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Merchandise mania kicks off at a midnight sale at Toys R Us[part one in a series of five articles celebrating the Star Wars prequel]
By Steve Lansingh
I never saw the movie "Jingle All the Way," the 1996 film where Arnold Schwarzenegger spends an entire movie trying to find a hot action figure for his son, played by then-unknown Jake Lloyd. But as I stood in line at Toys R Us last Sunday at midnight, with a hundred other shoppers eager to get their hands on a Jake Lloyd action figure, the film jumped to mind as one of those odd life-imitates-art moments.
Life diverged from art, though, in the attitude of the crowd. Instead of eyeing each other as cutthroat competitors, as Sinbad and Schwarzenegger do in the film, we saw each other as part of a vast brotherhood. We weren't there just for the toys, we were there to be part of the community of Star Wars Mania, to convince ourselves that after waiting years for "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" to grow from rumor into reality, the movie was almost upon us. "I guess we're now officially Star Wars geeks," one guy said to his buddy as they got in line behind me. I smiled at him. "Welcome to the club."
I imagine how this would look to an outsider: a hundred 20-somethings lined up to buy toys. Just the fact that they're making toys should remind us "The Phantom Menace" isn't aimed at us but at the 10-year-olds we were when the original trilogy was out. I suppose we're here, then, to take ourselves back to that time, to be 10 again. Some of the people in line might be collectors who are going to box up their investment, but I'm going to open mine and have fun with them. The only difference between being 10 and right now is that tonight I can stay up way past my bedtime and I'm armed with a credit card.
By the time I've inched up to where the figures once were, none are left. There are a few "deluxe" figures packaged with vehicles that are quickly disappearing, so I start grabbing whatever I can and figure I'll decide what I really want later. I snatch a Darth Maul, a Battle Droid, and a Jar Jar Binks. I snap up Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn deluxe figures that come with little lightsabers that spin them around. (Why you'd want your figures to spin around on a lightsaber I don't know.) They're the last ones.
I try to find Amanda, who has stayed, in her maturity, at the perimeter of the frenzy, so I can ask her what -- if anything -- I should buy. I know that Wal-mart and Meijer will be putting out their merchandise about now, and I overhear another shopper say Kay-Bee is well-stocked and opening at 10 a.m. Suddenly I see three figures lying on a box off to the side. Extras, perhaps? I reach down and grab them, peering around to see if anyone is giving me the evil eye. They don't seem to belong to anyone, so I add them to my loot.
I've just found Amanda when I hear that the employees are bringing out more merchandise from the back. I hand off the pile of boxes and blister packs to her and head back into the fray. Workers are opening boxes and dumping them toward the bins, but the figures aren't even making it in before they're snatched mid-air. I'm half-expecting people to get trampled, but so far, no violence, just eagerness.
I'm too far from the feeding circle, and I know I'll never be able to push my way in before the stock has vanished. I turn around to find Amanda again when, providentially (this is the spiritual message in this article), another Toys R Us employee begins to open a box near a bin right next to me. He dumps the figures in the bin, and I grab two fistfuls. I toss back the duplicates and snatch two I don't have; then they're gone.
I've barely begun choosing when another fan, who's maybe 14, says to me, "I'll trade you an Anakin for something." He's holding five Anakin Skywalker figures in his hand -- the Jake Lloyd character I wanted most. "Anything in the cart," I say, and he trades me Anakin for a Darth Sidious. I savor the moment, and hear the Star Wars quote "The circle is now complete" echo in my head. The long path that brought me to the store that night to collect figures started with the generosity of some Star Wars fans, and now I encounter it again.
I was at a Wal-Mart in West Virginia a couple years ago when the bug first hit me. In anticipation of the Special Edition Star Wars movies that George Lucas was working on, Kenner had released a brand-new line of Star Wars figures. These figures were posed more naturally and molded more accurately than the figures I had grown up playing with, which moved like skinny Frankensteins and had wimpy lightsabers inserted in their forearms and flimsy capes that ripped within a day or two. I thought I might buy one of the newer, snazzier ones, for (new, improved) old-time's sake, so I decided on Darth Vader. My friend Alex, the person I was visiting in West Virginia, saw how excited I was by this new figure, and offered to buy me some more as a birthday present. We went to a Kay-Bee, and I picked out three or four figures and a vehicle. When I brought them to the register, the cashier said, "I can see you're a big fan. I saved this out for myself, but you'd probably enjoy it more." She took a Princess Leia figure from behind the counter and offered it to me.
The generosity of Alex and that cashier started my collection, which grew from a quest of collecting the eight main characters to collecting the main characters from each movie. I'll always be fond of the original figures I played with as a kid (that collection was started by the generosity of my friend Nathaniel when I was five, who gave me a landspeeder and three figures for my birthday), but I liked these new figures because they were so accurate, like scale models. I thought it would be cool to make a display out of them. So before long, my collection grew again to 40 or so figures that I would use to create three key scenes from each movie. My intention is to make them into a diorama that visually tells the story of the Skywalkers. My beneficent wife is even going to allow me to display it.
Now, as I looked into my rapidly filling cart, I realized how unprepared I was for this bounty. I'd counted on having only a couple figures available, not a dozen. How could I possibly know which characters I'd need for my three "Phantom Menace" scenes, before I'd seen the movie? Suddenly there was another commotion at the Star Wars display. More figures were coming out. Knowing that at the very least I needed a Darth Maul, I headed back into the crowd.
No Darth Mauls, but plenty of Anakins. I couldn't believe it. To make matters worse, I heard people asking each other if they'd seen a Darth Sidious, but no one had. Only a few minutes ago I'd gotten all misty-eyed about how generous that kid was to trade me an Anakin Skywalker, but now I saw he was a swindler. My mind started playing tricks on me, seeing news the next day that Darth Sidious figures were impossible to find and they were worth a whole bunch of money. My demeanor soured in a minute flat. "Anyone need a Darth Maul?" I heard a guy standing near the bin ask, holding it in the air. "Me!" I shouted, and he handed it to me. I was back to euphoria again. Man, what a rush.
I found Amanda again, this time in the baby section (is there something I don't know?), and added four more figures to my pile. I grimaced slightly at the size of it. I looked on the back of the packages to see if I missed any characters. (I was surprised to find that Shmi Skywalker, Anakin's mother, wasn't among the figures first released -- and disheartened, knowing I'd be searching stores for a year trying to find her. Amanda's probably even less thrilled.) The only ones I were missing were Mace Windu and Ki-Adi-Mundi, the latter of which I didn't think was available since I hadn't seen one and hadn't heard anyone asking for one, either. Still, that left me 16 to choose from.
The check-out lines were still fairly long, so I wandered around the store and helped shoppers find figures they were looking for while I tried to decide what to do. And of course -- you can see this coming a mile away, can't you? -- I found myself a Mace Windu. I was supposed to be eliminating figures, not adding them. I went back to the baby section and grinned sheepishly at Amanda as I added figure #17 to the cart. She smiled back serenely from her new-found perch in a display rocking chair. Maybe picking the baby section to sit in was somehow symbolic of me.
In order to decide which figures to keep, I placed all of them in the front basket of the cart, and then started moving the "definites" to the main part -- Anakin, Darth Maul, Queen Amidala, Obi-Wan ... .
Then the same 14-year-old walked up to me again. "Do you have the dirty Battle Droid yet?" he asked me, holding out an extra like a street huckster.
"I'm not collecting all the versions," I told him. (There are four versions of the Battle Droid -- light, dark, battle-scarred, and dirty -- but I had more than enough figures to collect without getting all the variations.)
"Oh, come on," he said in a wheedling tone. "You need all four!" A born salesman. I almost expected him to start listing the benefits of the dirty Droid and sign me up for optional insurance coverage in the event I dropped a figure or left it in a hot car and it melted.
I shook my head and started to turn back to Amanda, but the boy had a friend with him who spoke up then. "Do you have this guy?" he asked. He held out Ki-Adi-Mundi.
"No," I said hesitantly, since I wasn't eager to trade for this character I hadn't heard much about.
"Here," he said, and tossed the figure in my cart.
"Thanks," I stammered as they walked away.
Well, I couldn't very well start putting figures back now that I had all 18 of them, with the last one given to me so generously. I felt doubly bad for thinking ill of the 14-year-old (even if it was for only 15 minutes), when in the end he and his friend proved to be as generous as I'd first imagined him to be. So I gave up on my prioritizing, transferred all the figures to the main part of the cart, and got in line to pay my $133, keeping in mind Toys R Us' return policy in case I woke up the next morning and decided I was insane.
It was a ridiculous price to pay for toys, I knew, more even than Amanda's requisitioned rocking chair. Like a 10-year-old, I still have an allowance; and, equally like a 10-year-old, I borrowed way in advance of what I'd actually saved of it to this point. But like I said, I wasn't there just for the toys, but for the experience. It was a chance to commune with my Jedi brethren, and a chance to satisfy a small portion of the tremendous anticipation I've been living with for the past year. The mania, I've realized, is just starting.
The doors open at 12:07 a.m., and the large crowd files in slowly. But the time my wife and I make it through the doors, the crush has pressed a lucky few dozen people against the action figure display, who (after taking what they want) are tossing figures into the crowd. It's almost impossible to move. A shopper near me, dressed up as one of the Emperor's royal guards from "Return of the Jedi," shouts excitedly through his mask.
I find my Star Wars widow again, who now has a cart (courtesy of a Toys R Us employee who took pity on her and her head-high stack of my toys). I toss the eight-or-so figures into the cart and grin at my fortune. I have 11 figures, including individual duplicates of the "deluxe" versions, so I put back the more expensive ones. I also have Queen Amidala, Padme Naberrie, C-3PO, Darth Sidious, Boss Nass, Senator Palpatine, Ric Olie, and Watto. Now comes the hard part -- deciding which figures I want. My plan was to get just the main characters, but since the movie hasn't opened yet, I'm not entirely sure how large some of these characters' roles are.
Fifteen minutes later I found a Darth Sidious, and I no longer felt bad about the trade. The feeling in the air of communal helpfulness continued; no one was trying to loot other people's stashes. By this time there were bins filled with figures halfway around the store, anyway, and most everyone had their fill. The Toys R Us powers-that-be were no dummies when they filled out their shipment orders. There were plenty of most every character, except Darth Mauls and Mace Windus, which people were still asking for.