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Star Wars Action Figures
An anonymous reader writes "Star Wars nostalgia buffs: X-E just added a fairly long feature detailing some of the many mail-away offers made by the Kenner company to keep kids interested in SW action figures in the 80s."
This letter reads so much like the start of the spam that I get in my inbox. It was funny to read...
...if only it read...
Dear Young Jedi Knight:
Greetings! I hope this letter reaches you -- I am sending it over great distances and many millennia.
I am sending it over 10000ly (TEN THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS) and 10000y (TEN THOUSAND YEARS)....
If only I didn't freeze Han Solo so many times and kept the figure in the original plastic it would be worth a lot now ;)
(DivX, 770 KiB, 13 secs)
I remember waiting weeks for the Boba Fett with the firing missile, and how pissed I was that it wouldn't shoot. I kept trying to make it shoot, looking for a button, moving the arms to trigger it. :(
I also remember playing with a land-speeder for weeks before I could get any figures to go in it (parents should've gone for that early-bird thing), and also how upset it was when I lost Chewbacca's gun in the dark 70s shag carpet, never to be seen again!
...to include Jar Jar and Queen Amidala, are they going to be considered "classic" action figures, too?
Okay, maybe it was a lame giveaway, but I remember sending in for a whole of emperors because I had the proof of purchase seals anyhow. I think I had more emperors than storm troopers. Maybe that's why the empire failed, too much management.
Raise your hand if, like me, you cried when you saw the current selling price of the original action figures you proceded to tie to a fence, shoot with BB guns and explode with fire crackers. Twenty minutes of sheer joy, a lifetime of regret.
----- "Blame the guy who doesn't speak English." -- Homer J. Simpson
This was how I got my Anakin Skywalker figure as a kid. It was the Anakin from the end of ROTJ, it was so cool and I was so jazzed.
Now you won't believe this one, but after getting that when I was about 7 or 8, I write to Hasbro telling them how much of a fan I was and how much I loved Star Wars and that I was enclosing $3 (the going rate back then for StarWars toys, that I earned raking leaves) for a Darth Vader action Figure w/removable helmet and Anakin Skywalkers head/face. Lo' and behold a few weeks later I get a package in the mail with a Darth Vader action figure, non-removable helmet. I was so excited, I didn't care.
I would like to see you try that now a days.
That was one fond memory. Thanks.
Star Wars nostalgia buffs: X-E just added a fairly long feature detailing some of the many mail-away offers made by the Kenner company to keep kids interested in SW action figures in the 80s.
Thank God! I'm tired of all those disbelieving stares I get from the neighborhood kids when I regail them with tales of my treasured Walrus Man action figure I had as a wee tyke! Kids today have no respect for the classics!
GMD
watch this
You need to put a *not work safe* link on anything Natalie Portman related. Especially *live video* !!!
Colossians 2:8
The BEST part of this article is the link WAY down at the bottom to this.
The thing I find funny is the consistent use of the term "action figure" (or even just "figure") to describe these things, even by people who are way too old and media-literate to be fooled any longer. Clearly, they're dolls, and hey, I played with them too (I probably still have R2-D2 - and if that one doesn't give the lie to the term "action" I don't know what does). Even as a ten year old boy I was apparently secure enough in my masculinity that I didn't have a problem with this - if we assume the same applied to the other members of the target demographic, who was the concocted "action figure" term actually meant to placate? The marketroids who coined it? The male parents, already distressed that their scifi-obsessed heir prefers fiddling with this weird crap to playing football like a good little oaf? I'm genuinely curious.
For that matter I'd love to know the history of the weird marketing term itself; were the Star Wars dollies the first use of "action figure", or was it ever used before that, say for certain toys with certain Kung-Fu grips? I'm pretty sure my disastrously-easy-to-disassemble Steve Austin doll wasn't called a "figure", whether or not he was a "doll". Though he would have been proud to be either, damn it.
Shoulda kept the Darda cars. Stupid kid.
can touch Hammerhead.. he rules too much to believe.
My buddy had an AT-AT ( link 1,
link 2,
link 3,
link 4 )and we massacred that thing.. took the head apart so we could get at the electronics and mess with 'em.. we were about 8.. it always kind of walked funny after that..
Here's some posts as to why AT-AT's are 'retarded'.
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Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of comments in this thread, I think the overwhelming opinion is "Who cares?" (/troll)
Seriously, though, the summation of the article wasn't exactly thrilling. Mailing list incentives to convince kids to buy Star Wars action figures?! Shouldn't you be linking to CES previews or something more interesting?
Ah, I just figured out the secret.
If you think you have a really good submission but it keeps getting rejected, just add change it to "STAR WARS [rest of original title]."
Everything you never had, always wanted, were jealous of... And hundreds of things that you never had the chance to get. Great site.
www.toysrgus.com
That guys AIM is on there, poor dude...
Banaaaana!
I misread the title in your message as "How can they overclock the emperor?"
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I remember finally getting Bossk, and all the other neighborhood kids just bowed before me.
And the Action Figure Survival Kit with the umpteen guns, especially the ones with the straps? I was the frickin ARSENAL!
I, too, was hopping pissed that my Boba Fett missle didn't actually shoot... as pissed as I was that my Battlestar Gallactica Cylon fighters and Vipers didn't actually shoot.
When my bro and I were a kid, we played a game...
:)
Take a stormtrooper, or Luke. Put kid on exercise bike with large rubber wheel. Get wheel going very fast. Put head of figurine on wheel. Watch plastic head slowly burn off.
That was great fun. I'd rather have done that than gain a few measly bucks off of another stormtrooper, anyhow...
What about the Natalie Portman / Amidala RealDoll (grown up and early teen versions available). Bet she loves that one.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
...one of the new X-wing fighter pilot action figures named "Jorge Sacul"....limited edition, I promise...still in the blister pack, with neatly trimmed goatee....? Serious offers only.
He just needs a voice box that says "I hate it when my Schwartz gets twisted..."
I purchased a number of arcade games a few years ago, including some Star Wars arcade games, for $250 apiece. Inside the twoo of the three Star Wars games I purchased were Star Wars arcade posters. I benefited from being one of the first people to put them on eBay during the Star Wars Episode I craze. It sold for $120. In fact, I was quite shocked that it sold for so much. But I was more than happy to give the buyer the better of the two posters I had.
Did anyone else get to the bit about Nike's transforming robot... it turns from a robot into, you guessed it, a shoe!!!
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
Guess I got lucky on this one, since I remember mine being able to shoot. I probably still have it in a storage box somewhere, crushed by other old toys. Probably a few $ in there if I could get around to organizing and eBaying it.
my mom is awesome.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!