Retro-Toy Thursday Flashback # 10: Movie Tie-In Drinking Glasses from Fast Food Restaurants

Fast-food collectibles from the likes of McDonalds and Burger King are big items for treasure seekers on E-Bay. Remember Super Size Me, that great documentary from last year about eating nothing but fast-food for 30 days, and how Morgan Spurlock visited a McDonald's collectible museum of sorts? Well, there are scads of people out there who collect just such items. Personally, I'm still jones-ing for The Star Trek: The Motion Picture McDonalds Happy Meals from 1979, but that's another story.

The subject or our tenth retro toy (or maybe retro-collectible...) Thursday is the movie tie-in drinking glass. Now, growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, you would find these at fast food restaurants everywhere, and as a Gen X kid, you simply had to collect them. First and foremost were the "character glasses" from all three original Star Wars films, made available by Burger King and Coca-Cola. There were four glasses available from each movie. From Star Wars (1977), there was a Darth Vader glass (also featuring Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin; pictured left), a Luke Skywalker glass, a Han and Chewie drinking glass, and finally one featuring the famous droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. For The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) got a glass devoted to him, and also featured views of the Cloud City on Bespin. Luke was seen on Dagobah with Yoda for another beautiful glass, and the bad guys (Vader and Boba Fett) and the droids (on Hoth...) again each had their own. Finally, for Return of the Jedi in 1983, Jabba, Ewoks, Luke and Han were all featured again on individual glasses.

Other movie franchises also had drinking glasses sold by fast food restaurants. The Star Trek Animated Series from the early 1970s actually had four such glasses produced by Dr. Pepper - featuring the starship Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, respectively. By the time of the first motion picture in 1979, Coca Cola produced a set based on the feature film, which included (again) the Enterprise, one with Decker and Ilia (Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta, respectively), and finally one featuring the classic triumvirate of Kirk-Spock-McCoy. For Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in 1984, Taco Bell sold glasses which featured the Klingon "Lord Kruge" played by Christopher Lloyd, a view of the Enterprise "destroyed," the Vulcan ritual of "Fal-Tor-Pan" and finally one called "Spock Lives."

Virtually every movie, cartoon and TV franchise worth its salt at one time or another had drinking glasses sold through fast food restaurants, even the ubiquitous hero James Bond. One of my favorite collectibles is A View to a Kill glassthat features a rendition of Roger Moore and Grace Jones (parachuting off the Eiffel Tower) from 1985. This was Moore's last appearance as Bond, so I'm especially fond of the glass (if not the actual movie...)

So, any glass collectors out there? Do you rememberowning these? What I remember most about movie tie-in fast food glasses is drinking my Mom's home-made iced tea out of 'em after long summer days playing outside. Refreshing. And fun. Do fast food places still make and sell tall drinking glasses with illustrations of the characters anymore? Does anyone remember other franchise glasses? I know that Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers each had "character" glasses sold in the late 1970s too, but I don't own any, and have never seen 'em.