The Grumpy Old Toy Collector #3

THE GRUMPY OLD TOY COLLECTOR: #3 - DRY UP ALREADY!
By Darth Zirock (Age: 153)

So, the whiny little turds all come running up to me, “Hey, where have all the toys gone? I can find the last wave of THE CLONE WARS or the Expanded Universe stuff from The Legacy Collection. The pegs at Wal-Mart and Target are actually empty! Have they stopped making STAR WARS toys or something?”

And I say, “Yes, they’ve stopped making STAR WARS toys. Time to start collecting BEN-10 Comic Packs, instead!” And I laugh and I laugh, then I sorta wheeze and grab for my oxygen tank. ‘Cause I’m old, and I’ve seen this crap before.

It’s a Toy Drought, that’s all.

This happens every so often, usually whenever a toy line refreshes and changes packaging. The last waves are always hard to get, because stores under-order cases so they’ll have pegs cleared so they can grossly over-order the first wave of the new stuff. Which then rots on the pegs for three months until the new cases of newer waves finally make it through the pipeline.

Longtime STAR WARS collectors have gone through this before. It wasn’t such a hassle with the vintage Kenner lines, because ... well, there weren’t tons of nudniks out there buying up cases of figures! Kids and a few adults were the primary buyers, and there were usually enough figures to go around. There were tons more retail outlets back then, too. If you couldn’t find a figure at Toys “R” Us, odds are you could score one at Two Guys, or Bradlees, or Kay-Bee Toys, or Korvettes, or Child World, or Woolworth’s, or ... you get the idea! Hell, there was a children’s furniture store in Union, NJ, that had a tiny little toy section, and I think that’s where I snagged a few vintage RETURN OF THE JEDI figures. So, for the three Original Trilogy-based toy lines ... not much of a problem. Hell, even the two animated lines from DROIDS and EWOK ADVENTURES were pretty easy to find.

Of course, there was the original STAR WARS Toy Drought, that lasted from 1986-1995. Kenner let the license go, and that was it! If you were an old school STAR WARS toy collector, you had crap to look forward to. There were some Bendie toys that came out, but they sucked. Yeah, Darth Vader as a freakin’ Gumby ... lame!

When Kenner brought back the steroided action figures in 1995 that were known as The Power of the Force 2 Line, at least these were real STAR WARS toys again ... even if they did look like somebody mated G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe toys at first. And even that was cool, because we had an extra point of articulation to deal with now: the waist! And if the first Princess Leia figure looked more like Rachel McLish than Carrie Fisher, it was almost better than nothing. Kenner started to shape up, though, and soon we had our first-ever Slave Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin figures.

And then there was a change to the line. EPISODE I was on the horizon, but the first-ever wave of Expanded Universe figures was coming out before it. The pictures in magazines and online looked awesome. But, most stores didn’t get them ... all we saw were empty pegs. WTF? Yup, stores weren’t ordering them, but were waiting for the EPISODE I mega-release. The first “Midnight Madness” sales! The first genuine modern STAR WARS toy drought. But not the last.

EPISODE I became Power of the Jedi. Remember trying to get Sio Bibble,TC-14 and Swimming Jar Jar? You’d hear rumors of these things hitting, but rarely saw them for yourself. And then that last wave of POTF, just before ATTACK OF THE CLONES launched the Saga line. Remember trying to get BoShek, Teebo, and R4-M9? It became a pattern after awhile. As soon as a line was going to change over, it was going to be a pain to get that last wave of figures. A.K.A: Toy Drought!

One of the worst was when the Saga line ended in 2004. It was months before The Original Trilogy Collection hit the pegs, and you just started to believe that STAR WARS toys were never coming out again. And then you’d start hearing reports of the new figures hitting the West Coast, and you started dancing around like a 5-year-old that’s just finished an entire 2-liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch until you found those suckers for yourself!

So, The Legacy Collection is over. The Vintage Collection is just around the corner. THE CLONE WARS is getting a revamp, and damn if you can find the last wave of red-carded figures (especially the Firefighter Droid and the MagnaGuard, because some asstard decided to put out a case revision that excluded those army-building bastards!). And Saga Legends ... as long as they get rid of those armies of Saesee Tiins and Plo Koons, who cares, right? Just another short-term toy drought. Deal with it, you ADD little punks!

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