There are a bunch of people who assume that I’ve built my collection over the years through the generosity of Lucasfilm or licensees. “You mean they don’t automatically send you one of everything?” Nope. I go out hunting at retail or online and pay full price for nearly everything. Oh, now and then over the years a licensee that I’ve built a strong relationship with or helped with some project will be very kind and send me product or give me a healthy discount. I appreciate that a lot, because being a collector who likes nearly everything produced worldwide doesn’t mean that I can afford everything.
But sometimes it helps being in the right place at the right time and having friends who are thinking about you. It was around midday on Sunday, August 26th, the final day of Star Wars Celebration VI. Things were just as busy for me and at the Rancho Obi-Wan Experience exhibit as they’d been for the entire show. Someone told me that Matt Shell, who works in Lucasfilm publicity, had been looking for me and would stop back. Matt had visited Rancho Obi-Wan for the first time not that long ago with Rob Wynn, head of Lucas Video Productions, to tape a Celebration “Join the Party” spot for starwars.com.
Matt swung by and started talking about some giant TIE fighter, a thousand cupcakes and needing to quickly find a home or else a trash compactor would find a new victim. I’m sure I gave Matt a very puzzled look. “Haven’t you been in the VIP Lounge?” he asked. No, I didn’t even know where it was. But what was this about cupcakes? “Cupcake Wars!” he exclaimed. Now I was even more puzzled. I absolutely love cupcakes, but I’m not a foodie, rarely watch television, and probably have never seen a show on the Food Network—until now.
Luckily, Ashley Eckstein wrote a blog post here Friday that explained it all, since she was a judge on the show that aired Sunday night. Four cupcake baking teams competed against each other for a grand prize of $10,000 and a trip to Celebration VI to share their small, delicious, and beautifully iced cakes with Star Wars fans. What I didn’t fully understand until I watched the show Sunday night was how the TIE fighter fit in. (If you missed the show, you can catch it again on Food Network Tuesday, Sept. 11 at 8 pm ET/PT.)
After two of the teams were eliminated in bake-offs, the last two teams had two hours (!) to bake and ice 1,000 cupcakes with Star Wars themes. And they also had to come up with dynamite displays to show off their creations. Two carpenters came in to do the work based on each team’s design. Except no way were they carpenters. They were magicians! What they came up with in two hours (and I believe everything I see on reality TV shows!) would have taken me two months—and then wouldn’t have looked one-tenth as good.
The team of Janell Brown and her assistant Kristen Cold from One Sweet Slice in South Jordan, Utah decided on a TIE fighter and the other team picked the Millennium Falcon. I knew this would be a tough one for Ashley and the other two judges, but in the end, the ladies from Utah won. There was a well-attended party Friday afternoon in the VIP Lounge (my invitation clearly had been intercepted and destroyed by an Imperial agent), and from the photos I’ve seen of the filled display (courtesy of Dunc, webmaster of www.clubjade.net) everyone had a tasty time.
I was quickly following Matt to the Lounge as he told me the back-story. When he heard that the TIE fighter display would have to be destroyed, and he remembered that a large truck was returning to Northern California with all of the Rancho Obi-Wan items, an idea struck him. When I first saw the display—and then tasted some of the amazing cupcakes still on the wings—I knew I had to save the display for all of fandom! (Well, excuse me for rationalizing!)
And Janell and Kristen were also happy that since the cupcakes couldn’t be preserved, at least the display would be somewhere to commemorate their victory. That’s Kristen on the left and Janell on the right (photo by Chris Gereke). Maybe they’re smiling because I asked how much it would cost to air-ship a thousand cupcakes to Rancho Obi-Wan!
Steve Sansweet is chief executive of Rancho Obi-Wan, a non-profit membership museum that houses the world’s largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia. To find out about joining or taking a guided tour, visit www.ranchoobiwan.org. Follow on Twitter @RanchoObiWan and http://www.facebook.com/RanchoObiWan.
Tags: Celebration VI, cupcake wars
so this isn’t related to this blog but just a question about Star Wars engagements. I’m a big star wars fan but I just watched a documentary about WWII and I couldn’t help but notice that the Star Wars battles, from the Battle of Hoth to Coruscant to Grassy Plains to Endor (both land and space) and all the other battles including ones from the EU were just like the battles fought WWII and before. After that, it sure seems like modern-day warfare and technology kinda makes Star Wars technology in military bad. Like dogfights: can’t they just shoot a missile at a target and let the computer do its work, just like the USAF does right now? Or where’s the drone planes, where there’s someone actually controlling a plane but not in the cockpit, rather by a computer. Why risk human life if you could just control a plane from the safety of a desk? And they use massive land armies in fairly simple strategies, like trenches and just running at each other. You don’t really see anyone in modern times just running with a gun in their hands shooting. The weapons are either outdated in comparison to modern day weapons, or are fairly static. If you really think about it, most of the tactics, battles, and weapons are just pretty unrealistic in the context that the Galaxy is supposed to be a science-fiction setting. Couldn’t a capital ship, with all the enhanced targeting systems it has, just fire a few rounds at a certain point of a ground battle and obliterate the enemy ground forces? We can do that today! Please, if anyone has an explanation, that’d be great.
And what about when Luke had to get all close to the thermal exhaust port in order to fire his missile. We can fire a missile today from across the globe and hit a target! Surely a galaxy that is way more advanced can do that…
Sorry if it seems like I’m critisizing, cause I’m not, I just want some answers. Things just don’t add up.
would you watch a movie where all they did was bring in their ship close fire a beam and win? shoot a target from the comfort of echo base and blow up the death star?
I wouldn’t
There was actually a panel at Celebration 6 about the correlation between WWII and Star Wars. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the panel (I sure wanted to!) but was busy elsewhere. It is well known, however, that Lucas used old WWII films to stage the air/space battle almost frame-by-frame. And while the technology “a long time ago” may seem amazing to us, I am sure they all had their own problems, etc. Especially in the Rebellion who were using old, beat-up ships that often missing pieces and should have been junked. They were trying to make do with what they could get their hands on. And a lot of the pilots were not well-trained, but brave enough to try anything.
I suppose so but for a Star Wars geek like me I like to have a retconn or something to explain it. With a galaxy so advanced, homing missiles would sell for a fairly small price, even forthe rebels. And the republic and the cis in the clone wars certainly had enough money. There just seems to not be any explaination!
And inwonder if the essential guide to warfare covers any of this but ive heard it isnt that great of a book
With all the modern warfare technology we have now it would seem there is no need for ground troops but that’s still not the case. We send them out there only to get blow up by roadside bombs with no less than WWII technology. No matter how ‘advanced’ society gets, we are still going to find new insidious ways to kill the ‘enemy’ just as fast as they can use the old stuff on us.
As far as Star Wars and all other science fiction goes, the battles are there to move the story along and to entertain us. Getting to technical would only interfere with the story. If the warring factions in Star Wars did what would make sense in reality then there wouldn’t be much to see other than guys at computer consoles typing coordinates of target and pressing the big red button we are not supposed to touch. What would be the fun in watching that?
Your sooooooo lucky….Great addition to the collection sir.
The TIE on “Cupcake Wars” was a much better rendition than the Falcon (although the Falcon is my favorite ship)! The Falcon was on a tilt (to show speed) but it just looked unsteady to me. And the cupcakes at the end of the mandibles just looked like they were about ready to fall off.
Great article Steve and great addition to your collection. Star Wars Collectibles of different kinds are awesome.
It will be great having the cupcake stand at Rancho Obi-Wan. Every time there’s a tour it will be filled with fresh cupcakes for all to enjoy, right?
Perhaps replica cupcakes made of resin could fill most of the space and there could be empty space for the real ones.
[...] displayed all the sweets you saw on Cupcake Wars the other night? Well, wonder no more: It’s headed to Steve Sansweet’s Rancho Obi-Wan, of [...]
Ah…(sighs lovingly) Cupcakes… (and thats really all that needs to be said)
Star Wars and cupcakes. I mean, what could go wrong??