For fun...star wars collecting fiction stories

[TheDarthVader]

Stories of fiction having to do with star wars toy collecting...make up your own...include star wars movie quotes for added fun. You can even post true stories if you would like.

Tycho looses his legacy collection Millennium Falcon to me after a game of Texas hold 'em. For some reason I loose my mind and decide to paint the whole thing pink. Probably just to aggravate him for loosing it in the first place. After seeing that I have painted the Falcon pink, Tyhco comes to me and says, "What have you done to my ship?" And I reply, "Your ship? Hey you lost her to me fair and square."

[Ji'dai]

I was in TRU shortly before christmas taking advantage of their BOGO sale on Star Wars figures and the checkout girl (probably in her teens or early 20s) says, "oh, SW figures! Are they still on sale? That's what I'm going to get my dad for christmas."

She's not getting them for a younger brother or cousin but for dad. Doesn't that make you feel old?

[pbarnard]

She's not getting them for a younger brother or cousin but for dad. Doesn't that make you feel old?

So you weren't creepy and ask for her number?

It was 1999 and a dad was looking for TPM figures for his kids. He was frantic saying he's have to resort to eBay and pay 4-5X what they were at the store. I told him about the internet, the official fan store, collecting sites who's sponsors sell these things. It may cost a dollor or two more, but you don't have to deal with the hassel of hunting, really over paying etc. He thanked me and walked right out the door.

[El Chuxter]

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out at mabs' house. (I go there at least once or twice a week to just hang out, even though he lives way up in Canada, mostly because his 2-1B collection is superior to mine and I love to play a good game of Deuce.) But we'd already played Deuce twelve times and we wanted to do something else.

"Any ideas what we can do until TeeEye7 gets here, eh?" asked mabs, who, being Canadian, has to say "eh?" after every sentence. (It doesn't matter that I've never heard him or any other Canadian actually do that; it's a stereotype, dammit!) I pointed out to him that the ESB wave had been seen hitting in some places, and he got really excited. It seems he really wanted a Willrow Hood figure, so his army of 2-1B's could have ice cream occasionally. He jumped up so high, he hit his head on the ceiling, and shouted, "We have to go to Figmo's right now and see if they've got them in, eh!"

But at that very moment, there was a knock at the door. Thinking it was TeeEye (who, as it turns out, had been caught behind a semi truck hauling candy corn that had overturned somewhere in Utah, and was too busy eating up the sweet candy goodness and lost track of time, and never showed up, and forgot to call, but was nice enough two days later to send mabs a box of Christmas candy he'd found on clearance to make up for it), mabs tossed open the door and yelled his traditional mabudonian greeting, which is the chorus to "Detroit Rock City."

But it wasn't TeeEye7. It was Mr. JabbaJohnL, and he had a case of Molsons. "Hey, boys, time to have us a little drink... in bed. Aww yeah!" (He wasn't actually hitting on us, though. See, though you wouldn't know it to look at him, JJL sounds just like Barry White when he talks. Ever since he hit puberty and his voice changed, he ends everything he says with "in bed. Aww yeah!" simply because he loves the way it sounds. It's weirded a few people out, and once led to a rather humorous story when Steve Sansweet misunderstood him when he told him to get out of his way in a Piggly Wiggly checkout line.)

"How'd you get beer, eh? You're underaged, eh? What's this all aboot, eh?" asked mabs. He was surprised. In Canada, you have to be 50 to buy beer, so even he can't get it.

"I just told the cashier I'd left my ID somewhere... in bed. Aww yeah!"

"Hey, we were talking about going to Figmo's and seeing if they've got the Empire Strikes Back wave, eh?" said mabs.

"Sounds like a good idea. Let's get going... in bed. Aww yeah!"

So mabs picked up the phone to call his personal chaffeur, who showed up mere seconds later in his hella cool black van. "You want me to take these turkeys with you to Figmo's?" he asked. "Shut that jibba jabba! I ain't takin' these foos nowhere!"

JJL was starstruck. "Wow, mabs, I didn't know Mr. T was your personal chaffeur! That's awesome! I can't wait to ride with him... in bed. Aww yeah!"

(Remember what I said about a humorous story when Steve Sansweet misunderstood JJL's meaning a while ago? A very similar incident happened here, only switch Mr. T for Steve Sansweet.)

So, about fifteen minutes later, we were all in Mr. T's van, on our way to Figmo's, when CRASH!!

"Aww, hell no!" shouted Mr. T, jumping from the driver's seat. "What foo' done hit my hella cool van?"

"Sarree, ser, I did knot sea it!" said a small voice from outside.

JJL hid his head in his hands. "Oh no, I know that voice. It's this annoying guy named Robin who bugs the heck out of everybody and spends a lot of time with his uncle... in bed. Aww yeah!"

We fully expected several minutes, if not hours, of fun antics involving Robin and his stupidity, but Mr. T hopped into the van just a minute later, muttering something about Robin being inappropriate for a family website.

So we kept on driving, and, well, the quickest way to get to Figmo's is by driving down by the docks. We'd stopped at a stoplight in the seediest area imaginable, and this decrepit hag strolled up and stuck her head in the window. "Show you boys a good time?" she asked.

"No, we're on a mission to get a Willrow Hood figure, eh?" said mabs.

"Can I at least borrow a dollar, so I can wash my clothes?"

Wanting Slicker's Mom to get away as quickly as possible, Mr. T handed her a five dollar bill. "Now go on, get, foo!"

It was at that moment that we saw the blue lights flashing in the window.

"Oh no, it's the fuzz!" said Mr. T. He pulled an M-16 from under the passenger seat. "Sit tight; I'll take care of this foo'."

"No need, Mr. T. There's only one police officer in Canada, and he's a friend of mine, eh?"

"Sir, why did you hand this woman money?" asked the officer.

"JJ, how's it going, eh?"

"JJ? Oh, you must mean Reason. I'm not him. He's busy playing World of Warcraft, so he paid me fifty bucks to fill in for him. Officer Jack Black, at your service."

"Oh. You look just like him, eh?"

JJL leaned forward. "Oh, Mr. Black, I loved you in Kung Fu Panda! I'm a filmmaker myself, working on the latest in my trilogy about Vince Offer. I've got just the role for you in my next film... in bed. Aww yeah!"

Black's demeanor cooled. "I'm going to have to ask you perverts to get out of the car."

"I have a bad feeling about this," I muttered.

We were arrested, the car was impounded--there was no way for us to avoid getting grounded! My parents had to cancel their vacation to get me. I'd rather be in jail than have my father hit me. Just as they walked in, I got my grip, and said, "Uh, Mom, Dad, how was your trip?"

A couple of days later, mabs called me up. It turns out Figmo's had actually received the Empire Strikes Back wave just that morning. Unfortunately, we were all in jail, and they sold out. None other than Lanny had bought the last Willrow Hood, and, knowing how much mabs wanted one, Lanny let him know he had it by standing on his roof and shooting across the street at mabs' house, "Hey, mabs! I have the high ground! Ha ha ha ha ha! Eh?"

True story. Swear to Dog.

[bigbarada]

I was 13 years old and it was the summer of 1986. My brother and I were staying at my aunt's ranch near San Jose, California. After doing yard work for a week and earning some money, my cousin decided to take us on a shopping trip that weekend.

First we bought a birthday present for our mom, to give her when we got back home. We checked out some toy aisles, but we were mostly into GI Joe back in those days. Eventually we made it to a Toys R Us and wandered through the toy aisle. I think I got caught up looking through the GI Joe or Transformers figures because my brother and cousin were way ahead of me.

By the time I caught up to them, I noticed my brother going through a very familiar section of the toy aisle. They were Star Wars figures, but these were different. They had coins on the figures and they all said "Power of the Force" under the Star Wars logo. It was the first time I had ever heard of this line as I thought that Star Wars ended with Paploo and Lumat on the 79-back Return of the Jedi cards.

Needless to say, I was shocked to notice figures that I had never even heard of before. There were several figures that I already owned (Lumat, Paploo, AT-AT Driver, B-Wing Pilot, Leia Endor Poncho), but a couple that I had never seen before. The first to catch my eye was a purple guy standing in front of an oddly blank grey background.

It was the Imperial Dignitary and I only briefly remembered seeing him in the film. I looked at him and thought, "Man, this guy would go great with my Darth Vader and Emperor figure!" But I hadn't brought any of my Star Wars toys to California with me and he didn't look like he would be any fun all by himself. So I put him back.

Next I noticed another new figure named "Barada." My first reaction was amusement at how different the figure looked from his reference photo. But still, something about him looked pretty cool and I did kinda like the whole "pirate" theme he had going on. He was definitely in my "maybe pile."

It finally started to dawn on me that there may be more new figures so I checked the back of the card with my hopes held high for three figures that I had dreamed about for years...

My first reaction was one of absolute disappointment. Why was there no Darth Vader with a removable helmet? No Chewbacca with his ROTJ hairstyle? And still no R2-D2 with the third leg? There was a new version of R2 on the back of the card, but that only came with a lightsaber. Lame.

My second reaction was "Who the heck are all these guys?"

Han in Carbonite stuck out like a sore thumb on that 92-back card and I thought he was interesting, but a little pointless.

The next one to really grab my attention was Amanaman, who I looked for on the pegs but couldn't find.

Warok and Romba were more annoying than exciting, since I used to always brag, "I own all the Ewok action figures"; but from that point on I could only say, "I own all the Ewok action figures except for Warok and Romba." (As you can guess, I never saw them on the pegs.)

While I was looking at the cardback, my brother pointed to a guy dressed all in black and said, "If you find this guy, I want him!" Of course, it was the Imperial Gunner and he was also nowhere to be seen at TRU that day.

Luke Stormtrooper was an odd choice I thought, but then it dawned on me that this was clearly intended to be a consolidated line and not just dedicated to ROTJ. I looked for him, along with the A-Wing Pilot, Luke Battle Poncho and General Lando (who I all thought were perfectly logical choices for new figures). Unfortunately, I didn't find any more of the 13 new figures I saw on the back of the card that day (I already owned the mail-away Anakin, so he wasn't new in my mind either).

However, while digging through all the figures, I spotted a couple more Baradas, Imperial Dignitaries and a Jawa. Which was a major find, because my only Jawa figure had been lost, or stolen, or destroyed (don't remember which) 5-6 years earlier and I always wanted another one.

The most exciting part of all this was the price: 2 for $1. I actually thought, "Boy, Star Wars figures must really be doing well if they can sell them this cheaply." Little did I know that this was the clearance aisle and I was witnessing the last dying breaths of the Kenner Star Wars toy line.

I decided that I could spare $1 on two figures and wanted those two figures to be Barada and the Jawa.

By now, my brother and cousin had already moved on to the next aisle and I decided that I needed to catch up. My brother was actually in the next aisle looking at some clearanced Rebo Band sets ($5) and the Shield Generator Assault Micro Collection set ($2 - the one with the little Scout Walker); but I wouldn't know that until about 30 seconds later.

By the way, this entire story is true except for this next part:

So I grabbed my Barada and Jawa and met up with them. We checked out and I lived happily ever after.

In truth, before I even left the toy aisle, I changed my mind and put the two figures down in some 'random-failed-1980s-toy-franchise' section of the TRU aisle. At the last minute I decided that I would rather save my money because we still had a couple of stores to visit and I didn't want to wind up being $1 short of some awesome new GI Joe toy because I had decided to buy more Star Wars figures.

[TheDarthVader]

Man those are so very interesting tales. Some may be true...I am personally hoping that El Chuxter's is true.

Sorry that you missed out Big Barada. That really sucks, and I wish (as you do) that you had purchased those figures. I can't believe a star wars figure in 1985 was only $0.50 on clearance. That is insane as our new figures are 15 TIMES THAT now!!

[bigbarada]

Man those are so very interesting tales. Some may be true...I am personally hoping that El Chuxter's is true.

Sorry that you missed out Big Barada. That really sucks, and I wish (as you do) that you had purchased those figures. I can't believe a star wars figure in 1985 was only $0.50 on clearance. That is insane as our new figures are 15 TIMES THAT now!!

That all happened sometime around the middle of July 1986. In early 1987 we saw several pegwarming POTF B-Wing Pilots at a KayBee Toys in Santa Fe, NM, but that was it. That one summer day at TRU was the first and last time I would ever see any of the "last-15" POTF figures at retail. They vanished into legend and rumor after that. In the years that followed, my brother and I tried to gather as much information about these figures as possible, but most of our friends were only good for providing ridicule (because we were in high school and still talking about toys), exaggerated truths or outright lies.

It wouldn't be until I read Steve Sansweet's book, 'From Concept, To Screen, To Collectible,' in 1993 that I was finally able to sort out fact from fiction (even though there are some inaccuracies in that book as well).

Needless to say, the last-15 POTF figures have always held a special place in my collecting heart and I don't think I'll ever be able to look at them as just any old toy line.

[El Chuxter]

No one else has an epic tale about mabudonicus? I might have to make up one about 2-1B and Steven Tyler. Maybe.