Toy Bender

The Star Wars figure exclusive was finally announced for the next Star Wars Celebration.

What a sweet figure set to pick as an exclusive. Normally, I don’t get all rilled up about non-clones/Fetts/or other assorted badasses, but I have to make an exception in this case. R2-D2 and C-3PO here are the continuation of the cool McQuarrie inspired figures I wrote about way back in December. The real downer is that if these guys aren’t made available after the convention in any other form, then the only way to get them will be to pay a fortune on the secondary market for them.

This reminds me of a story about the last time I went to a Star Wars Celebration and an exclusive figure. It was Celebration II. The year was 2002 and I was still a dreamer in college with a manageable credit card debt. The convention was held in the lovely city of Indianapolis, which is unfortunately located in the wretched state of Indiana. We, being my buddy Shawn and I, missed the first day’s festivities, having arrived there that evening after the doors had closed. In order to save money we had arranged to share a hotel room with a few guys that Shawn knew through the local comic book store. When we got in the room, there were stacks, and I mean stacks, of the convention exclusive George Lucas as an X-Wing pilot laying around the hotel room.

This was a pretty big exclusive back in the day. I had almost no special interest in a George Lucas themed action figure as it seems kind of corny with this really idiotic bio on the back of his card:

Among X-Wing pilots, Commander Jorg Sacul is renowned for his inner strength, his ability to remain calm under fire, and his mentoring of younger Squadron members. Once a reckless dreamer, his life changed course after a near fatal crash in his T-16 Skyhopper on his homeworld of Tatooine. He went off to the Academy and emerged as the top pilot in his class and a natural leader. A visionary storyteller, he entertains the pilots in his command with far-flung tales of distant galaxies thousands of years before the Republic. Rumored to be Force sensitive, many say Sacul would have become a great Jedi…if only he had been born in a different time.

How stupid is that, I mean really? My mouth feels violated and my knees hurt from reading that thing. Plus his bastardized anagram name, Jorg Sacul, bothered me. Ugh, just call him George Lucas and be done with it.

Shawn was hot to get his hands on one and even though I wasn’t ape-shizzle over it, I would’ve liked to add to my much more broad collection of figures back then. We figured that they’d be sold out, because it was a highly anticipated figure and we missed the first day. However, the abundance of figures in the hotel room gave us hope that one of us might get our greasy collector’s mitts on one.

When we talked to our temporary roommates about the Jorg Sacul’s, they start bragging it up about how there was a strict limit on them, but they had gamed the system by going to different cashiers and/or had gotten cashiers that didn’t give a flying crap about the limits. When asked about directly if they could sell us one, they came up with a bunch of dumb excuses about why all the figures were spoken for. Sure enough, when we tried to pick one up the next morning good old George was sold out. The only place you could get one were at the dealer tables for an exorbitant price.

If you are ever in some sort of figure windfall like this, then share the damn love with your fellow collectors, especially if you’re screwing the system so other people can’t get their fair chance at it. Don’t be a greedy jerk and shove it in the face of your fellow men-children. I should have stomped on their stupid toys, instead I barely talked to them when we saw them. Damn my passive aggressive behavior patterns! If you greedy bastards are reading this today, the following picture illustrates my feelings on the matter:

Source: Sir Steve’s Guide

Toy, toy collecting, Star Wars, Action Figure, C3P0, R2-D2, George Lucas, Star Wars Celebration, Hasbro, Ralph McQuarrie