Back in the summer, Rish and I were talking about action figures...who have thought, right?...and Rish mentioned the ferry droid they had in the last episode of season one of the Mandalorian. They took an artoo unit, and added arms and legs to it so that it could row its way along in a boat. As we talked about it, Rish suddenly decided that he wanted that figure. He searched on eBay for a listing, but was discouraged to find that you could only find it available in the four-pack that they sold it in.
"I want to get it, but I don't want to get all the other droids that it comes with," he said.
Well, we left it at that and moved on with life, but then I got the idea that I should get Rish the droid for Christmas. He seemed really excited about it, but only became discouraged when there was no way to get it for a good price. However, I have these goofy aspirations of creating a space station populated with Star Wars figures, particularly droids. I'd love to have the other three droids. I'd love to have the ferry droid too, but the other three are fine. I could get the whole pack, send Rish the ferry droid, and keep the others. I could eat the leftovers, so to speak. I could clean up the slop.
So, that's what I did. I sent it to Rish, but by that time it was about six months later. I think his interest in the figure might have waned. He sent me this text when he got the package with the figure in it.
"Oh, no!" I thought. Does he not even remember that he wanted that figure? Does he not even remember that the figure exists? I wasn't sure how to answer his question.
Well, I don't know if it turned out to be a good present or not. At least he got it. That's better than it has been in other years. It's the thought that counts, right?
Anyway, due to that present idea, I now have several droids that I didn't have before. The first one is Goldy here:
He's got a good look. I like this one. Then there's this pastel-looking, Miami Dolphins fan one:
He's got a good look too. He'll be great on Ankletown. Lastly, there's this one:
This is R1. It's a security droid, I believe. This one is pretty big. He's as tall as a figure. Apparently, this robot flies. It comes with that stand, but when I photograph it, I'll have to use Photoshop to remove it so that it looks like it's flying.
Anyway, here are the three new droids that now roam the hypothetical hallways of Ankletown Station.
When I was out with Rish last week, I got two things while we were out hitting toy stores. One was the rover Lego set that I talked about yesterday, the other one was this:
That's Thanos, the Mad Titan. He typically falls into a category of what they call the Cosmic Marvel characters, so he's exactly the kind of guy that should be on an inter-dimensional space station.
Here's what he looks like standing beside the regular figures of Ankletown.
He's taller, but the biggest difference is the fact that he's something like twice as wide as those guys. They look pretty good together if you ask me.
The glove comes off.
So, I could use the Infinity Gauntlet in some other way if I'd like.
I don't have any ideas for it, but who knows. Maybe I could just put it in the window of a pawn shop or something. Could be fun. Having a pawn shop, now that I think of it, could be a really fun idea, actually. I could constantly change out the item in the window, using the accessories of various figures. I'll have to see if I can't make that one of my first building I make.
While I was out of town to see my stepmother's funeral, I had a chance to hang out with Rish Outfield for a few hours. We did what we used to do all the time. We ate some breakfast together and then went around to a few Rosses, Walmarts, and Targets.
I have been avoiding that kind of stuff recently, staying far away from any Ross. I swore that I wouldn't buy anything further for Ankletown Station unless I first created a building for it. Of course, I broke that vow, but not too many times. It was mostly my wife's idea that we should start paying off all of our debts so that we could save up some money instead of just living as debt slaves for the rest of our lives that really got me to start eschewing the Rosses...that and the fact that Ross never had anything good anyway.
While out with Rish, I was still in that mode. I did get convinced to try a few things, though...and by convinced, I'm not talking about Rish doing the convincing, it was just my mind doing that. I only spent about six bucks, but I think they were good purchases. The first one was this:
This thing was a Lego set...one of those tiny Lego sets that they charge $3.99—actually, considering inflation, it's probably $4.99 now—however, it was on the clearance rack, and I got it for $2.50. I thought that it might be cool on Ankletown Station. Having some kind of rover as one of the droids that wanders the station seems great.
It doesn't look particularly Lego-ish. It looks more like an erector set, which is basically what the real rovers look like if you ask me. I like it. I think I'll name it Fred Rover. Fred Rover, Fred Rover, send Artoo right over.
The real question was, how would this thing scale with the figures that I have for Ankletown Station? Well, once I got it assembled, I checked that. Here you go:
It's perfect, right? Just the right size. This thing is gonna be good...once I build something for it to populate. I'll get there someday. Someday, Jennifer. Someday.
This one, I don't really have an excuse for. I shouldn't have given into this temptation.
A few years ago, Hasbro went all in on Lando Calrissian. They made figures of Lando in all of his different costumes in several different scales, and made them available all at once in high numbers. This led to Lando being the biggest pegwarmer ever. Any store you went to was overrun with Lando figures clogging the pegs and keeping new merchandise from ever arriving. The demand for Lando just wasn't anywhere close to the supply that was available.
I avoided buying any of these Landos, because I knew that they would definitely make their way to Ross. There were just too many of them for that not to happen. Eventually, all the figures disappeared, but I'm pretty sure they weren't slowly bought by Lando fans. Instead, stores realized they'd never sell, and they pulled them off and sold them away to secondary retailers.
Well, just the other day, I saw my first Lando at Ross...oh, wait, let me be more accurate. I saw my first ten Landos at Ross. Yeah, they had them on the pegs there now, and there were a bunch of them. At least ten.
I only wanted one, and I'd be done. I bought it, and took it out to the car.
It's a pretty good figure for a 3.75 inch scale guy. That really looks like Billy Dee Williams to me.
The cape is a little wonky, but I'm sure some work on it would make it look alright.
I thought about buying more of them and using the heads on other figures, but that's not going to work. There's only one Billy Dee. I can't just put a Lando head on somebody else and pretend like it's a rando, because it definitely isn't. It's Billy Dee.
So, this will be the only Lando that I buy, and sadly, the rest of them will probably warm the pegs at Ross for months or even years from now on. Hopefully, Hasbro will learn their lesson, and only produce figures in the numbers they need to sell so this doesn't happen again...of course it will. There's always some pegwarmer or another.
Okay, I talked about Krrsantan yesterday, and how I broke my oath to avoid buying more Vintage Collection figures for Ankletown Station until I built a building for the thing. I went to an Ollie's and bought Krrsantan even though I shouldn't have. Well, while I was there, I also bought a Stormtrooper figure that I shouldn't have.
The Incinerator Trooper and Grogu were another set of deluxe figures. A while back, I bought a couple of the Artillery Troopers from Ross, they are figures that are normal Stormtroopers with a little bit of yellow accents to them. They look like this:
So, the Incinerator Trooper just looks like the same guy but in red. I can dig that. He's like an officer or something. It's not a bad look. So, I got one.
He comes with tons of flame effects. I could use them for him, or I could use them for any of the myriad other figures that I have that are fire-related characters like The Human Torch or Firestar. Then he comes with a Grogu figure, which is a tiny little worthless thing, but I don't think I have a Grogu otherwise.
There is also a fire effect specifically for Grogu that shows him using the force to bend the fire around him. Kind of cool, but unlikely anything I'll ever use for Ankletown. I'll just put it with Firestar or whatever.
Here's another figure that can look good in pictures and be fun on Ankletown Station. Now I need to get going on that. I broke my oath, but I still need to get to it.
I swore that I wouldn't buy more stuff for Ankletown Station until I got around to creating the first building for the place...yet, the temptation came along and I gave in and bought something even though I had yet to do anything on a building beyond take a piece of wood, and look at it for a minute and wonder, "Would this piece work?"
Sometimes it's hard to get going on something like that. I had the same problem with the Wall of Voodoo, but once I got going, I really got rolling and plowed through it. I'd like to say the same thing will happen with Ankletown Station. Hopefully that's true.
Anyway, when I went out to the new Ollie's that opened near me, there were a few of those deluxe figures from the Vintage Collection that they'd been selling for astounding amounts a few months ago. The first one I grabbed was the Black Krrsantan figure.
I think they wanted $35 for this thing in the first place. No way in hell would I pay that for a 3.75 inch figure, no matter how deluxe it was. Now that it's $9.99, though, it's not prohibitively expensive. It's a good figure, and it's a wookiee, an alien that I would put on Ankletown Station.
Since it was Deluxe, it came with a bunch of extra crap, like those electric effects that go on his brass knuckles things on his hands. But it also came with all of this stuff:
Two sets of hands, a big rifle, a big old mug, and a...fruit? I guess he probably used that stuff in the Boba Fett show. I have mostly blocked that show from my memory, so I don't remember a mug or a fruit, but surely they were a thing.
I'm not a fan of Krrsantan himself. I may even repaint him a different color to make him look like a different random wookiee. Who knows. He'll be fun, one way or another.
Sometimes, what you imagine isn't all that similar to reality. Having high expectations for something can often lead to a huge let down. Back in the day when I was doing my Big Anklevich on Toys videos regularly, I did a recurring segment called "Cheap Toy Hunting." I would show off the toys that I'd managed to get for a really good price. Most frequently they came from Ross. If you've ever been to Ross, you know that it's mostly a huge dystopian landscape. It has a small toy section that usually looks like a hurricane has recently passed through, and, for an adult toy collector like me, there's very little of the merchandise they are offering for sale that might appeal. In fact, on most days, there's nothing that might appeal.
Despite that description, I did sometimes find things worth getting, enough so that Gino Moretto, who lives in New Zealand commented on one of my videos that he wished that they had this mythical Ross place where he lived so that he could find some of these deals I was boasting about. It made me chuckle, because it just wasn't as nice as he imagined.
When I moved out to Texas, I got access to a bunch of new stores that didn't exist where I used to live. Chief among those stores was Five Below. This was a discount store where everything was marked to $5 or less, that's what the name was about. Rish was watching on YouTube, and saw a video where someone said that Five Below had the Marvel Legends Guardians of the Galaxy figures on sale for $5 a piece.
"Do you have a Five Below near you?" he asked me over the phone.
I had no idea. I'd yet to notice one, but maybe... I looked it up on Google, and turned out that there were a lot of Five Belows, including one just across the street from where I worked. I wouldn't mind having a set of Guardians of the Galaxy to display on my shelves. I should have probably run over there that very day, but. I didn't. Instead, the next time it was convenient for me, I went over. I think they still had one Rocket Raccoon, but beyond that, they just had the Ex Nihilo figure and the Adam Warlock figure that weren't from the movie.
I didn't even buy Rocket, because I didn't want one memeber of the Guardians without all the others. It had already been picked clean. I hoped that they might get another set in, and went back several more times, as well as finding a few other Five Belows that were in locations that were convenient for me and checking them out, but I never saw another Marvel Legends figure in a Five Below again.
All the same, Rish Outfield built up this vision in his mind of Five Below as this mythical place where there were amazing deals available at all times. He always asked me about what I found there, and my answer was almost invariably nothing. Rish took a vacation to Los Angeles, and while he was there, he made sure to visit Five Below. He was surprised to find that they had nothing worth getting, despite the fact that I'd been telling him that I'd found nothing at the store for months on end.
Then, they finally started opening up Five Belows right where Rish lived. He went out to them a few times, wondering if he might find a special deal because it was the Grand Opening or something, but there were none. It was the same old BS. He finally now saw Five Below as I saw it. It wasn't a mythical place, but just any other store.
It's only gotten worse as inflation has forced the prices on everything upward. They're probably going to have to change the name of the place at some point. Ten Below...or smarter yet, Twenty Below, because inflation ain't stopping, no matter what chucklehead we put into the white house. From Five Below to Twenty Below, though? Does that mean Global Warming isn't real? Ha ha!
There's one more mythical store out there for Rish. This store called Ollie's, which is a big discount retailer on the East Coast, is frequently talked about on the toy collecting sites that Rish goes to. The posters there would extol the amazing deals they found there. Rish would tell me about them, and sometimes I'd see them as well, and wish that I could go there.
Then, one day, I saw an ad for the grand opening of Ollie's in a city...relatively close to me. It could have been worse. Houston is a big area, and it can take an hour and a half to get from one place to another even though you're driving eighty miles an hour on the freeway most of the time. This one, though, was only about 45 minutes away...sadly, it was nowhere near anything else, so if I went there, it was solely for Ollie's.
I went out to the grand opening. I even did a Big Anklevich on Toys video about it.
It was very busy, and I was a little unimpressed by their stock of toys. I didn't buy anything, and I didn't go back for quite a while, but eventually, somebody found something at an Ollie's somewhere that I hoped I would find at mine too, and I went looking again. I found a few good things over the few years that the store has been there. So, I don't hate the place like I have grown to hate Five Below, but it was such a horrifying slog to drive all the way out there, and so disappointing if I didn't find anything, that I almost never went.
Rish continued to tell me about things that people supposedly found there, and I think he still sees it as a mythical place, like he once thought of Five Below. I suspect that Ollie's would probably live up to his imaginings a lot better than Five Below ever could.
Well, the other day, I saw a commercial on TV that caught my eye. Something about an Ollie's Grand opening in Houston. Where was it going to be? I looked it up online, and found this:
Six grand openings. and when I took this picture, it was the Wednesday before they were to happen. Well, most of those locations weren't near me, but a couple of them were, so I figured I'd have to stop in and see what they were like.
Friday, the day after the grand opening in an attempt to avoid the crowds a little, I went out to one of the Ollie's that is near a Ross that I usually go to frequently. I took this picture, because I thought it kind of showed Rish's dream stripmall.
A Ross with an Ollie's right next door. Wow!
They still had someone at a table just inside the door handing out cookies to people who came to shop...I didn't partake, but I suppose others thought it was nice. They had a lot of toys, particularly Marvel Legends, though they were all figures that I was uninterested in. They had the Dungeons & Dragons Owlbears there too. I considered getting one, but I didn't need that. It would just go in a storage tub and stay there. They did have a Star Wars guy that I grabbed and carried around with me while I looked. It was the Vintage Collection Incinerator Trooper who also comes with a little Grogu that can use the force to turn away the flames.
I figured I would get it, but then I saw the line, which was very long due to the whole brand-new-store thing, and I changed my mind and put it back. It'll probably still be there later. They had an awful lot of them.
I suppose I couldn't have bought it anyway, because I made a pledge not to buy any more stuff for Ankletown Station until I had at least one building created. I still haven't done that, so I'm glad I put it back...though I'd completely forgotten about that particular pledge.
Okay, I don't know why I wrote this entire huge post about this crap. I guess, the point was to say that mythical stores don't ever live up to their hype, and now that I can go to Ollie's all the time, I'm sure it will fall further and further down in my estimation with each visit. Then again, maybe I'll see all the good stuff before everybody else plunders it, and I can be the guy who makes the videos about his finds. Who knows?
A while back, I got an email from Rish that said "I'm SERIOUSLY considering buying this." It had a link to an eBay auction selling lot of ten Star Wars figures still in their package for $59.99. They were all the Klaatu (Skiff Guard) figures.
That was a figure that I didn't have. I was all for it if he was actually considering it. If he had ten of them, he could surely part with one to sell to me.
Rish made an offer and managed to get it for ten dollars less, and we were off. He sent me my Klaatu in the package that came the other day.
So now, I've got another alien for my space station. I won't get anymore, though, I swear, until I build a building. I think maybe I'll see if I can't build one this weekend. Or maybe next week during the morning.
I talked yesterday about the Halloween Star Wars zombie droid that Rish sent out to me...but that wasn't all he sent out. There were two more figures in the package. I'll talk about one more of them today, and then the other one tomorrow, I guess.
I want as many droids as I can get in my Ankletown space station, so any chance I have to get one, I take. The Disney Store had TC-14 available for purchase, and after being up for a while, they decided to put it on clearance. Marked down to $10 instead of $15, I jumped at the chance.
This is the robot from The Phantom Menace that brings Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan a drink right before the Neimoidians decide to gas them. So, it comes with a tray and a pitcher.
It could make a nice waiter at the bar or restaurant, or something. Although that pitcher doesn't look like a pitcher at all.
I know that I just swore that I wouldn't buy anything for Ankletown Station until I at least made the first building for it, and I swear to you that this doesn't go against that. A few weeks ago, Rish told me that he was buying some stuff from the Disney store online. If I wanted to, I could order too, and then there would be no shipping to get the guys.
They had a Halloween figure available there that I'd been thinking about, and this was my chance. I probably wasn't going to buy it myself and pay the shipping, but combining our orders would make it worthwhile. The figure is called R5-Z0MB. It's a zombie version of a Star Wars droid.
Doesn't he look spooky? Okay, maybe not, but it's pretty fun. He came in the mail just the other day...but I bought him before, so I didn't break my word.
The hole in its head is pretty fun, although I wish there was something inside of it. There ought to be wires or something poking out now that the head is broken open. I guess that astromechs don't have a lot going on upstairs.
He's not exactly right for Ankletown Station, but it could be fun to have him in pictures when Halloween comes around.
Since he's a Halloween figure, I put him up on the shelf with the other Halloween stuff. Here is his space for this year:
Went out to Ross, and I didn't find Franken Berry like I was hoping. Rish found Franken Berry at his Ross, but not me.
He said he would send me one if I never find it myself, so I guess I don't have to be too worried.
I did find something I hadn't seen before.
This is Yoda's Jedi fighter, from the Micro Galaxy Squadron line. I've been collecting as many of these ships as I can to use on a 1/72 scale space station I'd like to create. since I'd never seen this ship before, I figured I ought to pick it up.
Rish tells me it's from Revenge of the Sith, but I don't remember it at all. He said that Yoda flies away in it at the end of the Order 66 scene. I looked that up on YouTube, and it wasn't there. Maybe it was a little later in the show. I don't know.
Anyway, while I like the Jedi Starfighter, this particular model seems strange to me.
It's kind of bulbous and goofy looking. I'm not sure why. Yoda is smaller than other folks, he could easily fit in their ships. Why does he get one with a bigger bulb than them?
It's wings open up in an attack position, and the cockpit opens to a seat made especially for Yoda.
It also comes with an Artoo-Detoo, but I'm not really sure what Yoda is doing with Artoo.
I already have an Artoo that came with the X-Wing, so I could repaint this one and make him look like a different R2 unit. I wonder how hard that would be to paint a figure so small.
I guess, in the end, it's a cool little ship and it'll be fine with the space station, but I certainly don't need more of these. I probably paid too much for it as well. They wanted $5 for this thing. I pay less for a Vintage Collection figure at Ross, and I think they're much more worthwhile.
You know what? I think I've got to stop buying anything for any Ankletown Station space station until I actually get the gumption enough to actually build at least one building first. I'm going to make that pledge right now. The only thing I'll buy from Ross is Franken Berry from now on. Until I have at least one building made for the space station, I'm not spending another dime on figures or ships. I should have done this long ago.
Then next post you see with Ankletown Station in the tags will be my report of making the first building. I'll see you then. May the force be with you.
I saw it on Amazon for a much lower price than they've been asking recently. It used to be $25 if you wanted this droid. I guess nobody was buying, though. When I looked the other day, it was at $11.70. That's not an amazing price, and for most Star Wars guys, I'd still pass, but I want more and more droids. As many droids as I can get. So, I jumped at the chance to get this new different droid for what amounts to a reasonable price.
He's a little unusual. I think he needs a black wash to bring out the details, especially in the red parts. I like the different look, though.
He also comes with the camera thing on the top of his head that he can use to look around with in case he gets dumped into a Dagobah swamp or something. That pops out if you push in the center third leg.
You can spin it around to make it look in different directions, but I don't think I like it much, because it's not attached. It will fall out if he turns upside down, or just tips over or something. I suspect that I will lose the thing sooner or later. I think I'll leave the third leg out permanently to try to make sure that doesn't happen.
I gotta stop buying Star Wars guys if they're more than Ross prices. I think I will make an official pledge right now that from here on out, unless there's some very special circumstances, I will not buy Star Wars Vintage Collection figures anywhere other than Ross.
They had a couple things at Ross the last time I went. I was a little surprised. They had another Weequay, and I went ahead and grabbed that. They also had this Fortnite figure.
I wanna say that I already have a Yond3r, but I can't find a post about him nor do I want to look through the drawer full of figures that I have for Ankletown Station in search of him. If I do have him, I'm pretty sure it's the gold version.
Now that I look at it, though, I don't think I did get it, so this is probably my only Yond3r. I guess Yond3r is supposed to be DJ, like Marshmello or Daft Punk.
Hence the donkey helmet look on a guy wearing a Michael Jackson looking suitcoat with epaulets and everything.
I like the look of the outfit, but not the head so much. I'll probably dump the head and maybe swap in an alien head like Weequay's or a Nikto or something...or I could just put the alternate head that the figure comes with. I guess Yond3r isn't as enigmatic and mysterious as Daft Punk. You can see him without the headwear.
If nothing else, it's a new head to use on something. I put it on the Weequay and it looked pretty good...although the Fortnite head is more simplisticly detailed than the Star Wars Vintage Collection figures are...so I could do that too.
