Origin of the Creature Cantina

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This past June, I spent a little time with the former toy buyer for Sears. He was a wealth of interesting info but my favourite takeaway of that conversation was this anecdote.


I am paraphrasing:


Basically, the buyer asked Kenner to make "The bar with all the aliens" as a play set for the Sears catalog.




Kenner was reluctant feeling it wasn't good to market taverns to children.


His reply?




"It's not a bar, it's a cantina, call it that"




And thus, the Creature Cantina was born.


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[noelani72]

I will have one of these in my collections someday, box and all.

[sprytel]

Brilliant solution. Thank God for a thesaurus.

[rche]

It got even cleaner as the 'Real West Cafe'
I'd love to have one of those.

[MRP]

It was one of the two Star Wars playsets I had as a kid The Hoth playset was the other when Empire came out), but is long gone along with all the Vintage SW stuff I had as a kid.

Love the anecdote about it though.

-M

[Hedji]

Still need one of these. Just to populate it with non-Star Wars weirdos.

[Earth 2 Chris]

And obviously, that name stuck. Good thinking Sears!

Great story, thanks for sharing!

Chris

[Bruce Banner]

Awesome playset.