Hoban Washburne

I am a huge fan of Firefly and the movie Serenity. I remember back in 2014 hearing that Super7 was going to make Firefly action figures in the same scale as Marvel Legends and Star Wars Black Series, and I was super stoked. I was ready to buy all of them.

Sadly, they got the same treatment as the show itself. They released a first wave, and then called it a day. There were only five figures to buy. They did Mal, Zoë, Jayne, Wash, and Kaylee...and that was it. The nine person crew of Serenity would not be completed. We would never get Simon, River, Book, and Inara, much less any of the other characters that we saw in the show like Badger, Saffron, and the two by two hands of blue guys.

When that happened, I decided that I would only buy the three fighters of the group, and put them together, because that seemed to work. They made a good group, but if I added Wash and Kaylee to it, then you look at it and wonder where are all the rest?

So, I got those figures, put them on my shelf, and went on with my life.

That was 2015, and now it's 2022. So, the last thing I ever thought would happen was to go to a store, in this case a store called Tuesday Morning, and find one of those figures on the shelf at a price that I couldn't turn down, but there he was, Hoban Washburne.

What the heck? It's been seven years. Where has this toy been for all of that time? And at $4, I definitely couldn't just walk away and leave it there, even if I decided long ago that I was only going to get the fighters. Wash wanted to be a fighter. There was that whole episode where they get captured and tortured by Niska where Wash was trying to prove that he was tough too, so maybe it works.

Doesn't matter though, I was getting it no mater what. In fact, there was two of them, and I bought the other one for my daughter who also loves Firefly. She likes to collect and display toys a little bit too. She has an All Might from My Hero Academia, some Doctor Stranges, and a Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I texted her and asked her if she wanted it, and even though she didn't see the text and respond before we left the store, I bought it anyway, because I knew she would love it.

She is particularly fond of the fact that he came with two dinosaur toys as his accessories.

"I think we should call it your grave!"

"Oh, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

I put mine up on the shelf next to the others, sans dinosaurs, since it seems like they're in a moment where the dinosaurs would be inappropriate. I think it looks good.

Now, though, as is often the case when I find a toy at a good deal, I feel like I need to get that last figure they made. I need to get me a Kaylee. I wonder how likely it is that I will find her sitting on a shelf for only $4 in another seven years. Pretty far-fetched, but after today, I'm not so sure.