Star Wars does weird things to me. With the new The Force Awakens Black Series, I have bought a whole two waves of figures based on a movie I haven’t seen yet, I’m army building troopers, and I’m obsessively hunting down the rest of the available figures. As I took pictures of my Black Series Star Wars figures for my typical style of article, I found myself thinking about how I got here again. My usual style of photography is here, but instead of the usual write-up about the features on these figures, I’m going to muse a bit about Star Wars.
You were warned.
I was born in the ’70s and I really don’t remember a time without Star Wars. It was definitely my first collection and it was something I shared with my grandfather. He would keep the cardbacks and hit the stores to pick up new figures for me for whenever I visited. Every time he came over, or I went to his house, there was a new Star Wars figure waiting for me.
He took me to see The Empire Strikes Back and I don’t remember much about the first time viewing experience other than the fact that I cried when Han was frozen in Carbonite. I can clearly recall what I was wearing and wiping tears on my powder blue, crushed velvet sweater. What can I say, I loved Han Solo.
After Return of the Jedi, I do recall moving on to other toy obsessions like He-Man and M.A.S.K., but I would still pull out the beat up, old Kenner figures for a “star war” every now and again. As I grew older and more into girls and video games, the old collection was abandoned and given away, but the love for Star Wars was never fully dormant; it was just looking for a way back in.
Widescreen video was the way back. At some point in high school I became an amateur movie buff and found video stores that sold widescreen videocassettes. I got this great set of the original trilogy in the widescreen format that was a revelation to a kid who spent a lot of years watching pan and scan versions on TV. I spent the next several decades trying to explain to my father why you actually saw more of the picture on these widescreen versions than in the original pan-and-scan versions, though I think he understood all along and just liked to needle me.
Those videos soon lead me to the first few Expanded Universe novels, which lead to more comics and finally that brought me back into collecting the new Power of the Force line. I think the responsibility of going to college and figuring out what I was supposed to do with my life made the nostalgia of rebuilding my old collection very appealing.
That was where I started hunting toys. I started off by ditching church on Sundays to walk to the nearby TRU, but eventually I was hitting every Target, TRU, and Kaybee toy stores in the area to get the latest figures, and my collection was almost always up to date. Kenner, and then Hasbro, always made more, though, and the hunt would resume. I actually got to know the different parts of San Diego a lot better because of the hunt.
By the time I was in college, the Power of the Force line was going strong and the special editions hit. I remember waiting in line at these massive, single screen, older theaters that don’t exist any more. The lines went around the block and the crowds were insanely excited to see Star Wars on the big screen again.
Not long after that, Lucas announced the prequels, and I devoured every scrap of information through slow as molasses dial-up Internet about the production of Episode I. Star Wars was my entry point to the then new world of Internet message boards and fan sites. I even bought a ticket for Meet Joe Black in order to see the first trailer for Episode I.
The movie was not great, but I enjoyed it enough that l saw it many times in the theater and collected the toys. The Jedi fighting was undeniably appealing and I was going strong with collecting Star Wars until Attack of the Clones.
I had stopped reading the comics and the Expanded Universe stuff (they killed Chewbacca and I was out) at this point. I remember liking a lot of things about AotC, but my collecting slowed way down, down to a trickle so much so that I only bought a couple Revenge of the Sith figures and saw that film once in theaters.
I’m not a prequel hater, but I did find it easier to walk away from the collection because I wasn’t loving the new films as much as the old ones. Plus, I was working full time, was married and starting a family at this point and started looking at other toy lines, like SOTA’s Street Fighter and Marvel Legends.
I still checked in on Star Wars. I tried to watch the Clone Wars, but ended up falling asleep during episodes more often than not. My daughter liked the show more than I did, mostly because she was awake, I expect. For the most part, though, I was out.
I still collected toys, but I was buying Marvel Legends and Masters of the Universe Classics figures. I hadn’t bought a Star Wars figure or product in quite some time, until the Black Series hit.
Hasbro had the perfect temptation with wave 1 of the black series 6-inch Star Wars line. The super-articulated figures that were my bread and butter combined with the Star Wars license was undeniable and the first wave was so good. When I found early released figures at SDCC one year with Nick and Robo, I had to buy Luke and Maul, even though they were marked up at con prices.
The next step down the rabbit hole was the previews for a new show called Star Wars Rebels. The previews for this show looked more like Star Wars than anything I had seen since Return of the Jedi. The structure of the show was immediately appealing to me as a former D&D player as the main cast felt like a party assembled to role-play in the Star Wars universe.
I immediately hooked into the character Kanan. He was a fun mix of Han and Obi-Wan and was cooler than any Jedi I’d seen on screen. The show also brought back a lot of the charm and humor that I had missed from the original trilogy. It also had the added bonus of being something my kids and I could watch and talk about together (plus it kept me awake!).
I loved the show so much, I ended up buying the tie-in novel and comics. Now I’m reading all of the new Marvel Star Wars comics and books as time permits.
The final nail in my Star Wars coffin is, of course, The Force Awakens. I had mixed feelings about wiping away all of the old Extended Universe material to make room for these sequel films as I liked a lot of those stories (though some were extremely awful), but I was cautiously optimistic about the prospect of new Star Wars movies. The trailers blew all that caution right out of the water with some amazing visuals and music. The marketing has been perfect and I’m already somehow invested in the character Finn.
So that’s my journey with Star Wars. I’m curious to see where it will go next.
