Confession. When I was small, we used to play with Star Wars figures, and we used to swap them. There was a kid a few blocks away with rich parents that had bought him the entire set, brand new. Let’s call him Martin. Martin was a few years younger than us, and many years more gullible. Word quickly got around the kids on our estate about Martin’s new toys.
You can guess what happened next. Martin’s parents were out and we deccended like piranhas on the poor boy, stripping him of his shiny new figurines with terrifying efficiency. When we skedaddled, we left a sinking cloud of dust and a pile of loose-limbed, paint-chipped toys with tooth-marks on the heads.
Within a few moments of their arrival at home, Martins’ parents had decoded his sobs and hit the phones. My parents, for the record, thought Martin to be a wuss (my father, I think, used a rather stronger term), but we still had to play fair and give the figurines back.
Curiously, my brother didn’t take part in this. He was, presumably, at home playing with his own almost-complete set, featuring not one but two giant Gamorrean Guards (prized because, at the time, they cost the same as a Jawa but contained around five times the plastic). He’d saved pocket-money for months to buy these figurines (even today he has an unhealthy obsession with collecting things) but he was still just as sneaky us kids who had stripped poor Martin to the bone.
One day soon after Martingate I was called upon by my parents. Apparently I had, according to my evil little brother, broken one of his Gamorrean guards by “dropping it on the floor". He was trying to frame me, presumably jealous of my non-red hair. One look at the figurine debunked him — not only had the marks not come from dropping three feet onto deep-pile carpet, but they looked very much like they were made with teeth. My sneaky little brother’s teeth. I gave him a beating that night.
If you want to relive any of this nostalgia, you too can buy the entire set of Star Wars Figurines from the first three movies — all 79 of them, although they have already been freed from their blister-packs, just like Martin’s. The price? $3,500. If that’s too much you could try for swapsies.
Complete Set of 79 Vintage AFA 85 Loose Figures [Brian’s Toys via Uncrate]
