An interesting brush with Lucas Film

In 2005 Buddy Finethy and I started the Great Atlanta Toy Show to fill the void of a general Toy show in this market. Our second show was to be a Sci Fi themed extravaganza that coincided with the latest Star Wars saga "Revenge of the Sith". The show included close to 100 tables of Star Wars, Star Trek and Sci Fi toys, costumed members of the 501st clad in Stormtroopers outfits as well as a very convincing Darth Vader aka "Vader Painter" with Lego as a sponsor and members of a local improv group Dad's Garage http://www.dadsgarage.com/

doing a Star Wars themed skit - the whole show was a lot of fun.

An added bonus was that Methane studios http://www.methanestudios.com/posters01.html

(responsible for plenty of great concert posters) did our show poster with a light saber wielding Darth Vader having just decapitated some iconic toys (a bearded GI Joe Adventurer, Big Boy and a Troll). Limited to only 100 signed posters, members of the studio team sold this and many other creations at the show. We were fortunate to have been given a handful for future use.

Later that year while promoting JOKESTER & THWAK magazine, The Great Atlanta Toy Show and JOElanta http://www.joelanta.org/

at Dragon Con we were selling a variety of old show posters including this one. Some months later a mutual friend happened to be at a lecture held by Steve Sansweet (Director of Content Management and Fan Relations at Lucas Film) where he was discussing the many uses of copyrighted images and how he often alerts the Lucas Film lawyers about some of these items. In the same sentence he mentioned how every now and then he'd come across a very cool use of a character and how he just purchased a Toy show poster at Dragon Con! http://www.dragoncon.org/

Imagine our surprise that we had sold him that poster. Glad they decided not to sue us - Thanks Steve ! : )