The Coolest Star Wars Playset YOU Never had!
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- čas přidán 2. 01. 2019
- The best Star Wars Playset most of us never had. Here is how you can built it! theswca.com/images-speci/woman...
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I not only had this. I HAVE this! The whole set including the original Woman’s Day instructions! It was built by my dad, and both of my grandfathers over years when I was just a kid. I thought I was the only person in the world to know about this. Thanks for the memories. I always loved playing with the spring-loaded one. The third one you reviewed. That platform is spring-loaded and you could send your guys flying! That blue part was a conveyor belt that connected to the “stairs to nowhere”. It fits a 4x8 sheet of plywood all assembled. Cheers!
*Hey dude that's awesome!!!! If you still have it, could you make a review of it?*
Or, at least upload some photos!
Awesome!
My parents had a coffee table that was made out of big thick natural tree roots with lots of curves and holes. On green shag carpet it was the greatest Dagobah anybody ever saw
Hands down the best “play set “ I ever had was a pile of broken up concrete. In the early, early ‘80’s, my dad busted up the tiny slab under our back door to make way for a proper porch. The concrete rubble was only there for about a month before he hauled it away but man did I have fun playing with my figures around that pile. Good times! I had the Hoth play set and that concrete beat it by a mile.
Why did our parents haul our playsets off?
Ours was a large pile of sand for lining our new septic tank. Alot if star wars toys wound up in a large hole in the ground as the guy driving the back home tossed our toys in while we were gone
Excellent! I know what you mean... the day my dad brought home left over pieces of packing styrofoam from his work was the best!!! Years of creating & customising dioramas!!!
There was a hole from a dug up tree out back and that was an awesome Sarlaac pit playset for all of us in the neighborhood. A blanket mountain on top of the bed was a cool playset too!
We dug a hole under a bush in our backyard and filled it with water from the hose. Crash an X-wing into it and there’s your Dagobah swamp
I lived in southern California when Star Wars came out. Tattoine was everywhere. I moved to Iowa right after Empire came out, so Hoth was easy to come by. By the time I moved to northern Florida, Kenner stopped making the toys.
Styrofoam inserts from various packaging with a little modification and some gray spray paint made me the coolest Death Star playset ever made. Since it was made out of what was essentially garbage, I got a new one about every other month and giving them away when I moved was no big loss.
My Mom had a copy of that Woman's Day. I saved it for years, just to look at the pictures of that amazing home made playset. Now that I am an adult with actual crafty skills I keep being tempted to go back and re-examine it, and maybe actually build it using modern tools and materials.
Dooooooooo eeeeeet! Oh, and record the process for posterity. Should make for an awesome video.
Man, that sounds like a HELLUVA good plan as ol' Picard would say "Make it so!" ( I know I'm mixin' franchises here, but what the hell?)
@@anthonyweb1879 Sadly it's a little more involved. That article didn't have the plans. It had a place where you could send away for the plans. Now those actual plans can be found on Pinterest. But it is not a project for the weak hearted. My Father in Law is a Master Carpenter and Cabinetry Maker. They scared the shit out of him. I'm a fairly advanced model maker. I've worked with Brass. Some of what those plans had you doing are insanely complicated.
There is also a second set of plans. This was the first year and while clearly intended for Star Wars figures, were Generic SciFi. They followed this up with a Playset that was very much Empire Strikes Back themed, and I think a later Return of the Jedi one.
@@andrewtaylor940 Any place you can get the other plan sets?
@@erichurd7605 I saw them all posted on Pintrest awhile back. I'd have to do some hunting
My mom made my brother and I the Hoth Rebel Base from Empire Strikes Back: it started in a 4 foot square board. Whipped up some paper mache’, blew up numerous balloons. Then crumpled newspapers to make Hills and berms. The big balloons made snow caves. The finishing touch was white and light blue paints that turned crunchy strips of newspaper and wheat paste into Planet Hoth. It had a 2-story cave, an escape hatch and a secret tunnel.
When I was younger, my Dad always brought home 'spacer boards' from work. I made playset bases outta them and it was so much fun!
I was a Navy brat, so I had playsets built out of Styrofoam packaging that could just be given away when we moved about every two years. All the neighborhood kids would help to collect materials for making them.
Kind of reminds me of what a Logans run playset would look like.
Lucas Burlock That’s exactly what I thought
Exactly!
Lucas Burlock Woah, I was about to type that about Logan’s Run and then I saw your message!
Han Solo would be a Sandman with that play set
Was that the largest miniature set at one time?
Or is that another?
That looks like it’d be a sweet Logan’s Run playset!
A few adjustments and you have Cloud City. Another Kenner fail. We had a ton of Hoth playsets but next to no Cloud City playsets and the flimsy Sears cardboard one barely counts.
Holy mackerel, Junkman!!! 😯 I'm actually more excited looking at that playset then I am actual licensed playsets...💯✔ I always liked clear see through play things and action figures, so something like that would have been right up my alley...🧒 Heck, one time when I was a little kid this magazine came through the mail and inside was a little paper cut out of Sesame Street with Bert and Ernie's building and it had little Bert and Ernie paper figures and I enjoyed the hell outta it...🤪 I'll never forget that day me and my mom put it together and sit there and played with it on the couch while she watched her soap operas and the news...👌🏼
Clear plastic bubbles means the future. It's not just for oversized hair dryers anymore.
Thank you so much! You just solved a mystery for me, I've been trying to track this down for decades. I have been asking every SW collector since 1991, " Do you remember that magazine that had a build your own Star Wars playset, nothing forever until today! Just got one off Ebay!
My friend's dad tried to make this using only the pictures and not the instructions, and it turned out way different, but still really cool. It was about 3' by 3' and about 4' high. It had a big landing platform at the top for the Falcon (not sure why it was at the top instead of the lower level, but it was still cool). It had a trap door that led to a non-compacting trash compactor filled with little rolled up bits of paper. It had a plexiglass wall on one side for some reason. It had lots of little rooms, including one with a big table that was from some doll house store. It was the conference room. This was made in 1980 or 1981, I think. But it might have been 82 when they re-published the photos of it. Not sure. But I do know we made a custom Grand Moff Tarkin out of an Imperial Commander figure for it. It lasted a long time but eventually the dad took it apart when my friend went into high school. Not sure what happened to the parts. But it was so cool. He spray painted little ovals on it, like the pattern on the original Death Star walls. There were little doors and everything. Very cool.
Thanks for featuring. With the help of my mom, I gave it my best building the Dagobah Woman's Day playset. The water and ground came out great but it was a complete headache to get even that far. I threw in the towel after taking one look at the exploding volcano thinking, yea right, maybe 100 hours later I'll get to that with the help of a rocket scientist. I probably should have raked leaves in the neighborhood to save up for the Kenner Dagobah playset instead.
You may already know this, but Woman's Day did another issue when TESB came out that had instructions for a Hoth and a really bizarre looking Dagobah playset. They were both pretty impressive for the time. I've got some pics of them still, somewhere.
I think my mother had the 1982 book from back in the day. You built it using a couple of household items and then a bunch of specialty stuff like laminates for the professional finish.
Each individual piece had something movable on it- elevator landing platforms, people elevators, moving walkways, and best of all was a trick staircase that turned into a ramp. That staircase had intrigued me for 40+ yrs.
I know this video is a couple of years old but I just saw this and had to comment on it. My Dad made most of this playset for me. It was amazing. My favorite part was the soda bottle monorail thing.
CZcams keeps recommending older JunkMan videos. Oddly, I think they are better than the new ones. I like this intro. You just seem more energized; not phoned in like the new ones.
This arguably makes a better Cloud City playset than the actual Cloud City playset
I would have loved to make this play set when I was younger . Definitely the best play set I’ve seen . I had 2 Vinyl caped jawas and 4 cloth caped but in the pictures there are 10 Vinyl caped jawas . They would be worth a fortune now especially if they were still on the cards .
My mom took molding putty, cardboard, and handmade molds to make a huge Castle Grayskull. Home made stuff is what I had like a Metroplex made out of hinges and styrofoam. On a side note, I once saw a multitiered diorama for Transformers at Big Lots in the late 80s. Looked like Cybertron.
That's a cool do-it-yourself play set! It had more creativity than vintage Kenner play sets had.
I look at my Death Star play set a lot too. It's on the floor in front of me right now. I got my first Death Star for Christmas in 1978, but it disappeared mysteriously in the mid 1980's. In 2016, I bought one on Ebay from the original owner, and he took very good care of it. I've had to do that with a few of my Star Wars toys. I'm pretty sure I mentioned my vinyl caped Jawa story. Regrets.
That's a very nice homemade Star Wars play set. It reminds me of the Buck Rogers TV show.
Another cool find JM...the USS Flagg of the 70s. Complete sidebar but I wish somebody would color print and reproduce the palatoy Death Star playset. I’d love to have one for display. Currently all my dudes are just standing on a boring shelf.
I'd like all plastic but YES!
I had the Flagg...I loved owning it when I was a kid, but this playset looks infinitely more functional than the Flagg. Generally since it was an aircraft carrier it was out at sea, so Cobra had a hard time attacking it. I had WAY more fun with the Mobile Command Center than I ever did the Flagg...which I sold for $20 at a garage sale when I was 16...I'm an idiot...wah-wah...
@@Tom_Van_Zandt I saw one in box at a garage sale for $50 when I was literally going to garage sales to buy old toys....IN BOX!!! and I passed on it! (box was not mint but still).
There not called dudes they are called guys.
My mom had this magazine and my brother and I lost our minds over this! We begged my dad to build us one, but he never did LOL. I distinctly remember being confused about the Jawas though...this was the first time I ever saw or heard about the vinyl cape version.
I have the 1982 Woman's Day Book of Best Loved Toys and Dolls. Both the Mego city and the Space Port look ultra cool but honestly it was quicker and easier 14 years ago to get a used USS Flagg on Craigslist for $100 and have my kids use that as their main base.
I do remember building my own Cloud City in my bedroom with styrofoam left over from my Dad's TV and some other purchases. No photos exist but it took up a whole corner of the room, Dagobah was easy as long as there was a tree stump uprooted in the neighborhood.
That is a cool one. I made my Death Star from a cardboard box, added levels and an elevator from paper towel rolls with toilet paper rolls and cardboard for the car inside.
Looks like a cool space port for any sci-fi setting.
Also, I bought the Sears Cantina pack. It had this cardboard insert that held the figures from bouncing around. I cut it in two and made a couple of boxy speeders out of it. My older half-brother visited and cut the fronts so they came to a point. I kept those things for years.
WOW! That looked awesome! Some mom definitely loved her kids!
The second playset component looks like something you might see in 1976's movie adaptation of Logan's Run.
The "brain center" playset could probably also serve as the...I dunno...plumbing hub? 😀 Oh, wow! Micronauts! I used to have Biotron, the giant red robot!
The "outer space food court" is also very reminiscent of Logan's Run...the Nu-Yu facility in particular.
BTW, Junkman, did you know that the interior scenes of the Domed City in Logan's Run were actually redresses of a giant mall in Texas?
I thought I was being creative by using my mom's discarded L'eggs panty-hose platic eggs as escape pods....until Mork And Mindy came out....dammit, I coulda made a mint ...if I wasn't an 8 year old who only thought of playing Star Wars, and not looking ahead to market futures. (I think I mentioned this in another of your videos....so, apologies for the recycled memory/joke) 😀
Brother Junkman, can you imagine if Kenner had made several "mini-playsets" of the Death Star's interior to make a Death Star playset that resembled (in function) what you just showed us?! A multi-playset of a Rebel base, and a Death Star! Holy yeesh, could you imagine the play sessions that kids would have had back then?!
May the Force Be With You and Yours, Junkman! Now I'm gonna go back and work on my CG Star Wars stuff. :)
A family friends wife made the hoth playset for me as a Christmas present
Really loved this video, Junkman!
I never knew anything about these play sets - would have loved to have them, too.
Keep up the great work!
I remember that article. Mom was an artist and subscribed to womans day .. she showed it to me.
My Dad made me a "Bespin City" and "Hoth" playset for me. they were his own ideas based on 1930's Buck Rodgers comics he grew up on in the 1930's-1940's. I still have both sets, but only 1 I can take a picture of at this time. I thought of making a video about it on my channel in the future.
the best star wars playset was the Palitoy Star Wars (cardboard) Death Star Playset, available only in Europe and Australia (and probably a few other places outside the US)
I had the Action Force version a couple of years later - superb!
@@vestyreed This was a great playset but Action Force was one of the best lines ever.
This video is hilarious.
Han with a dog! lol
Princess Leia passed out on the floor in the "food court". LMAO.
Great stuff Junkman.
"Food coma" Leia.
I've made my own,Yoda house,Rebel Hoth base,Imperial attack base,Land of the Jawas ,Cantina,Droid factory and Ewok village. Most were made with paper machete and all had stuff I just had around the house.
Another thing that works really really well (besides shoe boxes of course,) are molded packing pieces like from electronics boxes. These usually come in styrofoam and/or cardboard (particle paper?) pieces. The styrofoam can be quickly painted with a spray can to look like concrete, and those brown particle paper/cardboard pieces make a perfect looking Tattooine setting. Just cut out some doors and windows. I had a friend take some molded rectangular styrofoam packing blocks, cut out a door and some windows, paint the whole thing battleship grey, then inserted magic marker coloured toothpicks into the windows like bars and made jail cells/brigs for his G.I. Joe figures. Also, now and then those brown paper pieces came as holding trays for something else and those make awesome Star Wars hallways when painted white or grey, black, & burgundy.
guarantied, this Logan's Run - Buck Rogers -playset looks way more fun than any cardboard Kenner star wars playset of the 70's , with the exception of the Jawas droid factory , this mega city was a dream come true to any 70's boy, in fact I play with Star Wars , Micronauts , Battlerstar Galactica and Buck Rogers figures in the same playset
Awesome vid. Our generation ,Gen X had some of the coolest toys there ever would be. My opinion is that the end of the 80s NES/Sega era ended the golden era for toys. I did enjoy erector sets though and shopped often at thrift stores so I amassed a good amount of 60s-70s toys as well. Star Wars popularity was as much about the toys as it was the "greatness" of it's filming. I am not sure people get that now and even with all the nostalgia induced Star Wars everything we have these days it just isn't what it was then. That era is gone....but instead of an awesome play set you can play KOTOR or some other great Star Wars game.
Love the new look JM! this set looks amazing! Reminded me that I used to have a couple of micronauts. I must have bought those when the toy store has run out of Star Wars figures!
I'm looking forward to the homemade Dagobah Playset!
I never saw those but I did have the issue with the Hoth and Dagobah DIY playsets. I agree they seemed more substantial than the official Kenner playsets although back then the Imperial Attack Base was my personal favorite. If I was to do a DIY Star Wars toy now I have thought about building a Star Destroyer roughly the size of a full size pickup
Super cool, definitely has a Logan's Run vibe going on!
I wonder what Kenner thought of it? As soon as Mother's day (sic) mag. started charging 1$ for the instructions, they put themselves in a precarious, legal position.
But F all that SH. I want that playset. Time to get to work!
Cool find Junkman.
Cheers from Canada
I thought I was the only one caught in a Timewarp. I specifically remember The Hoth Playset and The Dagobah playsets you could build from Womans Day Magazine in the 80s. I think before ROTJ was released! I cut the two pictures out and taped them to my wall from my Grandmas brand new magazine she hadn't read yet! LOL
Nice
I too remember seeing the Hoth and Dagobah sets, my Mom had a copy of that magazine.
Cloud city really
Hell yeah!
Yes
It’s beautiful, I want to build it
LMAO!! "I don't know if she passed out from all the cigarette smoke, or just taking a nap in her cape."
I still have the pages from 'Woman's Day' magazine (which I have kept in my Kenner Star Wars figure cases) showing those amazing DIY Star Wars playsets and I particularly drooled over seeing several vinyl-caped Jawas in the photos (I still have one) which nowadays would be worth hundreds of dollars each. :)
My mom read Woman's Day, and I ordered those directions. Never built it, though. Wish I still had the booklet they sent. I was ten, and completely obsessed with Star Wars. I dug Micronauts, too.
I had this play set. My friend's father made it for me and my friend. Some of it was pretty innovative, made with regular house hold items.
The "Stairs to Nowhere" set looks like something that M.C. Escher started and didn't finish.
Nice treasure! Another proof that imagination has no limits!
Hello there, Junkman. I remember this from way back in the day....BUT. Did you know there was a follow up? A few issues later, they put out an issue that gave you instruction to build a Hoth and a Dagobah playset. Like this one, these were hand made and looked awesome. If you find it, you may want to do a video on it. Trust me, the're awesome. It can be found under The Woman's Day Magazine Empire Strikes Back Playsets.......
My mother had bought this set of plans for me. I was 9 years old at the time. But when it came in the mail she was very disappointed ! She really thought it was instructions AND - a kit to build. I never got to doing that and kept it with all my other Star Wars paperwork including the monthly poster magazines. Flash forward to 2015 my mother past away and cleaned out the attic and found those same instructions but they were ripped and damaged from termites and of all thing AGE. SADLY-they crumbled when I picked them out of my OLD Star Wars stuff. A sad day indeed.
This thing complete would have been the Star Wars' 'unofficial' USS Flag!!!! Thanks Junkman - never seen this before!
I actually remember this and tried to make it myself with hand tools. Of course, mine did not come out the same as I did not send my whole week allowance to get the instructions.
Your description of it is spot on looking back at it.
custom dioramas do it Well too. we cannot expect much from Hasbro so...
DUDE!!!! This is amazing. Going to look for your videos on the hoth playlet now.
Haven’t done it yet
@@ThatJunkman I found the plans online. ;) Plus I ordered the 1982 Womans Day best toys book for $4 on ebay!!!!!
You’ve GOTTA do the Hoth playset. Just as you did this one!
Haha I love Han Solo's little dog. 5:42
Dad built me a X-Wing launch pad playset out of plywood, 2 levels, all painted cool. I really wish I still had that.
I have the Woman's day toy book that reprints that issue, it's also got a decent Mego city project as well. I love that the Star Wars play set photos incorporated Micronauts, which I also mixed in with my Star Wars back in the day.
the death star was always the centerpiece of the battle, but got a lot of use out of the hoth playsets, too. built many playsets, too.
Can't beat this stuff
Another excellent vid 😊
I had this! I begged my folks to order it from my grandmother's magazine and... and we never built any of them. 😞
I might still have the schematics somewhere. So much nostalgia though.
06:50 She's waiting for Han to make some moves. 😂
Holy shit!
My grandparents used to have that fucking book! My grandpa built me the city junk man mentions in the video as well! I have been looking through their books for years to try to find these pictures!
I recently found a 25 year old picture of me standing next to my city... I'll have to dig it out and post it. It makes the Ghostbusters fire house look like a joke.
Thanks for the video. I thought I would never see this playset again. I feel like the book might have different pictures than the magazine too.
You Lucky kid!
...classic Junkman. Had no idea you were doing vids 2yrs ago
The complete play set it so awesome!
Reminds me of Buck Rogers for some reason :-)
LOL they pushed this as a "generic" 3 1/2" Space figure playset. Some of the photos of the set were using Buck Rogers figs and the Starfighter.
I wish I had collected the Buck Rogers figures and ships too. This playset - if I had it - would have made an awesome Rebel base and could do a crossover with Buck’s universe. Buck’s starfighter and Luke’s X-Wing could have really taken the fight to the Empire!
The complete setup looks like something from Logan's run. Princess Leia was laying on the floor because she was passed out drunk. She was played by Carrie Fisher after all.
I love the new intro!
DARTH BROLO Thanks
Wow! Awesome video junk man! I'm gonna look into getting the instructions for this set. Maybe I can get some of my friends to help me build it.😁
just the link to them I put up, under the video.And let me see it when done!
I will for sure!
Styrofoam parts, boxes and outside made the best playsets. My father made me a skiff from wood it was GREAT
I get total “Logan’s run” vibes from this
"Mom, wll you help me build this"?
"no"
"will you PLEASE help me build this"?
"NO"
"Why not..?"
"If i buy you an actual Death Star playset, will you leave me alone"?
"Deal"
Hey I had a barbie house that I painted black and glued straws on and pretended it was a Imperial base. This stuff was cool back in the day!!!
Lol sounds cool
That's pretty neat actually. Considering we never did get a Cloud City playset (except from the Micro Collection, which is why that line ROCKED!!😎,) these home-made sets actually could pass for the halls and dining room scenes.
Are they cheap? I guess...but honestly, are they really ANY cheesier than any set from a Buck Rogers episode??😜
I had the Sears exclusive Bespin playset (all cardboard and 4 figures)
I used to make escape shuttles out of those old styrofoam chicken mcnugget clamshell boxes! Lol
That's epic. Do magazines even do cool stuff like this anymore?
i dont think so....
My parents would never get me out of my room if I had these playsets.
Love that opening Junkman. Yoda holding a He-Man, nice. Lol
Thanks
Now that was really cool....I use to use wooden blocks to build my own playsets. I remember using my board game of Battle of the Sarlacc Pit with two shoe boxes, the board game box, and a blanket on top and to sand pit on top of the blanket. I used two pieces of wood for the Skiffs and the Sail Barge from the board game....it was awesome....except when one or two of the heroes died.
we had a old tall cardboard box that a fridge come in and it was the best playset ever
Looks awesome for it's time. I wonder if the guy who does the Rot-Gut Station playset ever had this as a kid.
Great stuff
Cool...Like your research!!
I still have the send away instructions to build it. You have to be a genius wood worker to understand the directions. I liked how they had Micronauts integrated with Star Wars and all those caped Jawas!
Being in england i had the action force hq playset which was just like the cardboard deathstar goodtimes
I had that too 😁
Wish to see someone make a PDF of the instructions on how to make this playset, alongside the custom Hoth and Dagoboh playsets.
I vaguely remember my mother having magazine's like that with other lower budget projects. One was a dagobaugh swamp made with cardboard and foam. Another was for mego super heros, a cardboard skyscraper with windows cut in it and velcro tabs so spider man could could climb the side. Anyone recall stuff like this and what magazine it appeared in?
I had the blue prints and instructions for this back then, but it was much too complex for a 9 year old and his mom to ever hope to build. It was sure fun to dream about, though.
I actually remember seeing this in my a newsstand issue of Woman's Day. I thought it looked awesome but way beyond my ability to build. I tried to tell my brother about it, and he thought I was making it up..
05:21 if you modify the stairway to nowhere it looks a little like cloud city from empire.. And Kenner didn't make diddly squat for cloud city. Just add some double doors and Vaders dinner table and you're in for a fun evening of torture the rebels. 😂
I played at school under the side walk I ug under it at the play ground to play witch looked like a cave since my mom was a teacher I had to stay after school till she could leave so I played with my Star Wars and gi joes out side as well as my he man figures for few hours in elementary school
I think the 1999 cantina is better than the original
Now this is pretty cool
It's kinda tight. Love ya junk.
I remember this! My Mom showed it to me in the magazine.
As much as I miss my mother...she couldn't even make pancakes...lol
At-At is almost a play set, and awesome around!
My mom had this Women's Day. I stared at it for hours and covetousness was rampant within me. Was thinking about this yesterday wondering how i would ever find it. Turned out to be super easy, barely an inconvenience. Don't remember the Hoth or other one. Junkman does it again.
So the real question is, was Treat Williams in Empire Strikes Back or not?
My parents thought the millinium falcon cost too much, so I had to make one out of cardboard for my action figures.