Imagine entering a toy store on a hot summer afternoon in 1987, trying to obtain a plastic flamethrower or a doll of your favorite villain. You would be sorely disappointed if you were looking for items inspired by Mel Brooks‘ science-fiction masterpiece ‘Spaceballs‘. While the film managed to satirize the hyper-commercial nature of ‘Star Wars,’ it inadvertently sealed its fate in merchandising.
The greatest joke the film plays on its audience is that its plot revolves entirely around the power of movie merchandising and the restrictions placed on selling it. And while it is an excellent idea for a movie to criticize a highly profitable industry that created countless similar franchises, its director unintentionally prevented himself from ever selling merchandise for his own work.
George Lucas Approved ‘Spaceballs’ With One Condition
After writing ‘Spaceballs‘, Mel Brooks presented a copy of its script to George Lucas to seek his permission. As he had done for his other parodies (High Anxiety), Brooks tried to be courteous enough to inform the director of Star Wars about his intentions.
Luckily for Mel Brooks, George Lucas was quite familiar with his previous movies, and he enjoyed the script for the latest parody.
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However, Lucas feared that releasing action figures based on ‘Spaceballs‘ characters could create issues since they could look quite similar to ‘Star Wars‘ merchandise.
Brooks promised to respect Lucas’ terms of releasing no action figures, and the director agreed to let him make the film.
“He explained that if I made toys of my Spaceballs characters they would look a lot like Star Wars action figures. And that would be a no-no for his lawyers and his studio’s business affairs department. So he gave his blessing to make my funny satiric takeoff of Star Wars as long as I promised that we would not sell any action figures,” Brooks stated.
The filmmaker did not violate this rule throughout the entire production.
Mel Brooks Turned The Restriction Into A Joke
Although ‘Spaceballs‘ could not release its own toy line, Brooks found a way to make the limitation part of the joke. His conversation with Lucas directly inspired the film’s famous merchandising sequence featuring Yogurt, a parody of Yoda.
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“The exchange with George Lucas also triggered a beloved comedy scene in which a character that I played, Yogurt, a takeoff on Yoda, responds to Lone Starr’s question of “What is this place? What is it that you do here?” with a whole exposé of the movie business,” he wrote.
The scene features Yogurt showing off his business cards and explaining that their adventure is nothing but a pretext for merchandising. The film’s merchandise list includes dolls, lunch boxes, flamethrowers, and even “Spaceballs: The Breakfast Cereal.”
Brooks’ satirical view of the movie industry worked perfectly at showing how absurd such business practices can be.
Despite all the jokes about the products, Brooks did not break the promise. In fact, one of the film’s funniest moments shows Dark Helmet playing with ‘Spaceballs‘ action figures that audiences could never purchase in real life.
“In the movie itself, we have Dark Helmet playing with action figures… we never sold any.” Brooks further stated
As Brooks later recalled, fans spent years creating mock versions of the products featured in the film, especially “Spaceballs: The Breakfast Cereal.”
In the end, ‘Spaceballs‘ became famous for mocking movie merchandising while remaining unable to sell the very products it was parodying.
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