In which I continue to be inconsistent about using the “cite” tags on “Star Wars.”

§ November 18th, 2016 § Filed under star wars § 3 Comments

rotjr2sens
So I’ve had Star Wars on my mind a lot lately, mostly due to getting in this collection I told you about a couple of days ago (and also probably because I’ve been plowing through episodes of Star Wars Rebels via Netflix discs over the last two weeks). A while back I talked about getting the Early Bird Kit for that first post-Star Wars Christmas in 1977. During that what seemed like an insanely long gap of time between Star Wars and whatever Star Wars II was going to be called was where I did the bulk of my Star Warsian toy acquisition. After receiving the Early Bird Kit figures in the mail, I ended up getting most, if not all, of the regular figures available at the time, as well as some vehicles (the Landspeeder and the Tie Fighter) and a playset (the awesome Pie Wedge of the Death Star set). And yes, I collected Proofs-of-Purchase and sent away for (and received) the mail order Boba Fett.

And that was that, more or less. When Empire Strikes Back came out, the only figures I ended up getting for that film (aside from Boba, which technically was a Holiday Special character, don’t @ me) was Yoda (of course, that was an awesome figure) and, inexplicably, a Snowtrooper (which may be part of the reason I was so excited to see someone dressed as a Snowtrooper at that one Wizard World I attended). After that, though I’d been tempted by many different Star Wars figures that came down the pike, I’d only purchased two: this Queen Amidala figure from The Phantom Menace (hey, I liked the look of the character) and R2-Q5 (can’t say why, other than it looked cool). I keep thinking about pulling the trigger on a BB-8 of some kind, but I’ve resisted so far.

In discussions both online and actually face-to-face, I found myself discussing that period just after Return of the Jedi was released, where it seemed like Star Wars was pretty much done for good and the toys ended up in clearance bins. I remember seeing piles of these figures just gathering dust in the bargain barrels with series of price stickers with progressively-lower prices affixed to the packaging, and thinking “boy, if I was still into getting Star Wars toys, I’d be in hog heaven.” Of course, 1983 to 1986 or ’87 me was completely ignoring the time-traveling psychic communications from 21st century me extolling him to “BUY THEM, BUY THEM ALL AND SAVE THEM TO RESELL LATER ON EBAY — I’LL EXPLAIN WHAT ‘EBAY’ IS LATER, JUST DO IT!” Ah, well.

Not sure why I’m laying all this on you, other than to get these weird Star Wars collecting feelings of nostalgia out of my system, or at least share them while they persist during my ongoing processing of that collection. That figure pictured above was one of the few actual vintage figures in this collection, dating from 1983. Most of the rest of the figures date from the late ’90s revival and later. Amazing how primitive-looking but still strangely appealing that little R2-D2 toy is…the little chrome head, that paper sticker glued to its torso, which was probably much easier than actually modeling all the nooks and crannies on R2’s body. The 1983 R2 looks pretty much the same as the one I got in 1978…no need to mess with success, I guess, or to improve the sculpt so much that it no longer matches the look and feel of the rest of the line. This version does have an extendable “sensorscope,” which I’m sure if it had been available when I was 8 years old, I would have nagged my parents into buying it for me. “But Mom, this R2-D2 has the sensorscope! We have to get it!”

Instead, 47-year-old me put it on eBay and sold it for $115.97, plus shipping. I’m not sure what 8-year-old me would have thought about that.

3 Responses to “In which I continue to be inconsistent about using the “cite” tags on “Star Wars.””

  • Thelonious_Nick says:

    “I remember seeing piles of these figures just gathering dust in the bargain barrels with series of price stickers with progressively-lower prices affixed to the packaging,”

    I think it was 1985 when I discovered a TIE Interceptor on clearance at Rose’s (the local discount mart) for $2. I was 10 and getting a little too old for toys but couldn’t pass up that bargain.

  • Allan Hoffman says:

    Eight-year old you would have thought, “I can buy so many toys with that money!”

  • 8-year-old Mike would have been more than halfway to understanding what eBay was.