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Quitting star wars toy-buying
I know Bel-Cam jos had a thread in a similar vein but its already gone to 4 or 5 pages and I figured anything I said at that point wouldn’t garner attention (or at least thats how it is over on Spawn.com).
Bel-Cam jos said he had to cut back because of new work commitments. As I’ve just finished my college course I too am in a period of transition. I doubt I’ll be making any permanent career choices at this time, more likely I’ll take a simple job that every teenager is going for, like bar work or something, I really have no goal loftier than that (part of the problem actually). To start with I may not even work full time. Since I haven’t worked in about 2 years whatever I end up doing will still be more money than I’m getting right now but I just feel as though, at 21 going on 22, I should be using my money to advance other aspects of my life. I go out (though many a weekend my addiction prevented this) but I’m not outgoing if you catch my drift. I consider myself socially stunted (though I do have friends) and find it difficult to talk to loose acquaintances and unfamiliar people unless I’m drunk. I don’t have a girlfriend wouldn’t you have guessed but this is mainly for total lack of trying because I’m told I’m good looking (not just by my mother). And of all years (2004 is great for Star Wars toys) I’ve become kind of disillusioned with the whole thing. Theres no way I could continue buying them consistently if I did get a girlfriend. And over the past week I’ve been thinking that I don’t particularly want to anyway despite the cool lineup this year.
Here’s the problem I have with Star Wars toys: New stuff is pretty much continuous throughtout each year and each figure sets me back 12 Euros and 50 cents. Hasbro has the license till 2018 and at the very least the Star wars line will continue for about 5 years after Episode III (they’ll find some way to renew interest) when I will be in my late twenties. As long as I’m buying these things I can’t envision doing the things I should be doing that everyone else has been doing since their early teens because they weren’t occupied by toys. In fact I could trace my situation back to the first decade of my life – I was always big into action figures while my friends preferred to be outside playing football etc. And at the age I am now I think its getting absurd and I should take advantage of my present disillusionment and situation change and stop before I’m killed in an accident and my only legacy is things that I’ve bought.
Y’know what the trigger was? I missed General Rieekan!!! A figure I’ve been waiting for for years and years. I was going into Dublin twice a week (my college was nearby) for about a month and a half after the basic Hoth wave came in, each time expecting that the deluxe wave would be there and being let down each time. Then I got three weeks off from college (when it just wasn’t convenient to go into town and risk it being a complete waste of time like the previous few weeks) and stayed away from town. Well guess when the deluxe wave hit the store? Yeah sometime during that 3 week period funny that huh? I know this because there was about 20 escape pods warming the pegs the week I got back to college. Rieekan naturally had sold out. Typical. And this sort of thing can only get worse now that I’m finished college and cannot reasonably go into Dublin every week. I will inevitably miss loads of great figures and I think I’d rather just not get any at all to be honest. My collection is blighted enough already by so many missed-figures, particularly most of the commanding officer types, the great POTJ imperial troop figures, a lot of cantina patrons(POTF and POTJ), jabbas palace aliens (POTF, amanaman etc)…no problem getting rehashed core characters though! Yeah I’ve a fine collection of Chewbaccas built up. trouble is you can’t assemble a good diorama with 8 chewbaccas, ever tried? You can’t do it.
I don’t think star wars toys, in their small scale, are particularly impressive as stand-alone pieces. They work best in dioramas. I cannot achieve good dioramas because I keep missing the best figures and because I can’t army build. So I truly think I will stop buying star wars and make do with the OT trilogy on DVD. I will however continue to buy McFarlane’s Alien and Predator and Movie Maniacs figures because A) Movie maniacs only comes out once a year and they will only make a certain amount of alien and predator figures before dropping the license
they only make about 6 figures in a given line C) there are predictable release dates for which I can save up money D) They aren’t much more expensive than star wars figures in Ireland E) I stand a far better chance of acquiring all the figures I want and the quantities I want F) they look better than star wars toys as stand-alone pieces and they also work brilliantly in dioramas. Cutting out Star wars would drastically reduce my toy buying and I think this can only be positive.I expect many prospective readers will have dropped off long before this sentence but thanks to those of you who made it this far. You did well. If anyone wants to voice their thoughts on this (I’m afraid I didn’t read anyone elses posts in Bel-Cam jos’ thread) then great. If not, then putting this into words may help to finalise my decision…a decision I actually consider to be quite big believe it or not. Naive you say? Perhaps…but y’know……
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