Back in 1995, before special editions or prequels or other signs that George may have lost his grip on his own property, we, the fans of those three little movies, had been without toys for around ten years. Ten years doesn’t seem like a lot now, but back then it was forever. Continents had shifted. Wars had come and gone. Michael Jackson was white. It was a crazy time.
For me, high school had come and gone, but I had never lost my taste for toys and Star Wars. So when I heard that a brand new toy line would be starting up, I was eager to catch that first glimpse of them hanging on pegs. Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long.
Back then I was trying to be conservative when I saw new toys. I was already deep into the 5-inch Marvel era, and I really didn’t want to start a new line. I loved the idea of new Star Wars toys, but I didn’t want to start collecting them. Five bucks a piece was a lot of money to start throwing on another toy line.
Yeah, five bucks a piece.
Whimper.
So I figured I’d get Darth Vader and Boba Fett and be happy with looking at the others. Maybe an Empire Luke when he came out. I needed someone for Vader and/or Fett to fight, after all. That would be it.
That didn’t last long.
I did pick up Vader when I first ran across them at Toys R Us. Vader and Ben. Because lightsaber duel.
There was no Fett. Bummed, I was.
I took them home.
Had them fight.
This was new. This was fun.
See, these lightsabers didn’t telescope from their forearm. They were actually separate, good-looking items that they could hold correctly. Sure, the little guys had six points of articulation, but super articulation hadn’t really appeared on the scene yet.
It was fun. It was good. It was Star Wars.
As you can see, I didn’t stop with a couple. I started tracking down everyone. One carded set, and one to open. Because I was insane. I didn’t realize at the time that everybody else on the planet was doing the same thing, rendering my mint-on-card set as worth about as much as a breath mint on a business card.
Oh well.
These first figures were odd in retrospect. I loved them, because it was Star Wars, but looking at them now, there’s all kinds of things that are odd about them. Luke is super-buff straight out of a McQuarrie painting. Leia’s well-mocked monkey face is even more pronounced than I remember. Chewbacca looks like he went to Luke’s gym. There’s an annoying preposed aspect to their sculpts that makes it hard for some of them to stand.
But I loved them. I was kidding myself when I though I’d stop with a few. I didn’t even stop with one entire wave. I continued on and on. For years I scooped up every figure, every version, every minor alien and ever slight alteration. Even through the prequels, I kept collecting. I stopped soon after the Sith had their Revenge because I couldn’t keep buying the same characters over and over with such minor improvements.
Once again my Star Wars collecting went into hibernation, just like a scruffy-looking Nerf-herder once did. The Black Series brought me back to Star Wars toy collecting. But these 12 figures are the ones that really brought me back to Star Wars. 
