Friday, October 13, 2023

Putting Past Trauma To Bed

Rish Outfield has been plundering Ross stores for the last week or more. For some reason, they've stepped up their supply of toys that he finds worthwhile trying to sell. He's been buying Transformers, Star Wars figures, GI Joes, and more like a madman. He's filling carts as full as they can go with these toys, because...sometime in the not too far distant future...he will be able to turn those same toys around for a great deal more money than he is spending on them now.

I stopped doing that same thing with Rish back in 2007 or so. It was fun, but also came with a great deal of frustration and stress, so I let it go, and faded back to simply being a toy collector. I don't, therefore, go quite as crazy at the offerings they have available at Ross, but I'm still pretty damn impressed, and moved to buy stuff.

I just bought Tomax and Xamot a short while ago.

Then I bought a whole mess of those 3.75" Fortnite figures, because they had both the alien guys and the Doggo guy.


The other day, when I stopped in at Ross here locally, I was met with the sight of another figure I couldn't pass up. 

When I was a kid, I got the vintage version of Princess Leia in her Boushh disguise. I loved it so much. Sadly, while playing with some friends near a little stream in front of someone's house, her mask popped off, fell on the ground, and vanished into the brush. I looked forever, but never found it. For years after that, whenever I walked past that house, I'd go over and search anew for a minutes. Even long after I no longer had the figure, I would still remember how I lost the mask as I passed that house walking home. Years later I wrote a blog post relating the whole story while talking about finding the new Black Series version of the figure at Ross.

Okay, I think we're all caught up now. So, I saw the figure at Ross, it took me back to my tragic moment as a kid, and I jumped at the chance to finally have that figure with an intact mask again. 

On top of that, Ross has decided to price their figures back to the level that they used to price them at. For a while, it was barely cheaper to buy figures at Ross, because they were well over $10 a piece. Gone were the days when I was able to assemble an entire platoon of Snowtroopers from Ross for $4 a piece. Suddenly, though, they're back in that direction again. Those Fortnite figures above sold for $16 at retail, but at Ross they're selling them for $2.99. Same goes for Boushh here. She sold for more than $20 at retail, but they're only asking $5.99 at Ross right now. I jumped at the chance.

I took my traditional picture of my figure on the Dashboard, but since I got the new schedule at work, I'm hitting the Rosses at nighttime, and the pictures just don't look as good without better lighting. What a great figure, though, right? Amazing costume design. That mask...that I once lost and never saw again...that mask is such a cool design. I love it.

Should I see if I can't find a Chewbacca to pose her with, like she's bringing him in to trade? Or should I put her on the shelf with the bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back? They're all bounty hunters, right? Or maybe I should give her her own shelf. She's cool enough to command her own place, after all.

Oh, since the figures were so cheap, I decided to grab one more. I picked up this figure of Grand Moff Tarkin.

I don't really want the figure of Tarkin, to tell you the truth, but I really wanted that torture droid he came with. It seems to me like it could work with 3.75" figures as well. It would be big, but no bigger than those astromech droids I got with Rish last week, for example.

I'll probably have to modify that stand to make it fit in with 3.75" figures, but I think it looks pretty good. Maybe, a year or two from now, when they don't have Tarkin for cheap at every Ross in the country, I'll see if I can't sell him for a few bucks. Or maybe I'll just put him on the shelf with the white dress Leia figure I have in a tote somewhere. I bought that one just because it was so cheap too, if I remember. Then the torture droid could migrate back to the 6" scale shelf to menace her. Good times, huh?

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