Awwwww, who's the cutest widdle army of intergalactic space Nazis? You are, yes you are!
This is my latest ebay haul of Star Wars "Galactic Heroes" (in)action figures. Origiinally these were marketed for toddlers, I guess as sort of a gateway drug to hard-core Star Wars collecting. But they must have caught on with collectors, because they no longer go under the Playskool banner and they've ballooned into a staggeringly complete line of their own. Ironically, though they're targeted at little kids they're the only collectables I can't seem to age out of.
I made a decision to quit collecting fanboy crap awhile ago. I just decided that for me it was over. God knows it wasn't related to any kind of societal or peer pressure. I happen to work in an industry where it's not only tolerated but somewhat expected that one adorn one's work station with movie- and comic book-related toys. Apart from that, half of my primary social group these days is two years old, and the other half is contractually bound by the State of New York to continue living with me no matter what kind of garbage I see fit to waste our money on.
It's just that--for me--it stopped being great fun. I realized a long time ago that nothing entertainment-related was again going to give me the kind of transcendant joy I experienced as a young Kevie living the Star Wars experience. I'm not going to piss away what chance my kid has at a college fund by chasing a cycle of diminishing returns, buying more and more sophisticated crap liscensed from less and less entertaining movies, tv shows and comic books. I mean, who the hell is buying photo-realistic 12" maquettes of Black Canary in a sexually suggestive kung-fu pose? Isn't that sort of like putting manniquens in your apartment and pretending it's a cocktail party, except kind of more creepy? I don't know, but I swore off the stuff years ago.
Then my man in Portland, Lee Dawson (the only person I know who can have an apartment full of toys and memorabilia that somehow looks like a happening bachelor lives there), showed me these cute-ass little figures of Luke and Han riding on big-eyed Tauntons and fighting an adorable little Wampa monster, and my newfound maturity folded faster than a phalanx of Democratic senators fighting an appropriations bill. Now any time I'm in Target or K-Mart I'm back to stalking the toy aisle like a pathetic goon, looking to see if a new lot's been released and hoping I look like I might be on the way to a child's birthday party.
These things put me right back in '77 or '78 when that first pre-release of Star Wars toys (if you tell me it's called "Episode IV: A New Hope" I will stop typing on this laptop right now and beat you over the head with it) came in the mail to those few lucky kids who had saved up enough box tops, or gum wrappers, or hair, or whatever it was you needed. There they were in a plain cardboard box (no bubble packs): four completely awesome, barely-articulated bits of plastic that looked nothing like Luke, Leia, Chewie, and Threepio. Decades later people in their forties would be clicking a link to buy 12" figurines from "Prison Break", digitally sculpted from laser scans of the actors' faces and featuring working zippers and hand-sewn prison beanies (I am not making this up), in an attempt to recapture that first high.
I love that these aren't replicas, they're goofy caricatures. But they nonetheless capture all that was wonderful about the glorious production design of those early films, for which my affection is bottomless. Middle age be damned, as long as they keep makin' em, I'll keep buyin' em. (I only turn my nose up to anything prequil-related. Wookie please!) As time goes on they keep getting deeper into the minor players in the first three movies. Every time I check online and see that another series has been released all work comes to a dead stop, and I might as well be tying off my arm right there as I hunt down the latest incredibly cute cantina extras.
And best of all, they're designed for little kids, with safety in mind, with the result that you can't lose the friggin' guns like you always used to!
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Today on the playground Edie started to seriously investigate the sideways tire swing on a chain thing. Even after she got done being pushed on it, there were the hours of fun to be had trying to push it herself without getting knocked over by it. At one point she even asked me to sit on it ( "Da-ee, swing") and did her level best to push me around until that got too taxing ("Da-ee, aw done"). We moved on and when we came back she was somewhat baffled to find a few bigger kids using her swing. "Edie swing?" she asked, hoping I'd make sense of this confounding turn of events. I tried to tell her about sharing and taking turns, and she soon decided I was useless as a consigliere, and really only fit to be an enforcer. To that end she walked around me and started trying to push me toward the group of big kids. "Da-ee, swing." Eventually a little lesson was learned about sharing the park facilities with the other kids, or at any rate that she really needed to look into hiring some better muscle.
