Star Wars' BB-8 Coins Roll Through TJM

With a new movie opening December 18^th, Star Wars hype is in full gear. Even a two-minute trailer is enough to send any fan into a frenzy, and there are millions of Star Wars toys, games, and promotional products on store shelves. While other nerd-related "fandoms" come and go, Star Wars is one of the few franchises that has endured since the first film premiered in 1977.

It should come as no surprise that many of us here at TJM are huge Star Wars fans. Before we settled on our current name, one of our first company titles was "Team Jedi Marketing," so from the beginning, we've stuck with our Star Wars roots.

Naturally, when we were contacted by Michael Erwin of the BB-8 Builders Club, we were beside ourselves. In case you haven't seen any of the trailers or merchandise (have you been stranded on an island the last year?), BB-8 is a new droid being introduced in the upcoming film. Due to his (its?) unique design, many people speculated BB-8 would be completely computer-generated. However, a team of builders actually designed and built a number of the droids to use in the movie.

The BB-8 Builders Club boasts 1700+ members in 26 countries, and even includes a number of members who work at Disney/LucasFilm Ltd. Mr. Erwin contacted us for challenge coins to commemorate a special event for the club, and we were excited to work with them.

Here's what he had to say about the club and the challenge coins:

"The club was started 16-April-2015, when a group of R2 & MSE Droid Builders, saw BB-8 roll out on stage at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim 2015.

The club was officially recognized by LucasFilm Ltd. on October 8, 2015. (aka October BB-8th). We then released the club files to allow members of the club to download and use their own 3D printers to print out the various parts needed to build their own full scale droid.

To commemorate the event along with the upcoming release of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we asked TJM to come up with a few designs that we could use for a Challenge Coin. TJM's proof was exquisite and had a high quality, premium look & feel. We asked TJM to etch a unique serial # on each coin. Serial numbers 1-8 went to the build team for the movie, 9-20 went to both builders that had completed building BB-8, along with others of the movie team. The remaining 21-109 went to the first members of the club.

It was decided at that point, that the club would use the club artwork produced by TJM for additional commemorative items, such as premium label pin, trading patches and even a BB-8 Builders lanyard for members to use for event identification.

Like the namesake droid, the work TJM did on our upcoming 2016 BB-8 Builders Club Member coin is one of the most beautiful and unique challenge coins any of us has ever seen. We anxiously await to see how the TJM artists are going to raise the bar for the 2016 BB-8 Builders Club trading coin to be used by our membership to trade with the members of various Star Wars fan clubs, such as the 501st Legion, various Prop Builder groups and memorabilia collectors."

There you have it! We couldn't be more excited to be working with Mr. Erwin and the rest of the BB-8 Builders Club, and we look forward to designing more products for them in the future. We're incredibly grateful they chose us to make their promotional products, and we're so happy to contribute to the huge world of Star Wars in whatever way we can.

For more information or to join the BB-8 Builders Club, click here: www.bb8builders.club

May the Force be with you!

(P.S. Is it December 18^th yet?!)