Oh, the nineties.  Everything was just so wacky.  Well, almost everything, that is.  The clothes were awesome.  The David Robinson Air Force Command sneakers were the coolest things ever.  If you disagree with that, I will fight you.  But everything else was wacky.  Case in point:  this Lando Calrissian figure was the hottest Star Wars collectible of 1995.  This proves my theory that if a manufacturer short-supplies anything, collectors will go rabid for it.  Hasbro could repack 5POA Constable Zuvio in Vintage Collection packaging, label it ”1 out of 1,000”, and there would be reports of nerd slapfights in the aisles.

This Lando Calrissian figure, which may be the epitome of the early POTF2 “He-Man” era, gave collectors the impression that it was short-packed.  Why collectors thought this, I don’t really know.  Up to this point, we really had no idea whether or not Hasbro would re-release figures.  I don’t know if collectors assumed they wouldn’t, or if collectors panicked at the mere possibility.  My money is on the latter.  Whatever the reasoning, some sort of mass hysteria set in when this Lando Calrissian figure showed up at retail for a brief moment and then disappeared.  It wasn’t gone for very long; a few months maybe, if memory serves.  But that was long enough for a collector panic to set in that would rival the bank runs of the late 1920’s.  I remember collectors paying up to $50 for this figure on the secondary market.  That’s the equivalent of $85 today when adjusted for inflation.  Can you imagine collectors paying $85 for a figure about a month after it showed up in stores today?  Of course you can.  We haven’t changed at all.  The second there is a perception in the community that something could be shorted, a feeding frenzy sets in.  Remember what the Jabba’s Palace Adventure Set was fetching after the first online allotment sold out?  Now you can’t walk into a Walmart store without finding several.

The only time when an item might get short-supplied is when it comes at the end of the line.  Otherwise, patience should prevail.  As for this Lando Calrissian figure, patience not only prevailed, but it was actually punished.  Hasbro seized on the mania over this figure and shipped it with reckless abandon.  They shipped it with the same ferocity that Atari shipped E.T. cartridges in 1983.  Lando Calrissian went from the line’s first effective “chase” figure to its biggest peg warmer.  How much so you ask?  I literally bought the carded sample above for $2.99.  Twenty five years after its release, I got the figure for 60% off its original MSRP.  That’s crazy. 

As for the figure itself, it’s nonsense.  It is ridiculously buff.  I blame the rampant steroid use by those darned baseballers during this era for having this aesthetic pervade our public consciousness.  The plastic cape is so ridiculously thick and bulky that if it were made out of kevlar, it would stop a Barrett 50 cal with ease.  The monstrous c-grip hands could crack open a lobster like an egg.  The blue bell bottom slacks look as tight as yoga pants.  Lando isn’t a Range Rover-driving soccer mom.  He has no business in yoga pants.  As much as I would love to rack up some Ebay sales from this review, I can’t recommend any reason to buy this.  It’s a 2 out of 10.  It’s spared from a score of 1 due to the fact that it can stand, despite a sculpted action stance and ungodly top heaviness.