So, I've been wanting one of these ever since July, when it was announced. I've kept a picture of it on my desktop, followed news about it on Toy News International , watched the various fora I know Target employees visit, bugged family to take me along if they're going out to Target, and tried to see if I could get a hit on the DCPI number on their website.
I was saddened to hear the price increase to $63 from $50, but I changed the amount of money I kept on hand in my wallet to compensate (still, with 7 figures{@$7~8 ea.}, the HISS tank {$16}, the trouble bubble {~$8}= free MOBAT.).
So, today, after classes I asked Pop to take me out to Target, to see if they had one, or failing that, some of the $5 single card figures whose sale was over today. Empty pegs, no battle pack in the back room. Drowned my sorrows with a Solomon Grundy build-a-figure.
On the way back home, Pop asked what I was looking for, and I described the set. Then I made the mistake of mentioning what it cost. "Fifty dollars!" (I didn't correct him.)"What the Hell good does it do you? You'll just have something no-one else has." (It bears mentioning on that last point, Pop has never seen my library fully assembled, just random shelves.) Never mind having what someone else doesn't is why I never sold any of my pieces, or indeed the underlying principle of toy collecting. I know the point of it is Pop doesn't get what these things mean to me.
I find it difficult to express how my mind works, and a subset, how my memory works. I've stopped going to funerals, for example, because after my Grandmother's funeral, every time I saw her face, I saw that waxy thing in the coffin. Every picture, every thought, that waxy thing that was no longer her was there. When I look at the Millennium Falcon she bought me at a garage sale, I can see her, I can remember that moment clearly. I can only picture her from the chain of association that starts with that yellowing toy.
Most of my childhood is just muscular tension and neurosis now, but GI Joe figures I can remember. Every one of the original 13, I got from Black's Hardware in Grandview. Black's Hardware downtown, coincidentally, was the only RPG store in town for most of my youth. Every week, Pop would need something, and I'd beg to go along with him (I had the same freedom of movement at eight I have now). I would get someone new ($1.29!), and sometimes, if I raked the yard, or burnt the weeds, I could get a vehicle. The MOBAT was for christmas, the HAL for my birthday. Hell, in those days, you could find decent toys almost anywhere. I got my ASP from a Kroger store.
The last two years haven't been very good to me (which is why I've been trying to replay 1993 and 1987. Apologies to everyone who was flooded, or bankrupted, in that order. Ellis mentioned how Jenny Sparks dealt with depression, but it doesn't do anything for me.), but I have had the 25th line. I should probably dig up my retail therapy notes (short version, it works for a time, with no permanent benefit. When your problem is having no money, double trouble.), but it worked. I'm wrung out to the point where tiny plastic men are what's getting me out of bed in the afternoon.
So, what good does it do me?
