For some reason, I remember the cards the best. There were three sets – bordered in blue, red and yellow.
I HAD them. The complete sets. All the colors.
I would leaf through them and remember the scenes from the movies. I’ve seen the movies dozens of times, but I’d venture to say those cards are the things that allow me to recount the entire plot from memory at a moment’s notice.
But I have no idea where they went or when they disappeared.
I had SO MUCH swag – so many collectibles – from those original movies (Episodes IV – VI) and somehow I lost it all.
And now THE FORCE AWAKENS has come out and I bet all that stuff is WORTH THOUSANDS.
I wonder if I would sell it if I still had it. Probably not.
I remember the drawer in my room where I kept the cards. It was the same drawer I started saving the letters from my Japanese pen pal, the ones she would write in looping cursive on the delicate Japanese paper.
Girls. They might’ve been the problem.
I had a Millenium Falcon. You could open the cargo bay doors and play out fight scenes with your action figures. It even had a little piece of the floor you could lift up and hide your Han Solo action figure in.
And oh – the action figures! – I had all those, too. I was constantly losing the guns that they held in their curved little hands. Never have such calamities arisen from the misplacement of such a small piece of plastic.
The light sabers in Luke’s, Obi-wan’s and Vader’s hands. The blasters in Han’s and Leia’s hands. The little straight brown stick in the Sandperson’s hand. I guess his staff?
When you lost the blasters, you had to have people holding the wrong gun. Han held the one the Stormtrooper was supposed to have. It just wasn’t right.
One day, somewhere in the backyard, I lost my Chewbacca. Not just his blaster. The entire figure (“guy” I think our eight year old, non-PC brains called them. I lost my “guy”).
That was a tough day.
I think I had a case where I stored all the action figures so I WOULDN’T lost them. A spot for each “guy” and then it closed up and you carried it around by the handle. I might be confusing this with the case I know I had for my matchbox cars, but I don’t think so. I think there was a Star Wars case, too. And still, I lost Chewbacca.
I had an X-wing and a Tie fighter. I’m remembering you pressed a button on the Tie Fighter and the “wings” popped off. I don’t remember why. Maybe when you were acting out scenes from the movie you were supposed to do that when the bad guy got shot down?
A lot of fun, acting out the movie with all those toys and figures. But somehow the cards. Those were my favorite.
This stuff was always out, all over the place. Probably drove my mom crazy.
That’s what happened isn’t it? Moms. They throw out your toys, toys that could be VALUABLE later. Are you guys crazy?!?
Ah, but there’s one thing I still have – the comics. I SAVED the comics. I’m talking the original series from 1977. They’re buried in all those boxes in my basement right now – too many for me to fish through – but I KNOW I still have them. Not every issue, but a lot of those early ones.
One of my nephews is a Darth Vader NUT already. He’s three, and we’re pretty sure he thinks he’s a good guy (which, by the end of Jedi…). For Christmas, all I got him was Darth Vader swag. Toys and books and other little stuff.
No cards, though. Now I’m thinking I need to get the kids cards for the new movies. Yeah.
And my sisters better not throw them out. EVER.
Chris Negron 