No scene has captured my imagination over the years like the Mos Eisley Cantina. I have been fascinated by it since childhood and created it in a variety of mediums over my career.
It started when I was a kid modifying vintage Kenner figures. Unfortunately due to an accident few of them remain. I also at this time made my first cantina out of scrap plywood in my dad’s garage. The story of my toy career was documented in a Lucasfilm approved documentary called “In a Galaxy” Unfortunately the documentary was bought by Verizon and launched on their failed media Go90 platform were it is now lost for ever. Here is an older photo (I am getting ready to get these figures out and take some good photos. I apologize for the quality but they were shot by me at a very young age with 1980’s camera, probably a Kodak disk.
In the 90’s as a kid I got really into customizing I had made virtually every Star Wars character you could imagine. It was era before Hasbro had made all the background characters. I wanted to have as many of them as I could. Here are some of the Mos Eisley characters. In this era I was mostly posting on message boards before I had my own site.
I, of course, made new dioramas of the cantina numerous times. Many have been displayed at various Star Wars Celebrations over the years such as at C2, C3, & C4.
All of the customs and dioramas were part of a long endeavor to recreate a lost film from my childhood that was a stop motion retelling of Star Wars with toys. I eventually remade the film with the help of my daughter who was 5 at the time. It was called “Toy Wars”. I was meant to be done in a purposely cheap looking style. Kind of a somewhat better version of the one I made when I was younger but featuring my customs and dioramas but some purposely low budget effects and gags. Here is part 5, featuring the cantina.
I have created this scene and its exotic alien patrons in virtually every imaginable scale and line.
In the coming days I will posting dozens of new 6″ scale customs of the Mos Eisley Cantina patrons.