In the spirit of back to school week, we thought we'd take a nostalgic look back at one of the coolest series of school supplies ever to be graced by the Star Wars logo -- yep, I'm talking about the pencil sharpeners, rulers, math sets and more produced in the late '70s by the Helix company in the UK.
A couple months ago we posted a blog entry about a British collector who had filled his loft with several items originating from his homeland, including the colorful Helix merchandise which caught our eye. This prompted me to check our old Licensing photo albums (remember those Halloween costumes and Droids/Ewoks merch?) and sure enough, the entire line of British school supplies was documented there in period snapshots stuck to old photo album pages. We've reproduced those images below along with the old product descriptions, and while the image quality is a bit dodgy (remember these were shot on-the-fly for reference use only), we can at least get a sense of the contents and packaging of the individual items.
Speaking of the packaging, the bright logo colors and signature blue boxes are what distinguish Helix merchandise from the sea of traditional black and silver Star Wars packaging of the vintage era, and is probably the single factor that has made the line so popular among collectors. These items were designed to be used in classrooms, which explains why many of the multi-piece sets turn up incomplete or well-used, to say the least. Still, stashes of unused, mint condition sets do turn up from time to time, and will often provoke some pretty intense bidding wars for what was originally pretty modestly-priced stuff.
While Helix sadly didn't pick up the license to produce school supplies for any of the Star Wars sequels, the company is still producing pencil cases, sharpeners, math sets and more for young students abroad.
