And just when I needed to feel young again too.

Our story begins in 1978, when Kenner put Star Wars toys on the market. I had already been Star Wars-obsessed for over a year before I spotted the first such item, which as I remember was an R2-D2 figure spotted in the Service Merchandise store in Central Mall in Fort Smith. My mother had hauled me there because she needed to pick something else up; when I waited patiently in the toy aisle for her to return – this was 1978, when you could actually leave your kids in the toy aisle and have a reasonable expectation that you could still find them there when you returned – clutching the newfound R2-D2. I was either six, or rapidly approaxing six, years old. I think my mom knew then and there that she was in trouble.
Our next story begins in 2000, when I moved back to Arkansas from my cavernous apartment in Green Bay, and I had to put a bunch of stuff into a self-storage unit, whose owners seemed to pride themselves on how secure it was. The apartment was just too small, I had no choice, but I was very, very reluctant to put my fleet of well-worn plastic spaceships under someone else’s lock and key. I’d go and check on the stuff in there every month whenever I went by to pay the rent on the unit. In late June 2000, about a week or so before my wedding, I went by, dropped off the check at the office, and went to check my unit…and found that my key didn’t fit the lock. Maybe it was because it wasn’t the same lock I had put on there. I went back to the office and asked them to come take a look at it. They handed me the bolt cutters and told me that if anyone was going to break the lock, it’d have to be me, so I cut the lock off of the door and opened it up, and it was pretty obvious that I had been robbed.
Very selectively robbed, mind you – four massive tupperware tubs containing virtually all of my Star Wars and Star Trek vehicles were gone, as was my old stereo amp and a little B&W TV. We’re talking the old-school 70s and early 80s Star Wars stuff too – not the reprints which were showing up by that time. My figures weren’t in that storage unit – I annoyed the heck out of my bride-to-be by refusing to put those in self-storage – but in one shot I had lost just about my entire collection of ships, with the only exceptions being my Playmates Star Trek 1701 and 1701-D models, which were on display at the apartment. As for the old amp, it was in storage for a reason: I had replaced it, primarily because, before my cats were fixed, one of them had perched on top of the nice warm amp……..and peed into the ventilation grill on the top surface. If that thing warmed up and got cooking, it reactivated that smell quite nicely.
I’ve always imagined that the rather selective thieves, who – given the layout and controlled access of the place – had to be either renters of another unit or the proprietors of the place, got home with their loot, switched on the amp, got some music going, started putting my huge collection of sci-fi wares on eBay…and then had their house filled with the smell of heated cat piss within about 20 minutes. Let’s just refer to that hypothetical incident as “Iago’s Revenge.”
Our last story begins earlier this year, when Dave let me know that an ex-roommate of his from college was unloading his Star Wars toy collection, consisting mainly of ships and playsets. The cost: nothing – he was looking to find them a good home where they’d be appreciated – though I do need to reimburse Dave for the shipping.
What the heck?, I figured. Even if they ships aren’t in great shape, that probably makes them about even with the ones I used to have. As it turns out, I was about to get the sweet end of the bargain.
When I was a kid, I was relentless about marking up, customizing, modifying and most would probably say customizing my figures. Battle damage galore was inflicted not with laser guns, but with Sharpies. The best example from my surviving collecti0n is my vintage Kenner Luke Skywalker-as-X-Wing-pilot figure. I decided I’d rather have Wedge, a figure that no one produced until the late 90s, so I Liquid Papered poor Luke’s crash helmet and decorated it with Wedge’s insignia. (Now that I think back, was there really a reason for this? Did Wedge, in fact, have different insignia on his helmet?) I can hear diehard collectors and purists everywhere crying out in anguish at this point, so let me suddenly silence you with this thought – they were mine, I was expressing my childhood creativity in my own weird way, and y’know, nobody else I knew had a Wedge figure. I really, honestly, felt the same way about anything else that I had “customized” in the ways that only a 6-to-11-year-old kid could manage – that was how I remembered them, that was how I wanted to play with them at the time, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. It never even occurred to me that I might someday have a second chance and get some untouched figures as well as the ones I had.
Now that all that boring preamble is out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff – the pictures.

Opening the box – holy crap, is that original packaging!?

Holy crap – that’s original packaging!

This is like Christmas 1980 all over again.

Or 1978.

Whoever this was, he had a near-duplicate of my collection – right down to the 12 inch Boba Fett and a Tauntaun without a sliceable belly.

They even saved their blister cards – a collector after my own heart.

BONUS! These ships are manned! My army of vintage Stormtrooper figures just doubled. And look. There’s Luke Skywalker, X-Wing pilot, with his original helmet. Now he and “Wedge” can tag-team ’em. So there.

Unexpected treasures: perfectly intact figures from Battlestar Galactica and The Black Hole – again, I used to have one of them there Battlestar space mutts. As for the Black Hole figures, these ultra-poseable late 70s Mego figures were literally held together by a rubber band, and you’re in good shape if you find them in – again literally – one piece. My figures of these same characters fell apart long ago.

Twin pod, triple canopy – not sure how that works. 😆

Imperial Troop Transporter – some assembly required. Given how much I lucked out with this collection, I’m gonna throw some batteries in that baby and see if the sound clips (the cluster of red buttons on the top) still work!
There’s a second box still on the way, so stay tuned, there’ll be more momentarily. I’ve been feeling bogged down lately, having trouble making ends meet, and generally feeling pretty old – like I’d lost the spark that had made me a child in the first place. I actually have a box full of unopened figures from the more recent Star Wars movies that I keep on hand for such an occasion – when I get down, y’know, there’s not much more of a childhood thrill for me than playing an old video game (especially a real live old arcade game) or breaking a brand new action figure out of its blister bubble for the first time. But here lately, I’ve been so far down that even busting a new figure out was just a reminder of how carefree my life can simply no longer be.
This stash, however, was a nice flashback to how much fun it once was – rekindling that feeling is definitely something worth striving for. They might be bits of plastic, but to me, that was some serious fun. And it still is. Christmas mornings between 1978 and 1984 were pure joy for me because I’d find this stuff under the tree. Half the fun was ripping everything out of the boxes – and here I get both guilty pleasures, the geeky collector score of intact original packaging, and yet I can still pull the contents out and fly them around the room without feeling like I’ve just defiled a virgin tauntaun. (Man, I so need to resume my classes at the University Of For The Love Of God, Please Rephrase That.)
It may be the happy afterglow of someone else’s 1978-84 Christmases, but you know what? If the original owner parted from these on his own terms, and was at peace with that decision…well, he’s got no idea how much peace it’s brought me on this day. Even if it’s stuff I’m just going to have to box back up and move again, the thrill was so worth it. Thank you.