What’s Your #StarWarsRoom Look Like?

By now, you’ve probably seen the incredible Kraft Macaroni & Cheese commercial featuring the father and son exploring Dad’s room of lies…er, Star Wars collection. In case you missed it, here it is again:

Yeah, pretty awesome, right? I don’t know about you, but when I watch that, I really want to see what else is in that room. The mac and cheese (though cool) is currently in every supermarket in the country. What about the MIB Hoth Ion Cannon set from Kenner’s Micro Collection? What about the box of vintage Topps trading cards? What about the Return of the Jedi metal lunchboxes?

Kraft obviously knows its market, because they’ve created a website where you can virtually walk through the room and get more information about many of the items on display. Check it out for yourself at KraftStarWarsRoom.com.

For this spot, Kraft partnered with uber-collector Steve Sansweet’s Rancho Obi-Wan, and everything you see is authentic, from the vintage plush Ewoks to the brand-new Legendary Yoda. Rancho Obi-Wan general manager Anne Neumann detailed the process of making the commercial over on StarWars.com, and it’s definitely worth reading.

This commercial really hit the sweet spot for me, since I used to have a Star Wars room myself. I started seriously collecting Star Wars back in the early 90s when I was in middle school and the franchise was essentially dead. This was before Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire novel and Dark Horse’s Dark Empire comic kickstarted interest and rebooted Star Wars merchandise in a huge way.

My collection soon outgrew the space available in my bedroom, and my parents gave me free reign of our attic (which was essentially a whole other level of the house). The little Type-A collector that I was soon converted the attic into my own personal Star Wars museum. I shelved books alphabetically, I stacked games and boxes in orderly piles, I hung carded figures in neat rows, and I displayed loose action figures on a custom-built shelf with inset dowel nubs so they could stand upright. (That last one was the crowning achievement of my stint as a middle school curator.)

That attic had some wicked awesome wallpaper. I know.

After I went to college, my parents moved to a bigger house (and of course took my entire collection with them). This time, I was given an entire bedroom for my stuff, and even now – more than a decade after the room was cleared of action figures and comic books – my parents still refer to that bedroom as the Star Wars Room.

My Star Wars room resembled Kraft’s room in many respects, though mine was definitely messier (as I was constantly in a state of cataloging and reorganizing). Watching the new commercial, though, stirs up all kinds of nostalgia for my collection, which is now mostly stored in boxes, sold off, or in the hands of my kids.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who went all out with a home exhibition. And I’m sure more than a few of you have such a space in your homes today. So…what have you got? How much space have you given over to your collection? What do you choose to exhibit? And most important, how do you explain your insanity to the unconverted?

Please, share stories, descriptions, and photos of your Star Wars room in the comments below or online. Use the hashtag #StarWarsRoom, and let me know what you’ve got!

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