Figures That Make Me Happy:  Yak Face / Saelt-Marae (Vintage Collection)

And TVC 2.0 cracks the "Figures that Make Me Happy" lineup.

I've repeated this story too often around here lately, so I'll keep it brief. I didn't know about the 1985 Power of the Force Yak Face figure until the mid-nineties, and even then, I had no idea who the character was. It would take almost another whole decade before we'd get the Original Trilogy on DVD to be able to really pause the films and analyze all the background characters. But once I spotted Yak Face, he can't be unseen. He's filthy throughout Jabba's palace and the Barge. He always was, but when watching football, I always follow the ball. When watching Star Wars, I follow Luke. It's not that Yak Face is some sort of "pause and seek" backgrounder. He's not hard to spot. It's that my eyes were always drawn elsewhere during those scenes.

Of course, once you know where he is in those scenes, he's impossible to miss, but that's not reason the Vintage Collection Yak Face lands in the Figures that Make Me Happy series. For mystique reasons, I was beyond excited when Saelt-Marae was announced for the Power of the Force "2" line in 1997. I still remember my sister stopping by and mentioning that she saw a bunch of new figures at a nearby Walmart. She said she never even heard of one of them. I asked if the package said, "Saelt-Marae" and she gave me a non-comital maybe. That was all I needed. A few sparks. A quick whiff of ozone, and I was off like a jack rabbit on a date. I tore off in my '87 Trans Am GTA (I'm not making that up). That mystery unknown figure was indeed Yak Face. The store had several, and if memory serves, it was also the same assortment with the first modern Snowtrooper as well as the then one-per-case Emperor's Royal Guard. It was quite the day, but the Yak Face was the crown jewel of the score.

The afterglow wouldn't last long. That POTF2 figure is a train wreck. It looks like Uncle Traveling Matt in some sort of hideous 70's leisure suit. Look at this thing. Ridiculous:


The reason the Vintage Collection Yak Face makes me happy is that, I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that the POTF2 version was the one we were going to go to our graves with. There always seems to be an uphill battle with Hasbro in getting updates to figures. The threshold for "good enough" appears to be very low. Painfully, we're probably going to have to live with inferior versions of Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, Labria, Narbun Lieds, Barada and many more secondary and tertiary characters that were crossed off during POTF2. Getting an update to Yak Face felt like a miracle. That fact that it happened is something for which I will be eternally grateful.

As a reminder, even though you just finished reading a "Figures that Make Me Happy" entry, today is Thursday. You still have to go to work tomorrow. If you have that false-Friday feeling all day today, blame nomad for being tardy.

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