Slashdot Mirror
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
The BEST part of this article is the link WAY down at the bottom to this.
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'.
Face The Crowd New Media. Now with CARP-free music, Freeware OS X Apps, and wicked Wallpapers!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
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]."
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...
He just needs a voice box that says "I hate it when my Schwartz gets twisted..."