Mailers
The die cast ships were available to buy through catalogues in the United States and Canada. The toys were shipped in plain mailer boxes with the Wave 1 and Wave 2 ships (apart from the Land Speeder) available through Sears, JC Penney’s and Aldens catalogues, with the Land Speeder only available through JC Penney’s and Aldens.
Sears boxes can be identified by their 49-59xxx code written on the box, although boxes with these codes can be found with alternitve store stickers.
The first issue boxes included the toy, paper packing and the first issue Kenner collections catalogue, with the second issue Star wave 1 boxes including the second issue catalogue with pink banner and the name of the ship printed on the box.
The wave 2 ships inlcuded the catalogue with the Death Star scene. Each later box proudly states ‘Star War’ in another of Kenner’s quality control oversights.
Boxes were plain card and featured the assortment number for each ship with or without the vehicle name. The vehicle name was not printed on the first issue mailers but some ‘blank’ boxes have the ship name hand written in pen. The boxes can have the text written vertically or horizontally.
No attempt has been made to catalogue the store variations on this site – we’ll save that for another day.
Additional images courtesy of bchick1022