics, and vintage comic art. It’s actually quite tempting to do another DIY Star Wars skateboard with similar colours and layout in order to keep it mint for display only.

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We went along to a local Lego Star Wars 20th Anniversary event yesterday, which was a really neat display. We were there to see the completion of the huge Lego Star Wars mosaic mural, but when we arrived we realised they were also giving out free Lego to fans as well!

The event had several build tables set up, with three different options – build a tile for the mosaic mural (but not keep), build a mini Star Wars vehicle (to keep), and a third table with lots of random Lego to build unique creations to show off (but not keep).

We joined the queue for the Star Wars mini-vehicle build tables. It was well set up so fans could follow instruction cards to build a mini Lego Star Wars Star Destroyer vehicle. A great way to pass the time until the mural completion ceremony, it was quite fun putting together these cute sets! The mini-vehicles even included little display stands.

They also had a supply of free Lego Star Wars mini-fig key chains for those who built mini-vehicle sets or mural tiles – we choose Rey and Poe Dameron.

Lastly, we also picked up these Lego Star Wars sticker sets, which are quite large – as indicated in the back page image, you can put these on the wall. Perfect for decorating a Lego build space at home.

All in all, it was an awesome event celebrating Lego and Star Wars, I’m so glad we were able to attend.

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My collecting passion for Topps trading cards and stickers goes right back to 1977. As well as standard issue cards, I enjoy collecting uncut sheets of cards or stickers. These photos are of an uncut sheet of stickers from the 1983 Topps Series II Return of the Jedi card set. There are 22 stickers, numbered 34 to 55, laid on the sheet in a random order, so that the jigsaw puzzles printed on the reverse side of the cards aren’t just assembled from sequential stickers.

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