Great, another mouse droid for the kids

**El Chuxter** · 06-17-2003

Yes, just when we thought all the mind-altering mouse droids Hasbro had unleashed upon the children of America had vanished (well, except for the one in the Target accessory pack, which not even the most desperate mouse droid junkie would buy an extra of), there's another mouse droid to keep your children away from.

And, like a true drug dealer, Hasbro got children hooked at the low prices for the POTF2 and POTJ mouse droids and has now jacked up the price to $20 for the "Imperial Forces Army Builder Set" (read: "Overpriced Fix for Mouse Droid Sniffers").

When will it end? Didn't Nancy Reagan teach us anything? Well, other than something about wearing shoes on Labor Day?

Children, just say no to mouse droids! Mr T doesn't sniff his toys, so neither should you.

**Beast** · 06-17-2003

I don't know who scares me more. Tycho going on about Mouse Droids, or El Chuxter going on about them.

MTFBWY and HH!!

Jar Jar Binks

**Tycho** · 06-17-2003

You know, they have never validated any studies showing that sniffing Mouse Droids has detrimental -WHOA! -AAGGH! WAAAAH! HII-yEEE-AAAhhh- brain effects.

I've been sniffing my action figures since I was a child, and I'm a perfectly normal, well adjusted member of society.

In fact, most action figure collectors are.

It's honestly not just a Star Wars thing.

Most boys have or had action figures at some point in their lives:

GI Joes, Wrestlers, Spidermans, X-men, Star Trek, and Star Wars figures, amongst so many others.

And most people are blessed with 5 senses:

sight
hearing
touch
smell
taste

Now I've developed a sixth and seventh sense, but we'll get to that in a sec, O.K.?

When I was a small child, I think I went through the same process every kid goes through when they got ANY new action figure.

1) First you SEE it. "Oooh. Aahh. That's cool, Mom. Can I have that?"

2) Then you hear it (in the vintage R2-D2's case, it began with Star Wars, but today toys have all kinds of electronic effects like the Deluxe Jango Fett, etc.) but mostly you can hear even the simplest toy calling you to "buy me! buy me!"

3) So you gotta buy it, open it, touch it, play with it. You inevitably bring it closer to your face to look at the incredible detail: "It really does resemble the Hasbro intern trying to make it look like Harrison Ford trying to look like Tim Allen!" Or you listen to it closely and it's saying to you "Gosh Hasbro was cheap and ripped us off again!" Or it makes some kind of sound that really translates "you better not leave these cheap batteries in me for too long, before corosion starts kicking in" (oh, and this brings up a whole new topic for another time: sniffing battery acid corrosion - don't try this at home kids!)

4) Well anyway, while the darn thing's so close to your face, you can't help but notice it smells NEW. Like new car smell or something. Your figures will never smell this way again, once they are loose, and out in the air near your cats' sandbox for a while.
So it is a natural outgrowth of appreciating your figures with your first 3 senses, that you get to sniffing them, and using now what amounts to 4 out of 5 senses to appreciate your action figures.

5) As to eating them, to stimulate your sense of taste, well Hasbro warned me in front of hundreds of fans at Celebration 2 that they would not defend me if I chose to pursue publishing a figure recipe book that encouraged fans to eat their action figures. Duh! It was a CUSTOM action figure recipe book - and yeah you boil them in hot water to remove the heads and arms etc. all intact so they'll be articulated figures when you put them back together. So sure I use my cookwares while customizing my figures, but I was not advocating that we cook them for consumption. Well, anyway, that was then. More recently, I've been giving serious consideration to picking up an extra 12" Gamorrean Guard and preparing the arms in legs in some marinate and knawing on them while I work at the computer. Actually, chewing on his head like bubblegum might also ease any sinus pressures so you could smell better...but back to the topic at hand.

Those of us who have really discovered Star Wars, already have our Sixth Sense: The Force of Course. It calls to us and when we connect with it, we know when we should visit our local Target for example. When I decide I'm going to go figure hunting, it guides me all the way: Like when I leap out of bed in the morning and prepare to run to the store before they open, I can hear the Force calling to me, telling me "Use your car dummy!"

Now the Seventh Sense is what really comes into play only with Experienced Mouse Droid Sniffers.

This is the instinctive ability to find products in your favorite toy store that you know would feel great when you stuff them in your nose!

I mean the Mouse Droid is so obvious, because the underside is hollow and the new plastic smell is contained in a small enclosed area, where new air doesn't readily sweep the old pvc plastic scent away, as it would off solid surfaces. Hence Luminara Undulli smells better under her robes than she does by her head.

With a finely honed Seventh Sense, you can usually spot products that would be good to smell, either due to shape, as we just illustrated, or due to materials choice, etc.

Is this addictive? It'd really be difficult to prove how.

The smell eventually wears off - even from the best Mouse Droid, and the sensations fade.

But we're collectors and we're always off looking for new action figures.

I only think you have a problem if you return new figures you don't already have, just because they don't smell strong enough for you.

But once you're in this hobby, it's difficult to prove someone is only buying action figures just to snort them.

Usually, I figure the guy buying a glut of new figures in the morning is first a scalper, or second buying for his friends, or buying to army build. But you never know. You might want to try asking those grown men that hang out front of Wal*Mart at 6:45 in the morning if they sniff their action figures. It's sometimes hard for an adult to admit Mouse Droid abuse to a younger individual, so stress that you sniff your figures already, and have been doing so with satisfaction for many years. Ask them if you can come over and sniff some of their more potent items in their collection. Remember kids, if they invite you to see their stuff at a Swap Meet, that means their a scalper - so kick their butt! Only see how helpful some friendly Mouse Droid sniffing can be to ensuring the enjoyment of other aspects of your hobby? Like finding new stuff that these over-grown buffoons that ought to get real jobs usually take? I seriously doubt they won't have second thoughts about messing with someone who has the Mouse Droid as their ally!

[remember not to go to a stranger's house without your mommy or daddy]

In any case, I really don't see what's the harm in some simple Mouse Droid sniffing.

So what's all the fuss?

Don't you sniff your action figures?

**QLD** · 06-17-2003

I sniffed a Leia figure once.....but it wasn't quite what I expected.

**Rogue II** · 06-18-2003

I opened my Imperial Forces pack, but I forgot to sniff the mouse droid.

The Saga Royal Guard is still the worst smelling toy, ever. Hasbro went out of their way to stick each figure in the back end of a skunk before placing them in the package.

It was the Slave Leia, wasn't it LIMP? You just couldn't resist the metal bikini, could you?

**El Chuxter** · 06-18-2003

Now see, this is the kind of scatterbrained logic I would expect from a mouse droid sniffer, trying to get his twisted addiction legalized!

It is not a natural thing to sniff everything we come into contact with. That is what separates humans from dogs. A dog sees a hydrant and immediately thinks, "Woo, I've got to smell that!" Whereas we, as enlightended beings, do not see a toilet and think the same thing.

Though a thorough study of the effects of sniffing mouse droids has yet to be published (though noted neurosurgeon Ima Fakeperson, DDS, is hard at work on it), I'd like to refer you to a site started several years ago as a haven for mouse droid sniffers to find others who share their depraved habit, which has morphed over the years as the droid sniffers have lost more and more of their mental faculties: The Mouse Droid Sniffer's Home Page. It isn't a pretty sight--or a pretty site, either.

For God's sake, clean up your acts, stop sniffing the droids, and devote your lives to something worthwhile, like making it a felony to be an otter!

**Tycho** · 06-18-2003

Aaaagh! Those poor tortured cats!

As a pet owner of two cats in addition to my Mouse Droids, I can definately say this is not the Mouse Droid Sniffers' Association's homepage!

This is in fact very scary and Mouse Droids may have nothing to do with what you see here. Warning: it is not for the feint-hearted!

This site is likely the result of strong drug abuse!

**Rogue II** · 06-18-2003

Tycho,

Since you're not only the president, but also a client of the Mouse Droid Sniffers Association, I think it is your responsibility to come up with the official MDSA homepage. You can include all of our Mouse Droid art.

...just make sure you put that quote from Hasbro saying that it's ok to sniff their figures.

I don't really know anything about webpage design, so I can't really help you. But I will gladly donate more Mouse Droid Art and graphics if necessary.

**El Chuxter** · 06-19-2003

Tycho, perhaps you missed the nonexistent tagline: "The Official Website of the Mouse Droid Sniiffers' Association, Created by Tycho."

I refer you all to the Death Star, the only scene where actual mouse droids have appeared. Notice that there are no Stormtroopers picking up the mouse droids and sniffing them. And when one approaches Chewbacca, who is more dog than man, Chewie doesn't grab it and take a whiff. No, he scares it away. This is because everyone in the Star Wars galaxy knows how harmful mouse droid fumes are. Were a Stormtrooper to sniff a mouse droid, he would be immediately expelled from the Imperial Navy for his indiscretion and locked in a rehad center. By contrast, there have been no Stormtroopers relieved of duty for using other drugs.

Only two mouse-droid sniffers can be seen in the Star Wars saga. One is Admiral Motti, whose sniffing of the mouse droids hampers his judgment and causes him to get into an argument with Vader. BIG MISTAKE! Vader puts him in his place, disgusted to have to deal with such a waste of protoplasm.