Please Don't Buy This $3000 Star Wars TV

I’m not personally a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise. I think they’re certainly good enough movies, and I’m not here to write some long contrarian screed about why no one should like them. For whatever reason or other, the films just don’t grab me in the way they do some others, and I never had a nerdy sci-fi parent to forcefully weave them into my emotional make-up. Luke Skywalker is a bit annoying to me, Darth Vader is about as menacing as a halloween lawn decoration, and Han Solo is cool, I guess. In fact, my favorite part of any Star Wars movie is usually the little freak squeaking and squirting milk all over a cantina table in the background. Where’s his miniseries?

But I digress. Like I said, I won’t confuse my personal lack of interest as a reason to deny other people joy in a media franchise that hits all the right synapses for them. I have intellectual properties that excite me that I’ve bored people to no end talking about, or lined up for. However, there is a level I refuse to support: the seemingly bottomless market for Star Wars branded items sold for every single facet of someone’s day-to-day life. Buy your hoodies and your graphic tees, even buy, against my deepest wishes, Funko Pops. But when we get into the world of housewares, know that you’re buying things that would seem mildly tacky even in Lucasfilm’s corporate lobby.

Your toaster doesn’t need to look like R2D2. Your rug doesn’t need even SUBTLE details that look like Yoda and the Mandalorian. And, please, for the love of god, your $3000 OLED TV that is likely the centerpiece of your entire living room does not need to have an imperial logo on the back. I promise you, a single tasteful poster will let visitors know you’re a fan. The only actual living space any collection of these nostalgia desperate housewares belongs in is “a mancave,” which is already basically an ersatz womb in which to resolve unsettled childhood issues.

Not to mention that getting that logo on the back of your TV, and sure, some concept art or whatever jpegs they pulled out of a back room hard drive at Disney to load in as Roku screensavers, comes at a premium of $500 dollars. Star Wars fans, I beg you, realize and feel the hands of the free market wringing money out of your inner child. There is, literally, so much regular stuff to buy that won’t make your house feel like your most formative childhood trauma happened halfway through The Empire Strikes Back. You are Kirk Van Houten, proudly pointing to your X-Wing shaped bed.

If this keeps up, we’ll have elderly men in hospice, hooked up to a ventilator that looks like the Millenium Falcon, giving your child a final hug from your Ewok-printed sheets, before they have to sit in a lawyer’s office, holding a Death Star shaped urn, watching your last will and testament be read by a Limited Edition Princess Leia Holodisc.

Top Image: LG/Pixabay