Lest you still long for the good old days when Star Wars wasn't owned by Disney, we present one of the last legacies of Lucasfilm: a partnership with Pepsi in Japan that yielded the world's first official Darth Vader cola.
The Vader version of "energy cola" -- which adds royal jelly extract, ginseng and guarana extract to the familiar sugarwater and caffeine concoction -- hit Japanese convenience stores in late October, but is only now starting to filter into the U.S. Tagline: "Give yourself to the Dark Side."
You can buy cans of the stuff for $4 apiece on the Japanese product site Jbox. Cans are also going for $4.95 (plus $6.95 international shipping) on eBay.
Darth Vader and Pepsi have something of a history. The Sith Lord was used in a promotional campaign for the Cola back in 1997, to coincide with George Lucas' controversial Special Edition of Star Wars Episode IV:
Pepsi also released a series of 24 Star Wars-themed cans to coincide with the Phantom Menace prequel in 1999. Each featured a different character from Episode I, including the not-yet-Darth Anakin Skywalker. The Japanese beverage is the first time a character from the series has been featured in the name of the drink itself.
Is this a foreshadowing of the kind of sellout marketing deals Disney will do, now it owns Lucasfilm? Somehow, we doubt it. Disney's number one concern is to look like a good steward of the Star Wars brand. The Mouse House doesn't exactly need the money, but it does need goodwill -- and it needs geeks to turn out in force for the as-yet-untitled Episode VII in 2015.
Lucasfilm, by contrast, was a marketing machine. Lucas was dreaming of the Star Wars tie-in possibilities as early as 1976, when he was still filming the original movie. (His first product idea, oddly enough, was also drinks-based: a Chewbacca tankard.) Indeed, we're surprised that Darth Vader cola took this long to appear, and that it is currently limited to Japan.