Star Wars Advertising – The Master and The Maestro

Anyone that follows me on IG will have seen this image already – I had never seen this image before so it was quite exciting seeing it posted on Twitter.

Checking out the image on Google Reverse Image search confirms what I thought – that this is an OLD advertisement from 1988. It’s apparently a Japanese Panasonic ad (I guess that’s why there is a floating Panasonic camera next to George Lucas 🤣)

I am wondering if my newly connected friend over at TVTA has seen this or knows anything about it? There isn’t a lot to go on online either.

Image via Twitter

Either way, I just love it – there is something so weird about it that you can’t help but stare. And the floating effect is pretty damn cool for 1988 as well!

What do you think? Have you seen any Star Wars advertising that looks interesting like this? Anything you haven’t seen before? I am sure there are dozens of ads out there that I have never seen for Star Wars merchandise. I mean nobody really uses their Television for, well, TV do they?

Anywho, let me know what you think in the comments as always. Please stay safe out there and I’ll catch you in tomorrow’s post!

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15 thoughts on “Star Wars Advertising – The Master and The Maestro”

    1. I’ve never seen this but I guess that’s because it was made for Japan although some ads can sometimes make it over to other countries just with small things altered for the audience. But this is a pretty cool concept 🙂

      Like

  2. Hi Julie, that’s a sweet ad.
    Here is another one from the same ‘Something New’ series from Panasonic, showing Lucas, Chewie and Wicket flying on what can only be described as a broomstick saber : https://thevintagetoyadvertiser.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/star-wars-panasonic-ad-1.jpg

    The ads were a Star Wars / Panasonic tie-in to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Star Wars in Japan, and were only published in Japan, which is why Western audiences aren’t so familiar with them.

    In addition there was a brilliant TV ad campaign (again, shown only in Japan) featuring Lucas and a host of SW characters endorsing Panasonic… absolutely brilliant to see!

    Here is a link to six of them. Not sure if they made more?

    or

    (let me know if links don’t work)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. aHHH thank you so much TVTA I was hoping you’d comment on this because as soon as I posted it I was like “I wonder if TVTA has seen this one?” 🙂 That’s amazing!! I love seeing things I have never seen before 🙂 Looks like I’ll be doing a follow-up post to this one, thank you so much for those links, taking a look right now 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      1. No worries, glad to help out 🙂 As soon as I saw your pic I was like, that rings a bell! I knew I had the Chewie, Ewok and Lucas on the saber broom one, and a bit of digging around then turned up the TV ad videos – they were great! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Ahhh I can see them now lol that is so weird! When I copied the URL from your comment it wouldn’t work and sent me to some random YouTube clip lol but when I checked it in my comments section, the correct videos were showing there and they are amazingggg. I think I will need to make a follow-up post on Star Wars advertising 🙂 Thanks again, TVTA 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Hi Julie, George Lucas worked closely with Panasonic in developing camera technology to allow him to produce the Star Wars trilogy as he wanted. He was partly responsible for the transition from celluloid to digital footage. If you have the Episode 1and 2 DVDs you might want to watch the behind the scenes bonus discs that have a few snippets of info talking about the change to digital. Lucas then had big collaboration with SONY to further develop smaller, but more flexible/powerful digital cameras.
    There are always 2….a Master and an Apprentice….no more, no less….but my question is….which one’s which?
    Great find, thanks for sharing.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. OOOoooh yeah I think I remember something about George Lucas and the transition from celluloid to digital but it was ages ago so not very clear on that. Thanks for the update 🙂 I remember reading somewhere probably on Reddit about the rule of two for Jedi but I am pretty sure a Jedi Master had no limit to how many padawan learners he could take on? Not 100 percent sure of that but I am sure I read that somewhere. Also, there is a book called Master and Apprentice except I thought only the Sith used the word Apprentice and the Jedi used Padawan or student 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi Julie, Jedi could train as many Padawans as they wanted (or were fit enough to do so) but they could only train them one at a time, hence the reason Qui-Gon wasn’t allowed to train Anakin as Obi-Wan was Jinn’s Padawan at the time. But you are correct on the other point, the Sith did tend to use the term Apprentice whereas Jedi trainees were known as Padawan learners. The “Rule of Two” as it is known was established by Darth Bane and it states that a Sith Lord may only have one Apprentice and that the Apprentice must kill his Master to progress to be the next Master and take an apprentice of their own. This usually happened when the current master had passed on all they knew to their student, or if the student felt brave and took their Master’s life earlier to progress their own ambition. The reason for this logic was that during the great Sith era there were numerous factions of Sith and each had it’s “Master”. These Masters would fight/kill each other to become “Top Dog” but this resulted in the weakening of the Sith as no one Master could fully train his/her successor and pass on the power. This is better explained in the Bane Trilogy of books by Drew Karpyshin….a very good read.

        Liked by 1 person

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