Stick a fork in me, I'm done!

There was a guy at Wal-Mart in Pittsburg at midnight who had some kind of list with him. I saw him carefully placing figure after figure in his shopping cart. Most of the figures I saw were pieces of crap. Did you see Padme's scary man-face? Emperor's squishy head? Anyway, I asked him if he was going after certain ones because they were going to be more valuable. He told me he was just going in numeric order. He was prepared to spend 300 bucks buying every single one of them. I can somehow respect that kind of geek insanity, but I don't think I can ever understand it. How do you justify that kind of expenditure on Down's Syndrome Star Wars figures?

Yea I think I'm with you Zod. I stood in line friday night with my Panasonic DVX100a prepared to document some of the hilarity. My enthusiasm was quickly curbed however. All I saw were mostly 30+ year old men who stood in quiet defiance of the rest of the world. There was some putz who had bleeched his hair and appeared to have eaten ever eclair that he had seen that day. He was chastising the crowd saying how dorky it was. Then he pulled out his PSP and flaunted it to his moderately attractive platonic female friend and talked about how he saw "all of these guys in the pretzel shop I worked at". I wasn't angry at him...I felt pity. Then the local Star Wars fan club came out....well I thought the Star Trek club had it bad. They probably look like James Freakin Bonds compared to these guys (and one girl). They were in costume, which while it was ballsy, didn't translate so well. Only so many short and devilishly obese white women with mullets can pull off a Mace Windu look. So I put the camera away, hoping that I could forget most of these people. I had my friend hold my spot in line. I looked in the mirror to make sure I hadn't morphed into Guywholivesinmomsbasement #1138. Luckily I hadn't, I was still the guy wholivesonlybythegoodgracesofhishotwife #2938. Perhaps I am the lesser of the two breeds who knows?

So the damn doors open. A flood of people doing that fast walk deal. You know the kind where the walkers gyrate their hips violently while always keeping one foot on the ground. I went to the wall. I figured it would be a better deal then trudging through bins. Mistake! I got blocked in by Morpheus Fan 12 and Chewbacca ass 13. They hemmed me in and removed figures before my eyes. It was garbage, people blocking little kids, one guy did some nice elbow pins that vintage 1989 Detroit Pistons. I grabbed what I could and exchanged my bulky cart for a more mobile hand basket. I went over to one of the large baskets. I found a much more cooperative crowd there. People were helping each other find the figures they needed. If someone had two of something they seemed to magically come to their senses and pass it off to someone else who needed it. I could feel Karl Marx getting excited. I got some good stuff and gave away some good stuff that I just didn't feel like I needed to buy. I escaped with only spending 40 dollars for the night. Half of that was for figures for my son.

Midway through this little adventure I pondered this.... How many frikken swampy dirty R2-D2s can I buy? C-3POs? Even Vaders? I used to try to get every figure just for posterity purposes. But in truth its bullshit. I'm not going to buy two identical Yodas just because one just a slashing attack and the other shits out of his left foot. The figures just don't look as good. Plus whenever my son plays with them the damn lightsabers, helmet attached by a thin strand of plastic, or detachable penis breaks. It has been happening ever since the Episode 2 toys and hes not a kid who is rough on toys. Ever since they went to those blasted two piece lightsabers its been a problem. Hell I would rather have the figures from the 80s as long as they didnt break.

So yea long story short. I see exactly what you are saying man.

It's amazing what a few years will do. When "The Phantom Menace" toys came out I was at Toys'R Us at midnight and then hit KB the following morning, wound up dropping $100 that time. 3 years ago I think I hit Toys'R Us the afternoon that the "Attack of the Clones" toys came out and only ended up buying a Jengo Fett figure, whose name I may have spelled incorrectly but after that movie I could care less. Jump to today and I didn't even know the "Episode 3" figures were coming out this weekend. I don't plan on making any attempts today to even see what they look like, I'll probably glance at them the next time I hit Target for some reason.

I'd say my lack of interest in the figures has to be because I'm older and wiser, but since I'm at this moment wearing a Punisher T-shirt I know that is not true. I think it's the fact that the movies haven't really blown me away. I liked "The Phantom Menace" a bit but "Attack of the Clones" left me pretty empty. It's hard to spend money on figures based on movies that don't leave much of an impact.

What pisses me of is the double dipping. They keep releasing the old figures with new and better sculpts.
I have about 100 figures from the POTF 2 line in little zip lock bags I never even look at.

Now with the Wal-Mart Early-Bird Kit comes the fact that all the figures will be re-released again in 2006.
When studios double-dip a DVD, we can always trade in our old copy on the new one.
With the figures, your just stuck with a box of ugly plastic.