The pandemic affected us all in some way–good and bad. Mostly bad. This post is about a good way. In the excess downtime my daughter and I went all-in on Star Wars. This is a franchise that I appreciated and respected, but avoided for the most part getting into for lack of time. The gateway drug for me was The Mandalorian. After that, we decided to watch all the original movies and the prequels in chronological order. Then Clone Wars. Then Rebels. You get the idea. I’m all in.

With my love for the Mando, the next logical progression in our Star Wars obsession (besides putting up a bunch of movie posters in my office-turned-Star-Wars room) was to collect a few things. For my daughter, it’s the light sabers. For me, it’s the helmets. I won the Target-in-stock lottery for the Mando helmet a few months ago. It’s incredible. I love it so much. Hasbro and Disney did an amazing job with it. But then I wanted more of the Black Series helmets. The problem is they’re so hard to find, unless you want to pay 2X or 3X the retail value on eBay. I’m not into that.

So, I scoured the Internet for my next Black Series helmet: Darth Vader. I finally found one at an online retailer called Skyward Fun Supply Toys & Collectables. They had the Darth Vader helmet in stock! (It’s currently out of stock at the time of this post). Yay.

The problem is: I’ve never heard of Skyward Fun Supply. So, being a smart shopper I did my due diligence. I googled “skyward fun supply review”. Found nothing. The closest to anything I found was a podcast interview with the owner, Jeremy. I listened to about half of it to make sure he sounded legit. Adding to the legitimacy of Skyward, I contacted them through their website and got a response from Jeremy the next day. He confirmed the item was in stock, brand new, and could ship out immediately.

I hesitantly placed the order. The next day I got the shipping notification. I ordered on May 24th and it arrived June 1st. Not bad for free shipping from New York to San Diego. So, not only was the price the lowest I could find, and extremely reasonable, the shipping was free. It took a week to get here. And, it arrived well packaged and in brand new/sealed condition.

Jeremy also included a nice handwritten note, a Star Wars trading card, and a Skyward Fun Supply sticker. So cool.

So why did I write this review/testimonial? Because he’s a guy with a small business and there weren’t any reviews I could find online with my Google search. I’ve never met him and never heard of his business before I ordered.

I wish more people would post reviews like this instead of turning to social media to post something that goes away in 24 hours and isn’t indexed by search engines so concerned shoppers can find it. This is also one of the reasons why I want to post more to my blog and less to social media. You should too.

I wish more people would write posts like this, so hopefully I’ve inspired others to do the same. I did not get anything for free. I paid full price, just like you would. I care about the small businesses trying to have success against the big sites like Amazon and bidding sites like eBay.

Hopefully my review will instill confidence in ordering from Jeremy’s Skyward Fun Supply. I know I won’t hesitate to order from him again.

As for the Darth Vader helmet? While the focus on this post isn’t a review of the helmet, I will say that it’s completely awesome and worth getting. It barely fits my big head (I had to snap it on hard) but it looks incredible inside and out–like the real deal. Hasbro nailed it. There are plenty of reviews online and on YouTube so go check them out if you must.

May the force be with you!