At about 5PM CST somebody or a lot of somebodies blew out my bandwidth at my image host, so you won’t see any pics in any of my posts until I get back under my limit (in 12 hours at least).

Okay, this isn’t really a bashing post. I may save the bashing until after my visit to Wal-Mart. Anyway, to show how the TPM toy debaucle affected my buying between 1999 and 2002 (and to show I’m not a total SW hater), here’s a list of all my SW figures. Yeah, it looks very small, after almost 30 years of fandom, but I was a kid when that started, and I wasn’t rolling in dough. The items in red I got at a discount.

OT Stuff
Princess Leia in Ceremonial Gown – Portrait Edition doll
Luke Skywalker & Yoda – 12″ figure & scaled Yoda
Luke Skywalker in Jedi Gear – 12″ figure

TPM Stuff
Obi-Wan Kenobi – 12″ figure
Qui-Gon Jinn – 12″ figure
Red Senate Gown Queen Amidala – Portrait Edition doll
Hidden Majesty Queen Amidala (2) – 12″ fashion doll
Return To Naboo Queen Amidala – Portrait Edition doll
Royal Elegance Queen Amidala – 12″ fashion doll
Ultimate Hair Queen Amidala – 12″ fashion doll
Black Travel Gown Queen Amidala – Portrait Edition doll
Beautiful Braids Padmé – 12″ fashion doll
Qui-Gon Jinn w/Tatooine Poncho – 12″ figure
Mace Windu – 12″ figure
Darth Maul & Sith Speeder – 12″ figure & vehicle

AOTC Stuff
Obi-Wan Kenobi – 12″ figure
Anakin Skywalker – 12″ figure
Luminara Unduli – 3-3/4″ figure
Shaak Ti – 3-3/4″ figure
Count Dooku – 12″ figure

Note that I bought only one of the Portrait Edition dolls at full price, around $60. The others were discounted at around 70%! I couldn’t find discounts on the 12″ figures; anyway, they’re bought in small quantities. I wasn’t surprised to find a thick layer of dust on some of the boxes. Once AOTC came around, however, discounts were nowhere to be had.

My plans for adding to this collection are still up in the air. There’s little I’m looking forward to, except maybe acquiring a 12″ figure of a female Jedi (finally!). But Hasbro has a history of making not-so-great female figures at that size. Also, I thought I might get Obi-Wan in all his different looks from TPM, AOTC, ROTS, and OT.

I had read somewhere that Hasbro took a $100 million hit for their TPM merchandise’s lack of movement. And that tricked down to the stores, especially Wal-Mart. When AOTC came out, there was the usual hoopla, and nearly a whole aisle of toys. But a few months afterward you didn’t see new figures so often. Then the shelf space set aside for them shrank. Hasbro wasn’t putting out as much as they had before, plus Wal-Mart wasn’t buying a lot. So my opportunities for steals dried up. I bought exactly five figures, one of which I got from Target. All at full price.

I’m not sure what pattern we’ll see this weekend. I already know I’ll be at my local Wal-Mart this Saturday, so I’ll report what’s going on there.

This weekend will kick off probably the biggest hype party this side of…well, TPM. Last SW movie and everything. Get your piece of history before it’s gone!

Oy.

I almost got caught up by the hype machine just before TPM came out. At the time, my local Wal-Mart was remodelling, and stuff was constantly being moved around. But the displays for the toys stayed in one place. I had gone before the toys were to be officially sold, so the display was there to get mouths watering. There was a sign (handwritten?) stuck to a shelf saying that they couldn’t sell anything until a certain date, and then only a certain number per person would be sold. To head off the scalpers, I guess.

A very different picture towards Christmas that year. Wal-Mart just could not get rid of the stuff they had. That’s when I made a killing. Most everything I got was at half-price. Hasbro did oversaturate the market, and I wonder if they’ll make the same mistake with ROTS. The press is saying ROTS will whip all comers, but will it translate into sales? Can Hasbro survive getting snake-bitten twice?

I got this by a TF.N poster who has the upcoming SW Insider magazine. It seems that Padmé is going to have 12 costume changes in ROTS. Okay, most of the movie she’s moping around the apartment, hoping nobody will look too closely and see she’s pregnant. So she needs to be seen in something new every few minutes or so.

*stares blankly at computer screen*

I can say lots of things here, but I’m going to wait until a certain Bash-A-Rama-Thon topic comes up. And if you’ve been keeping up with the list at the Antechamber, then you’ll guess which one it is.

…to mess up your groove. Back on schedule Monday.

Saturday I spent the day with the Sith clan, talking, watching Emeril Legasse do his thing on the Food Network, and playing with the cat. My sister isn’t a SW geek like me, but she loves the OT. I don’t think she’s ever seen the Prequels, or ever wanted to. She’s never heard my rantings and ravings over the PT, the state of SW, etc. So when she started talking about ROTS, I had a moment of pause. She asked me if I knew anything about the movie, I said I knew quite a lot. But I didn’t say any more than that. With a somewhat pained look on my face, I considered whether or not to pour out what I knew. Then I remembered she’s not as deep into SW as I am, and I said nothing else.

I hate to let her get hung out to dry by not warning her. But if she sees it and gets some kind of enjoyment out of it, who am I to stomp on that? It’s different from me coming here and unleashing my rage. No one has to read it if they don’t want to, and most who read it agree with what I’m saying more often than not. She didn’t asked to get pulled into my world, so I’ll leave that door closed. If she doesn’t like ROTS, however, the door will be unlocked and Darth Sheba will give her a tissue and a shoulder to cry on. But if she says “why didn’t you warn me”, well…

[insert sheepish grin]

I scanned a few excepts from the ROTS novelization recently. These bits and pieces have manage to lift the expectations of some of my basher bretheren, but, as always, I have to look at them with a slightly jaundiced eye. In the book, there’s plenty of space to embellish and polish out problems presented by the script. Things not explained on screen can be explained in print. Much of ROTS will need to be explained to be understood, however.

According to some sources, the dialogue is pretty much what’s going to be in the movie. When reading the excerpts, I found myself skipping over it and reading the surrounding exposition. Usually with me, it’s the other way around. It has the effect of making the dialogue contained therein look better than it actually is. (I’ve spent almost thirty years working not to do that in my own writing. Ultimately, you want it all to be good, dialogue and exposition.) Actually, I credit Stover for sweeping me up in what’s going on, if only for a little while. Then I remember this is ROTS, and some things still kick you out of the illusion, like much of the PT.

I doubt I’ll read the book before I see the movie. My senses might be so assaulted that I might not want anything else to do with ROTS. And that’s a shame, because I like to read the books for the “secrets” and “dirt” and other arcana that didn’t get on screen.

I’ve had to deal with it again today, but now I’m exhausted. After I post this, I’ll be in bed for the next 12-15 hours. If I wake up feeling better tomorrow, I should be able to post something intelligible.

No bashing today. I have Darth Real Life to deal with, and I barely have time to write this.

Maybe a tiny bash…

At Wal-Mart today I saw one of their promos for their ROTS sales blitz in April. On it was Yoda in mid-jump brandishing his lightsaber. I wanted to be sick.