I am happy to announce my little addition to preservation – through January, I have scanned in all of the booklets from Star Wars: the Official Starships and Vehicles Collection that ran from September 2008 until October 2011!

Promotion for the collection on the back of issue 80

I looked for a copy to download and could not find a copy. So here it is for everyone to have a read!

Internet Archive
Google Drive

This is the first time I have scanned in something of this size, as usually I can find a way to download a copy.

Looking back at these, which my parents got for me as a subscription at the newsagent, this formed a solid foundation for my Star Wars knowledge and was a great way to summarise some information about the EU and the movies.

Notably, it displays EU material alongside movie details where they are inseparable, with nothing even hinting at a divide between the two.

The front of the official binder
Issue 1 inside the official binder

Each issue, I would get a booklet with a little model of the featured starship or vehicle(s).

Each booklet is A5 in size, and scanned in as such (at 300×300 DPI), which breaks up the centre fold-out. With Issue 1 as an example, this is the intended look.

Centre of booklet folded in
Centre fold-out of Issue 1

Each booklet contains:

  • In-depth information about the featured starship/vehicle.
  • A centre blueprint-style fold-out of the featured starship/vehicle(s)
  • Character profile(s).
  • A subfeature of another starship/vehicle, usually related to the main feature in some way just before the centre fold-out.
  • Information on creatures.
  • Information on a planet or two.
  • Depending on the issue – information on novels, comics, or video games.
  • Behind the scenes making of the featured starship/vehicle.

There was also a metal die-cast model of the ship that came in a plastic display case, with background information relevant to the specific vehicle, as seen in the promo at the top of this post (they are currently in storage).

When the collection grew, they had official binders to keep the booklets in, which hold 15 booklets each.

They also scanned in with OCR, so should all be searchable!

I hope this is interesting and a fine addition to your collection. May the Force be with you.