He'll never get anywhere,” my primary school report read, “because all he thinks about is Star Wars.” But my teacher was wrong. This week I did get somewhere. It was Boswell’s toy department in Oxford.

I was inspecting the latest range of Star Wars figures with my five-year-old.

He’s never seen a Star Wars movie but the new film comes out on December 18 – just in time for Christmas. I suspect there’s a mind-bending onslaught of Star Wars paraphernalia heading his way. The current display is merely a taster.

In my direct line of sight I spy the new Darth Vader, slinkily trapped in a cellophane box. I look him in the eyes as though to say “hey, when I were a lad all this round here was fields”.

Then I take one daring glimpse at his 21st Century price tag and sling him back in the crate with the other Darth Vaders.

Meanwhile, my five-year-old attacks me with a flimsy lightsaber. We’ll go to see the film of course, but I hope he doesn’t get the bug as badly as I did when I was his age.

In the days before VHS and DVD you got to see a Star Wars film once – and then you had to wait three years for the next one. So collecting figures was a big thing.

There were the main characters like Han Solo and Princess Leia. And then there were figures you’d hand over your hard-earned £1.50 for, without having the faintest idea who they were.

Made by Kenner in the US and Palitoy here in the UK, more than 300 million were sold between 1978 and 1985.

This explains why, with notable exceptions, the collections so many of us have kept in our attics over the years are little more than worthless, intergalactic junk.

Among the exceptions is a figure of Boba Fett that sold at auction earlier this year for £18,000, breaking the previous record of £7,000. There are some serious collectors out there.

The most impressive is Californian Steve Sansweet, who has opened the Rancho-Obi-Wan Museum to house his hoard.

Over the years he’s come back from the shops with more than half-a-million items.

I wonder if the current crop of toys will be collected with such fanaticism? Or how many dads, queuing up to buy this stuff, will secretly be buying it for themselves?

At some point in the 1980s, I stopped pretending I was Luke Skywalker. For a few years I was just Luke Skywalker’s friend. Nowadays, I look the other way when I see him standing at the bus stop.

So I’ve never become one of those fanatics who will fly to a Star Wars Convention in Geneva dressed as Chewbacca.

Mind you, Iwouldn’t mind sitting next to one of them on the aeroplane, and exchanging a few nostalgic notes over a gin and tonic.