Return of the Jedi Clip-A-Long #1 (Craft Master, 1983)
Craft Master's "Clip-A-Longs" are probably my favorite items featured in this article, and probably my three favorite things on the entire planet for at least another ten minutes. I guess they were kinda going for that whole Swiss knife vibe -- wearable doodads that did this-or-that, never really finding themselves used much but a-okay all the same. They're just conceptually strange -- the kind of things that couldn't have come from a sober brainstorming session, but in cases like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
First up, an R2-D2 compass -- compass as in "that thing that lets you draw perfect circles," not a compass as in "that thing that tells you how to go northeast." An included crayon fits snugly into a retractable robot arm thingamajig, letting you draw circles of many sizes. Though the least useful of the three Clip-A-Longs I picked up, at least the crayon was made in the United States, dammit. Says so right on the label, where most other crayons say "Crayola." Good stuff all around.
