| MERCHANDISE - POSTERS |
| Theatrical Release 1-Sheets |
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Three different 39" X 27" U.S. theatrical posters were released that I know of. The advance
poster featured the Willow logo and the slogan, "Forget all you
know, or think you know," in front of a swirling red background,
and the text "From the creator of Star Wars; From the director of Cocoon."
This was followed by a teaser poster (basically an enlargement of Madmartigan,
Willow and Sorsha in the bottom left-hand corner of the general release
poster) with the tag line, "The Next Great Adventure." The art was done by renowned
artist John Alvin.
In addition, all-new art was developed for the French general release poster (measuring 47" x 63"). The same artwork was used on many international posters and later resurfaced on the widescreen laserdisc jacket. For the Thai release of the film, Thailand's premier poster artist, Tong Dee, used the design of the US poster as his base and re-rendered it in his own style. The title is given in both Thai and English and the credits are in English. The poster measures 21½" by 31½" The Japanese poster features the teaser poster art and photos from the movie, and includes a small picture of George Lucas in the bottom left corner. It's highly likely that the world's most unusual Willow poster is the Polish Poster #1 designed in 1989 by Wieslaw Walkuski, a leading artist of the Polish poster school. The poster measures 28 x 39 inches, and the artwork is completely unrelated to the images of the movie that we're accustomed to seeing. Polish Poster #2 is also his work but isn't as wildly original as the first one. |
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| The DVD poster art displayed below is from a CD of key art created by Lucasfilm for professional use in advertising. These posters seem to be quite rare, and I don't know how many of them actually made it into print. I got the CD from an eBay auction based in Australia; I can't tell if these posters were an Australian exclusive, or if they were intended for wider use. |
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| Lobby Cards |
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A variety of lobby cards were produced to promote the movie in the theater. Many of the
cards combined the artwork from the promo poster and the teaser poster with
stills from the movie.
Sixteen German lobby cards measuring 11¾ inches wide by 8½ inches high were issued. They were printed on poster paper and came in two sheets of 8, with perforations between each card for easy separation. The whole set is presented collectively and individually below, along with some lobby cards from other countries. |
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| Kraft Promotional Posters |
| Kraft Foods distributed a few promotional posters to the public, and produced some in-store display posters as well. |
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Poster Front |
Poster Back |
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| Poster Magazine Posters |
| Five double-sided pull-out portraits were available in Starlog Press's Willow Poster Magazine (see the Miscellaneous Merchandise section for more on the Poster Magazine). |
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| Miscellaneous Posters |
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Several commercially distributed posters were released. A 26" X 74" Madmartigan
mural was printed by Portal Publications, with Val Kilmer in five different
poses from the film, along with a 23" X 45" Madmartigan poster from One
Stop Posters. Below are two pictures of these items from a black and white advertisement
for them.
Also pictured below are three posters advertising the video release of the movie; these posters of course were not intended for sale to the public. The one featuring the original artwork measures only 9 x 12½ inches. The arcade game poster uses artwork similar to the NES game box. The NES game poster is doublesided; it's 16 x 19¾ inches in size, and shows a map of the game with an unrelated poster for IronSword on the reverse. The map poster came from Nintendo Power Magazine #9 (Nov/Dec 89), and is folded and has staple holes in the crease. |
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