Here we see two extremely rare toys, and no, I never had either of them! Blue Snaggletooth and Yak Face are arguably the two rarest "Star Wars" figures from the original Kenner line of figures. Yes, my friends and I used to collect them. And they were great. Actually, like the Sesame St. playset, the little details tended to make them more fun.
I still remember the day my Dad pulled out a C-3PO figure from a bag. He told us that if we were good & got good grades, etc., we would be able to get it. Which is bad parenting, but it worked. We were good. And we eventually collected many of the figures and original toys. The toy room seemed to become the Star Wars toy room for a time.
The figures played a role in what I consider one of the funniest home movies we ever did. We tried to re-create scenes from the film using the figures and the playsets. You should see it. Strings are everywhere. Hands and arms are everywhere. It's classic. I guess I shouldn't laugh, because even in my recent home movies you can still see hands and arms everywhere. Oh, well.
If you were to ask me when the Star Wars toy boom began to die down, I would have to say it really began with the "Micro collection." The Star Wars micro collection was a limited series of toys and figures that began a little bit after "Empire" came out and just prior to "Jedi." It was made up of small metal figures rather than the plastic action figures, and it included several scenes/sets from the films, including the Wampa ice cave & the Millenium Falcon.
The micro collection was essentially too much for a collector to take! I mean, how would you like to collect hundreds of figures and toys, only to learn that now, you need to collect a totally NEW Millenium Falcon, Wampa ice cave, etc. ? We (and by we, I mean our parents) can only afford so much!
So we had to accept the fact that we couldn't afford everything. And accepting that fact made us reason, "You know, maybe I don't need to get EVERY single figure that comes out. . ."
So economics forced us to grow up and look at collecting differently. That, coupled with puberty (someday I will do a lengthy blog about that one!) made us understand that collecting every single figure wasn't the major goal of our lives. So we stopped collecting, and some of us (gasp!) actually gave up our collections. But that's okay, the toys did their part (See the Elvis teddy bear post in August 2006 for an explaination of this).
Now the original Kenner line is considered classic, and even an old beat-up Darth Vader figure with its head chopped off could probably sell for at least $1.00. It's great to look back on the toys and sometimes even play with them again, but I don't feel the need to go out and complete the collection.
I'm just thankful for what I've got.
