Ralph McQuarrie’s Sparky robot ILM original stop-motion puppet

In 1988 George Lucas was back in the movie industrie with Tucker and Willow. But he was also back in the advertising business in Japan for Panasonic advertisment, and the Maclord range of VHS videotape player.

Panasonic’s President, Masaharu Matsushita, specially request that Sparky the “Genius robot ”, that will be showcase in the ad, be created by Star Wars designer Ralph McQuarrie. ILM, George Lucas visual effects company, put all their effort into the actual fabrication of the bot. The robot was constructed by Marek Sekowski from ILM.

There were two versions, the big one for close up shots with Lucas, and the smaller version (the one in the Archives) which is a puppet made ??for stop-motion animation.

You can see the TV ad bellow…