Episode 142: Star Wars Toys

[Flack]

Episode 142 is Online.

In Episode 142, I and special guest Earl Green from TheLogBook.com share our memories about collecting Star Wars toys. Both of us saw Star Wars at very early ages and have been collecting Star Wars toys ever since.

Link: Episode 142: Star Wars Toys
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[Pantechnicon]

I enjoyed YDKF 142 on Star Wars toy collecting. Being in the same age bracket as yourself and Earl it brought back a few memories of my own limited experiences with a couple of the Star Wars toy lines growing up.

- When the first Kenner line was in distribution my brother and I only had a limited number of figures and vehicles (like, eight of them and the Landspeeder) between the two of us. One day I was visiting a local park and chanced upon a Stormtrooper figure just lying there in the grass. Suffice to say I was elated because – hey - free Star Wars toys! I was so thrilled about this that on the next occasion of Show & Tell in my 3rd grade class I took my serendipitous acquisition to show off. One of my classmates then proceeded to tell me how he happened to be in the park that same day and bore witness to a younger child who was crying his eyes out over having just misplaced a couple of Star Wars figures, and that I had an obligation to seek this child out and return the Stormtrooper to him. I quietly shrugged and sat down. No, I never sought out this kid, because – hey – free Star Wars toys…

- In the late 90s I began collecting the Galoob Micro Machines series of Star Wars ships and vehicles in both the small vinyl and die cast metal scale. My wife and I were living in an apartment at the time and display space for the ships was limited. In the course of shopping for a house, we came across one which had a small office which had a number of small nook shelves built into it. My first thought upon seeing these was “This would be the perfect spot to display my Star Wars ships”, and this factored significantly into why we ultimately bought that house. The ships are still sitting there to this day. I do not admit to people generally that I was motivated in part to buy my house because of its ability to display Star Wars toys, but there it is.

- Eventually becoming an “adult” of some means and disposable income, I decided to make up for my childhood’s meager collection of Star Wars figures and over the last 18 months have been actively collecting loose Kenner figures and vehicles. I am not shooting for completion, but only for a sizable representation of the Kenner line, which I have largely accomplished. My nephews are big Star Wars fans, and once asked me why I kept all my Star Wars toys on a rather high shelf. I explained as politely as I could that my toys “are all up there because you’re all down here”. On occasion I will pull them down and let them play…but only under close supervision. I had to wait 25 years to get that Millennium Falcon, darn it...

[Flack]

"They're all up there because you're all down here." HAH! That's a great, great line. In 2000 a lot of stores were dumping their Power of the Force toys and I was picking them up on the cheap. While Susan was pregnant with Mason I had a friend visit who gave me an eye opening assessment of my house. "That'll get opened, that'll be gone, that'll be broken," etc. That's pretty much why my collection went into storage until the kids were a bit older.

I appreciate your feedback and stories. I thought this episode would be way more popular than it ended up being. It's doing okay on downloads but I've received almost no feedback on it.

[AArdvark]

I'm not a big Star wars fan, at least not in the sense of collecting stuff, but I appreciate the franchise and the impact on our culture. I will say that while listening to you guys swap Star Wars stories I realized that the stories behind the toys mean almost more than the toys themselves. I think this is the theme for all the YDKF podcasts. It's the heart behind the stories that keeps me tuning in every time there's a new episode.



THE
MORE THAN
JUST AN ACTION FIGURE
AARDVARK

[Flack]

I don't think there's any "almost" to it. The memories ARE what make the toys so great, whether it's the memories of playing with the toys themselves or memories of the films. That's why I have such a hard time paying a lot of money for figures I didn't own back in the day. If I didn't own them or play with them back then, what's the point?