old Star Wars toys!

I dug out my box of vintage Star Wars toys that I have left. My original, beat-up, basically junk Star Wars dudes that I loved probably more than I've loved any woman I ever met.

Kind of wish I still had my X-Wing and ISP-6 mini-rig, but those are long gone. And now, anecdote time! Darth Vader. Man, how many of these I owned. C-3PO with Removable Limbs, R2-D2 w/ Sensorscope, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader. I bet I had an average of three of each, with R2-D2 probably being my most common purchase. Those damn stickers just couldn't hold up to the bathtub, man. And Vader- every time I lost his saber or ripped the vinyl cape, I had to have a new figure. Of course, by the time I was old enough to own these, they were on mega-clearance, and I was able to get them for like 3 for $1. I was a Jedi baby, one of the last of the original Star Wars Generation. Hell, I remember getting Admiral Ackbar and a couple other guys at Kay-Bee in January of 1987 when my youngest brother was born-that's how long these toys hung around on clearance. Lobot there I have a really good memory of getting. No kid in the world would have ever asked for Lobot. I knew who he was in the movie, since Kenner basically packaged the figure on a 6x9 still from the movies, but at full price, there's no way. I remember one trip to Target which had to have been before I had any siblings, and there in front of one of the makeup aisles was an endcap full of clearanced Lobot figures. No one else, just Lobot, $1 each. My dad asked me if I wanted one, and I said yes, duh. Still have him, and I bet if I had lost him, I wouldn't still have that memory. Wicket W. Warrick there in front comes from the Ewoks cartoon in 1985. Got him at Kay-Bee, again. Went there all the time, since my parents loved Sears and JCPenney, and Kay-Bee was strategically located between those stores in Crossroads Mall. (JCPenney is where I got the Jedi Luke and Endor Han, if I remember right.) I'm sure I wanted the Jabba the Hutt playset, because Jabba. I got this Wicket instead, since he was much cheaper. I've looked for somne time to get a nice minty version of this figure, to no avail. These toys went up in value quite a bit in the last thirty years. The B-Wing Pilot (dude in red) and Logray came from Christmas 1984. They and a bunch of other toys I got that year were piled loose into a Tonka dump truck, back when Tonka trucks still were made out of aluminum. I think my dog Snowball got a hold of the Pilot, what with all those chew marks. Chewbacca was purchased at the long-closed Ben Franklin in Evansdale, IA. My aunt Linda bought it for me, and man, was I glad to have Chewie finally. I tried to take care of that one. Plus, I could finally pull of this trick:

This was the greatest thing ever. Until you ripped that damn vinyl backpack. Wow, this is getting long. The AT-ST Driver was purchased at a K-Mart (I believe) by my grandmother to placate me on a car ride to Lake City. My grandmother also bought me the Rebel Commando, who was one of my favorite figures. Leia in Boushh disguise was one of those 3 for $1 purchases at Kay-Bee. My acquisition of the Emperor is a funny tale. Walking through K-Mart (they used to be huge back in the day, believe me) I spied the greatest Star Wars toys ever made: "The Force" lightsabers! Both red and green! I had to have the green one, because Luke had that color in Return of the Jedi. My mother was like "HELL NO." Not because of the cost or anything, but because I had an infant brother at the time and the last thing she wanted was a four-year-old with a rigid plastic lightsaber running around. So she offered a compromise of another figure instead. I saw the reason and picked the Emperor. Pretty sure I lost his cane in the Oldsmobile riding home. Still have the figure, though he's one the cheapest figures on today's market and those lightsabers are damn near impossible to find. Obi-Wan Kenobi came from Sears. That same Sears store is still open in Crossroads Mall. I still, to this day, expect them to suddenly take out the exercise equipment and put toys back in that area, because that's where the toys were back then. Of course, now, Sears rarely carries toys. I remember getting this Obi-Wan there, and eventually losing the lightsaber. I improvised, and took the cotton off a q-tip, colored the stick blue, and placed it in his hand, where it remains to this day. Back there all lonely is my favorite action figure of all time, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker. He followed me everywhere, and has the super loose joints to prove it. This figure took a lot of abuse. I'm glad I still have it. My junk collection wouldn't be the same without him. I recently decided to rebuy a nice mint vintage Star Wars collection. I had a good collection going, but sold it a few years back when I needed some dough. I instantly regretted it, and avoided buying any for a long time. Having finished my He-Man and GI Joe collections to satisfaction, I decided to pursue these again. I am passionate about few things (OK, nothing else) like I am Star Wars, and it just feels like the right thing to do. Though a few figures may remain out of my reach, I don't have a silly need to get them all.