September, 1977 -- While Star Wars was breaking theater attendance records across the nation and a televised "making of" special was beaming into living rooms, fans scraping for any trace of merchandise bearing the Star Wars logo were meeting with limited success -- a couple buttons and posters, a movie program, a novel, t-shirts, and a few other items were pretty much all there was, with licensees scrambling to get their wares to market to fill the enormous demand.
Enter Burger Chef -- a popular nationwide franchise that actually pioneered the fast food premium phenomenon with the introduction of their "Fun Burger" meals (a box containing a burger, fries, and small toy) in 1972. Happily, Burger Chef's relationship with Star Wars licensee Coca-Cola opened the door for the restaurant chain to offer the very first Star Wars promotional tie-in, a stunning set of four posters illustrated by Georgia artist Del Nichols. Free with the purchase of a large Coke (about 49 cents in 1977), the posters flew out of restaurants at the rate of about 1,000 per week, according to one account reported by an Ohio restaurant manager.
The campaign a success, another burger franchise with ties to Coke, Burger King, offered the same set of four posters the following year. The repeat promotion has led many Star Wars collectors to guess that Burger Chef and Burger King were somehow related -- actually, the only common attributes the two shared were their stock in trade and the year of their founding: 1954. Sadly, while Burger King's business thrived in the decades following A New Hope (culminating in an unprecedented campaign staged for Revenge of the Sith), Burger Chef floundered, closing the doors of its last restaurant in 1996. By then, most of the franchise had been absorbed by the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains.
While Burger Chef actually hosted two more Star Wars tie-in campaigns -- one for a series of "Funmeal" trays in 1978 and another for a trio of Empire Strikes Back posters in 1980 -- the first poster series holds a special place in the history of Star Wars fast food collectibles, which took on international status with the advent of the Star Wars Special Editions in 1997. Happily, for a set of four posters that would have cost a total of about $2.96 in 1977, the quartet still displays amazingly well, and is relatively easy to find today.
The television commercial that ran during the September campaign included a rare appearance by several Star Wars denizens, including R2-D2 and C-3PO, Darth Vader, stormtroopers, Jawas and Tusken Raiders. The '70's Burger Chef chic of that employee uniform just might outshine all the stellar costumes, however.
