A Star Wars fan, I am. A ThinkGeek fan, I am as well. A great match, this is! Ahem. Well, you’ve all seen the little white stickers that adorn the rear window on so many minivans. Typically stick figures, there will usually be one for Dad, one for Mom, one for each of the kiddos and sometimes even ones for Fido and Whiskers, all in order of descending height. Cute, but let’s face it: booooring. ThinkGeek helped me find something better. No, not just better. Awesomer. I now show off my Star Wars fanship (Is that a word? It is now.) by spicing up my famship (Is that a word? Same deal.) with these Star Wars Family Car Decals. They are impressive. Most impressive. If I do say so myself. I am quite impartial about such things. Let’s take a fly-by.
Background
While visiting my wife’s parents this past Thanksgiving, my son was across the street playing with the neighbor boy. When I walked over to fetch my son before we left for the day, I noticed that the neighbor’s van had some sweet-looking Star Wars figure decals on the back window. Since I already knew the boy’s dad was a Star Wars fan himself (the SSID of his WiFi router is “tatooine”), I commented that really liked the decals on his van. To my very pleasant surprise, he responded by saying, “Thanks! I have a bunch of extras – pick some out for yourself!” What a generous fellow! My kids and I spent the next several minutes with ThinkGeek’s Star War Family Car Decals sheets spread around my inlaw’s driveway gleefully selecting the best Star Wars character decals to represent our family. Ultimately we went with the combination shown above: Darth Vader (me), Padmé Amidala (my wife), little Princess Leia and little Luke Skywalker. And no, our kids aren’t actually twins like Leia and Luke, but all of the family connections here at least made sense to us. 🙂
Options
An officially-licsensed Lucasfilm collectible, the Star Wars Family Car Window Decals are an exclusive product designed by ThinkGeek. They are available in two different sets as shown below. Either set is $5.99 $14.99 individually, or both for $9.99 $19.99 (apologies as when this review was posted, these products were on sale at the lower prices). You get a pretty darn decent amount of stickerage for the price.
Original Set – 50 decals total, 19 different characters, including:
- Tall characters: Darth Vader (x2), Luke Skywalker (x2), Princess Leia (x2), Han Solo (x2), C-3PO (x2), Obi-Wan Kenobi (x2), Padmé Amidala (x2), Slave Leia (x2), Boba Fett (x2), Chewbacca (x2), Stormtrooper (x2)
- Short characters: Yoda (x2), Jawa (x2), Ewok (x2), R2-D2 (x2), Little Stormtrooper (x12), Little Princess Leia (x2), Little Luke Skywalker (x2)
New Hive of Scum & Villainy booster pack set, 22 characters, including:
- Tall characters: Tusken Raider, Greedo, Gamorrean Guard, Bib Fortuna, IG-88, Bossk, Dengar, and five Cantina Band members (AKA “Fiery” Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes)
- Giant monster-type characters: Bantha, Rancor, Jabba the Hut w/Salacious Crumb, Wampa, Exogorth (AKA Space Slug), Dianogo (AKA Trash Compactor Monster)
Packaging
The decal sets come in a glossy cardboard envelope with a transparent window on the front allowing visibility to the decals inside.
The rear of the package has a diagram showing all of the character decals contained within the package.
Features
Above are two of the three sheets that were in the Original Set from which my inlaws’ neighbor generously let us select. Apologies because I omitted showing the third sheet in the set; in my zeal to choose our favorite character decals, I was snapping these images in my inlaw’s driveway, and I left one of the sheets in the package!
Application
Application of the decals was fairly straightforward. If you know how to peel a decal from a backing sheet and stick it on something, you can do this. I made sure to thoroughly clean the surface (in this case my Honda Odyssey’s rear window) with Windex, then dry it thoroughly before applying. The only word of caution: these things are sticky. I wasn’t super careful while applying me…er…Darth Vader, and I left some bubbles that I couldn’t smooth out. However, I was a little more careful with the other three and they turned out great.
How do they look? Awesome. That’s how. Most impressive. I like that the characters have a very simple style, vaguely reminiscent of LEGO “mini figures,” but the characters are clearly recognizable.
Conclusion
These are just no-brainer fun and cool. Lots of Star Wars character options available, affordable price, easy to apply. And they don’t just have to be used on car windows. You could use them to Star Wars-up your laptop, your notebook, your cubicle wall at work—basically any clean, smooth surface. You don’t have to have the wisdom of a Grand Master Jedi so know that ThinkGeek’s Star Wars Family Car Decals are pure awesome fun.
Update 04/18/15
My family had fun with these, and we enjoyed the comments we got from people. Sadly, we got a new van so I need to get a new set of these, and I will soon.
Source: The stickers for this review were purchased by me.
Product Information
| Price: | $14.99 for either pack or $19.99 for both |
| Manufacturer: | ThinkGeek |
| Requirements: |
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Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
Please explain why anyone would pay $5 or $10 for some silly people decals to put on your car.
Makes as much sense as the “baby on board” signs. Am I supposed to behave differently because the car in front of me has a baby on board?
@Donald it’s called fun and freedom of expression. 🙂
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
Yeah, what Julie said. Dude, chill.
I’ve seen these on a minivan while driving on the freeway. The Dad was Chewbacca, one of my fave characters. I found that funny at the time because I wondered if that decal was chosen because he shared the character of Chewy… or his looks.
My grandboys are really into this stuff. So I went to the site. There are no stickers there for under $14.99. I might have bought some for the boys, but now I won’t. Great idea though!
The Real Person!
The Real Person!
@Marsha – Chewie has always been one of my favorite characters, too. And I also happen to know a few dads who aren’t too far from Wookiee status!
@joy patton – Apologies to you and to anyone else who may have been confused by this. These were on sale for $5.99 per set and $9.99 for both when the review above was posted. I have edited the review to reflect the full price of the items, $14.99 for each set and $19.99 for both sets.