Star Wars Bikkuriman Stickers: Episodes I, II, III

Back in mid-January I busted open a box of Star Wars Bikkuriman: Special Edition stickers from Japan. These stickers are packed with some decently tasty chocolate wafer snacks. The Special Edition set was actually the third product released. There were two previous sets; one for the prequel trilogy and one for the original trilogy. I got a good deal on the Special Edition box, but buying boxes of the other two sets was cost-prohibitive. There was a seller on eBay, though, who had both sets listed together for about what one box of wafers would have cost me. I used my portion of our recent windfall to snap the lot up, as all the other online sellers wanted double the price for the sets.

Each series contains 24 stickers. I think they're a little over an inch square. They've got shiny foil backgrounds and illustrations featuring key characters and scenes from the movies. I'm more of an original trilogy guy than a prequel guy, so my favorites here are the droids and Yoda. The prequels had some pretty good moments, but they also had way too many of these moments:

The illustration style is based on the original Bikkuriman stickers which featured fantasy characters and were part of a game. From my understanding, though, the game was largely secondary to collecting the stickers.

That's not to say that the prequels didn't have their moments, though. My kids were fans of seeing the Jar Jar Binks sticker in this set. I've read a fan theory positing that Jar Jar is the big bad guy manipulating the Sith, but I just don't believe that. It would be a heck of a reveal, though.

I don't really know what the backs of the stickers say. I know the titles are the same as the text on the front of the stickers. I would imagine that there is some descriptive text beneath those along with all the copyright information and logos and stuff. I mostly included scans of all the backs so that some future person out there searching for information on the set can see it all in one place.

I thought sticker # 18 was a nice inclusion as it shows the issuance of Order 66 to Commander Cody, initiating the extermination of the Jedi order. We also get to see Anakin as Darth Vader and a couple of key lightsaber battles from the films. Pretty cool stuff.

I like these stickers, but they have an odd size that isn't easy to store. They are popular enough in Japan that they make special sheets for them, but I don't know if they are available here in America, especially in the small quantity I would need. They do make pages for film slides, but I don't know if they are the right size. I guess I could go and do some measuring, but the idea just came to me so I haven't done it yet.

"What are those picture thingys, Grandpa?"

The auction listing appeared to show the stickers in pages and I secretly hoped that the proper-sized pages would come along with the stickers, but they were packaged in regular 9-card pages from Ultra-Pro. I guess Japanese collectors don't want to pony up for a whole box of Bikkuriman pages, either.