So they’ve turned R2-D2 into a mailbox.  Hundreds of mailboxes, actually.

Depending on your outlook, this qualifies as either the ultimate compliment or the ultimate indignity.  I’m leaning toward the latter.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m a huge fan of Star Wars, and I love getting mail.  But there’s something about this arranged marriage between a blockbuster Hollywood franchise and a cash-strapped federal agency that makes me queasy.

Now, I certainly appreciate the Star Wars merchandising machine; I started accumulating action figures within 24 hours of seeing the film, back in 1977, and my thirst for galactic accoutrements knew no bounds – I had Star Wars sheets and Star Wars pillowcases, Star Wars school supplies, and Star Wars trading cards; I had Star Wars books, Star Wars t-shirts, and Star Wars stickers.  If it had a picture of a Wookiee, or a droid, or a Dark Lord of the Sith on it, I coveted it.

I learned about the concepts of both anticipation and sequels while waiting for The Empire Strikes Back to finally arrive, and in the throes of my first prepubescent crush on a girl, I daydreamed that I was Luke Skywalker and that she was Princess Leia, and imagined us kissing gently beneath a leafy canopy of backyard trees.

(This was before I found out they were brother and sister.  Obviously.)

So then what’s my beef here?

Maybe my beef is with the Postal Service, and the fact that a federal agency is spending untold millions on mailbox makeovers and the promotion of Star Wars-themed stamps and pre-paid Express Mail envelopes.  You think it’s just a calendar quirk that this month’s increase in stamp prices coincides with a massive, feel-good movie tie-in?

Maybe my beef is that the Postal Service can hand George Lucas scads of cash for a marketing stunt, but they can’t (or won’t) pay a real mail carrier, in a real mail carrier uniform, in a real mail truck, to deliver my mail – so instead my mail gets delivered by a plainclothes subcontractor, sans benefits, in a beat-up Chevette.

Maybe my beef is that the multibillionaire Lucas simply can’t seem to stop himself from milking more and more cash out of his intergalactic cow.  Yes, I appreciate that this is the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars, and yes, the mailboxes are kind of cool.  But it’s not just the mailboxes, or the stamps, or the Express Mail envelopes, or the shot glasses or the checkbook covers or the belt buckles or the chubby nesting dolls or the iPod covers – it’s all of it.

Maybe my beef is that these stamps and mailboxes are just one more thing for the Star Wars cultists – the ones who buy Chewbacca flash drives and mark themselves with Star Wars tattoos (and there are enough of these people to fill a book, literally:  “The Force In The Flesh” was unveiled this week) and clamor for Hasbro to produce action figures of characters whose names are never mentioned in any of the films – to obsess over.

Maybe my beef is really with the trilogy of Star Wars prequels, which had all the soul of electrical tape.  Am I biased toward the movies that defined my youth?  Of course.  Am I bitter that Episodes I-III seemed more committed to pushing licensed merchandise and showing off what pasty Mountain Dew slurpers could do with computer graphics than developing characters you might actually care about or telling a coherent story?  You bet I am.

Maybe my beef is just this feeling I can’t shake that while the R2-D2 mailboxes are kind of fun, they’re also kind of tawdry:  overcommercialized, overexposed, overdone; too slick, too shallow, too much.  Or maybe it’s the feeling that everything kind of feels like that right now.

Maybe I’m just turning into Andy Rooney.

But I can’t help feeling that if Artoo were alive today, he’d wheel up to one of his squat doppelgangers, give it the once-over with that one little electric eye of his, and burp out a series of whistles and beeps, that, loosely translated, would be the droid equivalent of Eric Cartman saying, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s a weird time to be alive in America right now.

Not that you needed me, or an R2-D2 mailbox, to tell you that.