While we've all seen some pretty bad Star Wars merchandise in our lives, only Jason Geyer - a former product designer who worked on merchandise to support The Phantom Menace - can let us know just how lucky we are that things weren't much, much worse. After all, did the world really need Bantha Slippers or Leia-hairbun headphones? Both were part of the pitch package that Geyer and cohorts put together to show Lucasfilm that they knew just how to take Star Wars concepts to a new audience. Behind the jump, see more examples of what you could've spent your money on in a parallel world.

A long, long time ago... [Action Figure Insider.com]

Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.