More Figures For My Collection
I wrote that with General Grevious's voice in mind, alive with splutters and coughs.
So, last week I added a new AT AT to my collection, but thought it looked a bit lonely so I went on the hunt for some figures from around the 2010's, so they would be apart of the same line, or at least close enough.
My intention was to buy poseable figures to create a diorama using the AT-AT as the centerpiece. I'd also like to get some rebel turrets from the same line, a snow speeder, and an AT-ST. But I'd also need figures.
Enter - Imperial Snow Troopers - Stage Right.
I picked these guys up off someone, and got a decent enough deal.
He was looking for €45, so €10 for each figure, and €15 for the figure with the tri-pod cannon.
Not a bad price, but since I wanted to buy them all in one go he was cool with working out a deal. I think in total it was something like €35.
They have really cool weapons holsters for their guns, which are deadly.
I like their design and also the fact that they all have some nice weathering, and more so than that, they all have nice weathering which looks unique to each one.
They're living on the shelf at the moment with the AT-AT.
Being able to see the figures beside the walker is great, as it really shows its scale well.
The thing is an absolute beast.
As I was floating around I saw these up there, and they were going for €10 each.
I thought it was a bargain, and decided to pick them up too. I've always loved the bounty hunters, and it gave me the idea to try and collect the others, Boba Fett, Bosk, Dengar and potentially IG-88.
The detail in these figures is great, especially considering they're larger than the average figure, measuring in at around 6"
On the back of the box you can see some other characters to collect.
They're fairly large, so I wouldn't be too interested in trying to collect them all but focusing on some of the ones I really like as characters might be an idea.
As you can also see in this picture, 4-LOMs box is slightly warped and damaged, but it doesn't really bother me too much.
I've been watching the documentary on Disney+ about how Star Wars got made. When it came out the toy companies were not ready for the demand and sold empty boxes with a voucher to claim the figures much later. I expect even those boxes are worth something now. George Lucas was very canny when it came to merch, but making that film almost killed him. It's amazing that the stuff still sells so well nearly 50 years later.
Not only are those display stands valuable, they're incredably sought after by most collectors and can go for 100s, especially depending on condition. I've seen graded ones in almost perfect condition going for a lot, especially if they have the figures with them.
There's a great show on Netflix called the toys that made us, and the episode about Star Wars and kenner is great.
Alot of people kind of see Lucas as this evil genius with the toys and merch sales, but realistically, he had a deal with kenner that he'd get something like 2.5% of every dollar made (which is a lot overall, but he wasn't ripping them out of it)
I think the toys, ships, and everything else was more of a chance to sing the praises of the designers and creators of the creatures, ships, and weapons. I mean, the only reason any of it was sellable in the first place was because it looked cool, but they also allowed/ allow people to kind of imagine their own stories.
When I was a kid I'd have so much fun re-creating scenes, or thinking of my own, I suppose it kind of left a mark on me because now, all these years later I write sci-fi stories for fun, so I guess back then the star wars stuff was my vehicle to output some of my creativity which is kind of interesting to think of
The Disney documentary is really interesting as it shows the struggles they went through to make the film. Space films were not taken seriously then and some a few years earlier look pretty bad. It all paid off in the end and, ironically, created an empire ;)