Hardware Wars is a 1978 American short science fiction parody film in the form of a teaser trailer for a fictitious science fiction film that parodies Star Wars. The 13-minute film, which was released almost 18 months after Star Wars, mainly consisted of inside jokes and visual puns that heavily depended upon audience familiarity with the original. The theme song is Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

The film begins with a parody of the 20th Century Fox logo with "Fox" being replaced with "Foss" (a reference to filmmaker Ernie Fosselius) followed by the text "Meanwhile — in another part of the galaxy — later that same day" (parodying the Star Wars opening crawl "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....").

A household steam iron flies through space, fleeing a toaster, which fires toast at it, disabling it. Two robots named 4-Q-2 (“fuck-you-too”, and who resembles the Tin Man from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) and Artie-Deco (a canister vacuum cleaner), escape from the evil Empire. After launching from the ship (a cassette player) in an escape pod (a cassette tape), they land on a desert planet (a watermelon). They are found by young Fluke Starbucker, who finds a holographic message recorded in Artie-Deco's memory banks. It is a loop of Princess Anne-Droid saying "Help me, Augie Ben Doggie, you're my only hope." Upon meeting Augie "Ben" Doggie (of the venerable Red-Eye Knights, a pun on The Order of the Jedi Knights), Fluke receives his father's lightsaber (a flashlight). After tricking the Imperial Steam Trooper guards (steam cabinets) to let them into the city, they reach a cantina, which Fluke describes as "too weird". The cantina is a country-and-western bar, where they meet space renegade Ham Salad and Chewchilla the Wookiee Monster (a puppet that resembles an orange version of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street). Meanwhile, the villainous Darph Nader (a pun on Ralph Nader) is interrogating the princess. When she refuses to talk (because she can't understand him; his speech is muffled by his welder's mask), he destroys her peaceful home planet, Basketball (a basketball).

After a light-speed chase, Fluke, Ham, Augie, and the rest are sucked into the enemy base (a waffle iron) by a tractor beam. While the rest of the crew attempt to rescue the princess from the base, Augie tries to shut off the tractor beam, which requires going to an exposed pylon and lowering a switch next to an animated picture of a farm tractor. After they rescue the Princess, Augie Ben Doggie chooses to stay behind to battle Darph Nader, and the rest of the group dismiss him as a "martyr". Their spaceship is assaulted by bits of tin-foil trash, which makes Chewchilla jittery until he spies Princess Anne-Droid's hair whorls, which are cinnamon rolls worn on the sides of her head. He eats one as the princess looks on in disgust.

Fluke joins a squad of spaceships (corkscrews). He is told to "trust your feelings" by the ghostly voice of Augie. The climactic destruction of the enemy base is not shown. The film ends with the voiceover, "May the Farce be with you". The end of the credits state that the production was "filmed on location in space", followed by a statement beginning "All scenes depicting violence towards animals were deleted from the film.", reflecting the legal statement that was beginning to appear in film credits at that time.

Hardware Wars was written and directed by San Francisco native Ernie Fosselius and produced by Michael Wiese. It was structured as a mock movie trailer, and Fosselius secured narration from veteran voice-over artist Paul Frees. Fosselius capitalised on his budget limitations by using deliberately-ridiculous household objects as props; spaceships were represented by such items as steam irons, toasters and cassette recorders, and the lightsaber of Fluke Starbucker (Scott Mathews) was a flashlight. The characters, played by actors who were as low-budget as the props, were also parodied in name and appearance; Chewbacca the Wookiee was replaced by Chewchilla the Wookiee Monster (an obvious Cookie Monster puppet dyed brown), and Darth Vader's counterpart Darph Nader (whose name parodied consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader) wore a welding helmet that distorted his voice so much that no one could understand anything he said. Other characters include Ham Salad, Augie "Ben" Doggie, Princess Anne-Droid, and the drones, 4-Q-2 (who resembles the Tin Woodman from The Wizard of Oz) and Arty-Deco (an antique canister vacuum cleaner).

Although Hardware Wars was a spoof, the creators found a talented post-production crew. The visual-effects department consisted of John Allardice, Andy Lesniak, Glen David Miller, and Fred Tepper. Allardice later worked on films such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lesniak worked on 2013's Man of Steel. Glen David Miller and Fred Tepper worked on 1997's Titanic together. Fosselius also did puppet work and was lead animator and lead editor. He became a sound recordist and editor whose credits include Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and, coincidentally, Spaceballs.

The soundtrack for Hardware Wars was performed by the Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jonel Perlea, and only featured one song, Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", which is quite ironic as this film is a spoof trailer while Wagner's music is world renowned as a marvel of opera. This song from Wagner's epic opera Der Ring des Nibelungen appears in famous films such as Apocalypse Now.