Here in Houston, there's a vintage toy store called Super Happy Incredible Toys. They often put on events where vendors can come and sell second hand toys along with them, and this past Sunday was one of those days:
If I remember correctly, they did these Sunday Fundays on a monthly basis in the past, but when things like Covid came along, it died off. Well, when they first posted the notice of the event, they said it was back by popular demand. Maybe that means they will be doing it monthly again. That would be cool.
Of course, in the past, when they did it, I never went to any of them, because I am lame. It's kind of a long drive, and I always found other things to be doing. This past Sunday, however, I actually make my way out there to check it out. Rish had told me a lot of stories about how many things were available and at what cheap levels you could find them at, and I wanted to experience it for myself. I hoped to add some residents to my Ankletown Station population. So, I put on my Guardians of the Galaxy t-shirt (so I would fit in with all the other nerds), and drove down there.
It wasn't a huge event, but it was decent. There were something like fifteen different vendors there, and I circled for a while, looking at everything that they had, and trying to decide what I was going to waste my money on. I saw a few things that I liked, but I didn't start blowing my cash until I asked the woman about this ship:
I knew it was a T-16 Skyhopper, but I couldn't tell if it was meant for 3.75 inch figures or what. I couldn't figure out how to open the cockpit and see if a figure could sit in it. I asked the lady selling it, and she didn't know. She asked the guy who was with her, and he didn't know. She went around to other people in the venue, and they didn't know.
"I'll give it to you for $5 if you want it," she said. It was marked as being $10, so I was motivated to accept her offer. Just then, I figured out how to open the cockpit as well. It definitely was a 3.75 inch ship, and I thought it would make a fun addition to Ankletown. Gettin a ship that was good to go for $5 was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to do, so I bought it, and at the same time, I bought a set of Ewoks they were selling too. She marked the Ewoks down from $10 to $5 for me as well, and I happily gave her a ten.
Then I asked what she would mark this goofy Force Awakens droid to if she was marking everything down.
It was marked as $8, which was about double what I would have been willing to pay for it, but she said she'd take $4 for it, which was exactly where I was willing to give it a shot. So I bought that too.
Now that I'd lost my buying virginity, I was ready to start spending. I went around to the other booths and picked up several more things. I think I spent about $30 altogether, and here's what I came home with:
So, there is the blue alien protocol droid from Force Awakens.
Her name is PZ-4CO. It's a kind of goofy looking droid, but that's fine. I'll see if I can't get a good wash onto it, and make it look as good as it can for Ankletown.
I am pretty low on droids, and they are one of the things I want to have the most of, so I need to keep adding more wherever I can. She also came with these rocket boot things.
They have little clips that you can attach to someone's ankles, but that would be pretty stupid. I don't know why they were included. Rish was telling me on the phone that all of the Force Awakens figures came with some stupid play feature to make the toys more toyetic, so I guess they had to include it because of that mandate.
Doesn't matter. They look like random greebles that could be hanging on the wall of a sci-fi space station, and I suspect that's what I will do with them. They'll be a good addition in that respect.
There was the 2-pack of ewoks as well. That one included Wicket and Logray.
I have one Vintage Collection ewok. That one is Teebo. These two 5POA figures could be nice along side of that guy. Since he would be way more poseable, he could do all the heavy lifting, and these two could be the background players. I always thought it would be funny to have ewoks that lived in a kind of homeless hovel kind of a hut in some alleyway in Ankletown. In fact, I even wrote a scene in my Ankletown Station novel where the main character get attacked by an ewok intent on making him its lunch. So, it's definitely a part of Ankletown that I need to follow through with.
I got some more droids, there was a set of R2-D2 and C-3PO from Force Awakens that I picked up as well.
Sadly, this one was $8, but since it's a 2-pack, that means each figure was only $4. That's not terrible. I suspect that I will try to paint these two in different colors at some point probably, to make them look like different robots than the ones we all know so well.
Although who even recognizes Threepio with that red arm? This one came with another one of those action features. Artoo has this contraption that you can put on him that makes him able to shoot electric blasts at somebody.
You remember when he did that in the movie, right? Oh, wait, I think he was powered down for the whole movie so they could bring in that exact replica of him that served the exact same purpose in the remake of A New Hope that was BB-8. Anyway, the electricity bursts are kind of useless, but in the same fashion as the jet boots I showed earlier, the rest of the machinery could probably just be mounted on a wall and look pretty cool.
So, those things will be useful in the end after all.
The last thing I picked up there was this Marvel Universe Iron Man figure.
Iron Man is a dude in space armor, so her definitely fits in on Ankletown Station. There were actually several different varieties to chose from, but I picked the most standard movie looking version this time.
He comes with an energy blast that is supposed to be coming out of his repulsors in his palms, but instead it clips to his wrist and curves around to give the appearance of coming from his repulsors.
I suspect I will never again put that thing on his arm. Who know, but it's not really useful to what I'm doing at Ankletown.
So, that was it for Sunday Funday. I went into Houston, bought a bunch of goofy stuff I didn't need, one guy said my shirt was cool, and then I came home. We'll see what I can do with all of this crap in Ankletown some day. I look forward to writing a new blog post about it for you. See you then.
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