May the Force Be with eBay
I walked into the computer/sewing/drumming/general creativity room this afternoon to find Mr. Bir Toujour squatting on the floor, surrounded by Star Wars toys. He looked up at me and smiled and his eyes crinkled. "I want to see if any of these are selling for a lot of money on eBay," he said.
Like most boys (and girls) of his (and my) generation, Mr. Bir Toujour grew up fixated on the Star Wars trilogy. He had many of the Star Wars action figures and playsets that Kenner sold in his youth, but--as happy boys are wont to do--he played with them to death in his high desert backyard, which I imagine to be not unlike that of Luke Skywalker's native Tatooine. What original-issue Kenner Star Wars toys he has today are far from mint condition, which is as it should be.
During the mid-90s theatrical release of Gerorge Lucas' CGI-fests--the new, adulterated editions of Star Wars Episodes IV-VI--Kenner (via Tonka) began to sell a new, amped-up line of Star Wars figurines. Mr. Bir Toujour, who was in college by then, began to collect these pumped-up action figures. He now has a pretty decent collection, all still encased in their original packages. They live in a big cardboard box labeled with the warning "JOE'S STAR WARS STUFF DON'T TOUCH!!!"
After reading a graphic novel about a young and greedy comic book collector, Mr. Bir Toujour apparently became inspired to make some cold, hard eBay cash off of his Lucasfilm collectables. So he spread his collection all over the floor to assess what he had and didn't have. He was in the thick of it when I stuck my head in the door and yelled "Christ, it's dinner time already!" (spaghetti and meatballs, and yes, it was delicous).
After dinner and just beginning to feel several glasses of cheap Chianti (it's not spaghetti and meatballs without cheap Chianti!), I came into the creativity room to wade through the Star Wars figures over to this here computer. But of course I became distracted by the toys all over the floor--how could you not?
The reissues of the Star Wars figures are, to be blunt, just *wrong*. The original Kenner figures loosely resembled their cinematic counterparts, albeit in a miniature animatronic sense. But these newer things! Princess Leia, with her square jaws and mannish hands, looks like a drag queen. Luke looks calm and wise, quite unlike his youthful and wussy film self. Worst of all, they gave C-3PO *pecs*. Look, the thing is a droid. Droid's don't go on steroids.
I can understand Mr. Bir Toujour's attration to collecting these things, though. Unopened toys hold fragments of our youth, still perfect and fresh and unplayed with. For a kid, nothing compares to the thrill and possibility of an unopened toy...waiting for *you*. Vintage toys still in their original packaging are frozen pulses from the past, as vivid and concrete as they can be.
When I lived in New York, there was a 5-and-Dime store that I liked to go to for about 100 different reasons. It was in the small Hudon Valley town of Rhinebeck, right on the main drag. The window displays, then wood floors, the discount greeting cards--it all smelled, breathed, and exuded oldness. Well over half of their merchandise was new, but I have no idea where they dredged it up: bright red polyester knee socks, lunch lady hair nets, aluminum egg-poaching sets, candy necklaces, bright pink plastic watering cans embossed with 70s daisies...companies still make these things?
But the store also had merchandise that was bona-fide old. I'm not sure where they got it--perhaps back in the day they simply overordered by mistake and are still selling off backstock that's over a quarter-century old--mostly nylons, sewing patterns, bobby pins, and the like. All of the prices were marked in black grease pencil.
One day I went in there and stumbled across a blister pack of cheap plastic dollhouse furniture. The wording on the box says "Lil' House-Keeper Furniture", and the clear plastic encases a dining room set with a china cabinet and yellow place settings for two.
But it was the photos on the side of the box that got me: pictured were additional furniture sets to collect, two of which--a living room ensemble and a bedroom suite--I had had as a little girl. Fragements of those sets might still dwell in a box somewhere in my parents' basement, but for all intensve purposes they are long gone.
I had a holy moment in that store the day I found the dining room set. I can only compare it to meeting a really amazing boy for the first time. It made me high for the next day and a half. What's really funny is that, as a child, I was never very attached to those sister plastic furniture sets. That didn't matter. I still have that dining room set, and it's still in its original packaging. It hangs on the wall very close to this desk, along with seven other cheap plastic packages of toys. I'm pathetic. I guess if a $3.95 investment as an adult can make me so happy, so be it.
Like most boys (and girls) of his (and my) generation, Mr. Bir Toujour grew up fixated on the Star Wars trilogy. He had many of the Star Wars action figures and playsets that Kenner sold in his youth, but--as happy boys are wont to do--he played with them to death in his high desert backyard, which I imagine to be not unlike that of Luke Skywalker's native Tatooine. What original-issue Kenner Star Wars toys he has today are far from mint condition, which is as it should be.
During the mid-90s theatrical release of Gerorge Lucas' CGI-fests--the new, adulterated editions of Star Wars Episodes IV-VI--Kenner (via Tonka) began to sell a new, amped-up line of Star Wars figurines. Mr. Bir Toujour, who was in college by then, began to collect these pumped-up action figures. He now has a pretty decent collection, all still encased in their original packages. They live in a big cardboard box labeled with the warning "JOE'S STAR WARS STUFF DON'T TOUCH!!!"
After reading a graphic novel about a young and greedy comic book collector, Mr. Bir Toujour apparently became inspired to make some cold, hard eBay cash off of his Lucasfilm collectables. So he spread his collection all over the floor to assess what he had and didn't have. He was in the thick of it when I stuck my head in the door and yelled "Christ, it's dinner time already!" (spaghetti and meatballs, and yes, it was delicous).
After dinner and just beginning to feel several glasses of cheap Chianti (it's not spaghetti and meatballs without cheap Chianti!), I came into the creativity room to wade through the Star Wars figures over to this here computer. But of course I became distracted by the toys all over the floor--how could you not?
The reissues of the Star Wars figures are, to be blunt, just *wrong*. The original Kenner figures loosely resembled their cinematic counterparts, albeit in a miniature animatronic sense. But these newer things! Princess Leia, with her square jaws and mannish hands, looks like a drag queen. Luke looks calm and wise, quite unlike his youthful and wussy film self. Worst of all, they gave C-3PO *pecs*. Look, the thing is a droid. Droid's don't go on steroids.
I can understand Mr. Bir Toujour's attration to collecting these things, though. Unopened toys hold fragments of our youth, still perfect and fresh and unplayed with. For a kid, nothing compares to the thrill and possibility of an unopened toy...waiting for *you*. Vintage toys still in their original packaging are frozen pulses from the past, as vivid and concrete as they can be.
When I lived in New York, there was a 5-and-Dime store that I liked to go to for about 100 different reasons. It was in the small Hudon Valley town of Rhinebeck, right on the main drag. The window displays, then wood floors, the discount greeting cards--it all smelled, breathed, and exuded oldness. Well over half of their merchandise was new, but I have no idea where they dredged it up: bright red polyester knee socks, lunch lady hair nets, aluminum egg-poaching sets, candy necklaces, bright pink plastic watering cans embossed with 70s daisies...companies still make these things?
But the store also had merchandise that was bona-fide old. I'm not sure where they got it--perhaps back in the day they simply overordered by mistake and are still selling off backstock that's over a quarter-century old--mostly nylons, sewing patterns, bobby pins, and the like. All of the prices were marked in black grease pencil.
One day I went in there and stumbled across a blister pack of cheap plastic dollhouse furniture. The wording on the box says "Lil' House-Keeper Furniture", and the clear plastic encases a dining room set with a china cabinet and yellow place settings for two.
But it was the photos on the side of the box that got me: pictured were additional furniture sets to collect, two of which--a living room ensemble and a bedroom suite--I had had as a little girl. Fragements of those sets might still dwell in a box somewhere in my parents' basement, but for all intensve purposes they are long gone.
I had a holy moment in that store the day I found the dining room set. I can only compare it to meeting a really amazing boy for the first time. It made me high for the next day and a half. What's really funny is that, as a child, I was never very attached to those sister plastic furniture sets. That didn't matter. I still have that dining room set, and it's still in its original packaging. It hangs on the wall very close to this desk, along with seven other cheap plastic packages of toys. I'm pathetic. I guess if a $3.95 investment as an adult can make me so happy, so be it.
posted by Lefty at 7:08 PM
1 Comments:
Heh, yes, those new and "improved" SW figures are weird looking, to say the least. But there is something about them in their "in-package" beauty as opposed to ripping open the pack, tearing the card-backing, and playing with the figure out in the dirt. Basically, the idea is that we know more now than when we were kids, and we'd like to preserve (as much as we can)the state of our beloved SW figures. We're alwauys trying to tap back into our youth, and if that means collecting the mid-'90s 'roided-up figures, oh well.
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