Collectibles > Power of the Force 2

The Beginning of POTF2

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Brian:
I was curious to hear some of your opinions, stories, etc. about when the POTF2 line first started out, and when Star Wars figures were back on the pegs.  I have to be honest, I wasn't really collecting right when it started, getting into it more so around 1999, about the time of Phantom Menace.  I was aware that the toys existed sometime before that, since my younger brother was receiving some things as b-day gifts at that time.  Anyways, just looking over the waves, figures, etc. online, I bet it was a pretty exciting time to see Star Wars on the pegs again.  Sure, they were big and buff, and most of them look pretty poor compared to today's figs, but I can still imagine it was pretty neat.

How did you first know they were back?  The internet community wasn't quite the same back then, was there another route (maybe commercials that I don't remember).  Did you know what was coming out next, in upcoming waves, or was there a time of "ta da, new figures" like it was in the vintage days?  Did you have any idea that Hasbro would continue on so far, or did it seem like it was a short limited series?  Were figures tough to find?  Anyways, just curious as to some of your personal stories for that period in Star Wars collecting.  I kind of missed out on it, and although I have some figures from that period now, it would have been neat to be a collector during that time.

Morgbug:
It started as a joke for me.  Really. 

I was in grad school at the time and was (apparently) really aggravating to my supervisor.  He was/is an extremely intelligent man, with tastes far more advanced than mine.  He listens to Opera, reads classical literature, attends the symphony, ballet, etc.  Being a lifelong (thereabouts) star wars fan I thought I'd get him an Obi-wan figure as a joke and put a Vader figure on my desk.  I was pretty sure he wouldn't pick up on the analogy, but he did, which impressed the heck out of me.  To this day he still have the Obi figure on display in his office, which is entirely out of character. 

As mentioned in the vintage section, I never collected the old figures.  I did collect Marvel comic figures, Secret Wars or whatever teh current action figure series of the time was.  I only ever grabbed one or two sparingly, maybe that many in a year.  So I sort of knew that the figures had just appeared in the toy aisles fairly recently.  Didn't have much money in grad school, so my purchases were very limited to say the least.  Essentially, I just stumbled on them.  I'm not now, nor was I then as critical as many here, I was just happy to have the figures, heman or not. 

Initially there were about 12 figures and Leia, who was the original shortpack in this line, monkeyface and all, was one I had no difficulty finding.  I picked up those 12, thinking that was about it.  When more straggled out, I would pick those up as they came along, following the packaging as a guide for what was available.  Eventually it became an insanity, on the retailers part.  So many figures out: POTF2, cinema scenes, SOTE, vehicles, beasts, 12".  I resisted the whole time, only buying main characters and that was about it. I was not initially aware of the diversity of figures.  Being in Canada, in spite of all that crap on the shelves (which I own most of now) I had no idea how much I was missing.

I eventually started doing searches on the internet and found RS in its first year on the web and eventually found collectstarwars.com as well.  I was a ghost at those sites for a very long time, from around 97 onward.  The whole time, until late 2001 I only collected 3 3/4 figures. 

No idea about promotional stuff, but I do remember one thing.  I used to see more parents buying stuff at that time, probably owing to the re-release of the OT in theaters.  I remember scouring pegs with a woman that was a parent of two kids.  She was asking all sorts of questions about what the main characters were and whether her kids would like things like Ugnaughts.  It was a fun conversation that won't be repeated these days. 

I never really followed what was coming up that closely, just occasionally printed out a new check list so I could see what was missing.  At the time I was a carded only guy but eventually space issues drove that out of me too. 

So essentially in my case it was dumb luck, or fate, depending on your point of view. 

Muftak:
I remember seeing the Toy Fair image of the first bunch of POTF2 figures in a Wizard Magazine sometime in the spring or summer of 95 and feeling my heart skip a beat.

They were real...modern...Star Wars figures!!

At the time I was collecting odds and ends of toys: Aliens stuff and X-Men stuff are what I remember mostly. Sometime that September I was at the local TRU and saw a handful of the new Star Wars toys on the pegs. My first grab consisted of Luke, Han, Chewie, Ben, Artoo, and Vader. They were all that was there. A few weeks later I found a couple of Stormtroopers and a Leia. Then a Landspeeder and an AT-ST.

I skipped out on the X-Wing and Falcon ,but eventually picked up a TIE. I liked the toys a lot...even the big EU extra weapons everyone came with. The lightsabers seemed a little long, but they were see-through colored plastic so I forgave them.

And those bios on the back of the cards...what an extra! I had been playing the RPG for a few years prior, and it was neat to see all the info from the Sourcebooks carried over to the new toys.

My Mom actually found C-3PO and Boba Fett for me not long after (half-circle Fett, that I proudly opened up and stuck on my shelf with all the others.) I had seen pictures of the New Fett on a Toy collecting magazine (no idea which one anymore) and thought--Wow!! It looks like a model or something! I had no idea it would be out so quickly. In the comic magazines they touted the return of Star Wars toys, and I learned what would be coming next.

It wasn't long before I had that next batch of figures,  Yoda, Lando, Luke Pilot, TIE Pilot (the hardest one for me to find back then!) Hoth Han and Dagobah Luke all hit here that same winter. Then it was a long wait, eight months or so, till Shadows toys hit.

I collected the entire POTF2 line steadily and displayed it all, until I moved into my own place in Summer '98 and had to pack everything away. Most of that old stuff still hasn't come back out. I "took off" from collecting for a couple years then, until 2001 or so when POTJ started to heat my enthusiasm back up. By then I was online alot of the time, and found the RS/CSW communities just before the big merge. And I've been with it ever since.

DoctorPadawan:
I was not even aware that there was going to be a new SW action figure line until I happened to see a copy of a toy magazine (Lee's?) in a bookstore in July of 1995.  I was just looking around for a copy of a Giger art book and on my way out, I noticed the cover proclaiming "Star Wars is back!" or something along those lines.  I picked it up, flipped to the page with the photos and just about fainted.  I can't put into words how excited I was about new SW toys (especially since I had lost the vast majority of my vintage toys back in the day to the evils of a yard sale) and I counted the seconds until I could look for them at retail.

The first thing I saw from POTF2 was actually the X-Wing on a top shelf at a Wal-Mart in early August of 1995.  Strangely enough, it would be another three months before that Wal-Mart would get anything else from the line (and even then it was another vehicle, the AT-ST), and another month after that before they got any figures.  Believe it or not, I actually found Han, Luke, Chewie, and Ben at a Woolworth's a few days after the X-Wing, and the following day I went to another Woolworth's a few miles away and found Leia, Vader, R2, and the Stormie.  The fact that Threepio was missing was very confusing to me, as I still labored under the vintage-induced perception that everything came out all at once and I must have just missed him.

By the end of September, I had all nine figures (Threepio showed up at that Woolworth's about three weeks later), all five initial ships, and I was absolutely thrilled that there were new SW toys.  And everything went downhill from there.  ;D

As for INTERNET, I think the first time I ever visited a SW collecting site was in October of 1996.  I had just heard about the Special Editions coming out the following year and was looking for pictures of the new stuff when I stumbled across a small personal page of someone who also had photos of the upcoming toys (which at that point were the Sandtrooper, Greedo, and the DS Gunner).  I did some other websearches and ran across Yakface's Realm first, then stumbled into Wiseacres.com and the SW Collector's Archive.  A few weeks later I discovered Usenet and found RASSC, and the rest is history.  Nine years later, I have Jebus knows how many figures, vehicles, beasts, playsets, and dolls populating a room of my home and no matter how crappy some of the stuff may be in retrospect, I still think fondly of every single piece in my collection.

bobafett14:
I actually was collecting the SW Bend-ems before the POTF2, and also the SW comics by Dark Horse.  I beleive the bend-ums came out around 1993 or 1994 (on vac. right now, can't remember) but I kept looking for the Fett and Luke X-wing (which I still need to complete that part of the collection)  they ran about $2.99 pretty cheap, but that's when I ran across the POTF2 in stores and the rest is pretty much history.

About that same time was when I first jumped online as well.  That's when I hit a few sites like collect sw, POTF2.com, and I think Gus's site were the early favs.  and I started grabbing the toy mags w/SW covers as well. 
(I think the first Lee's I grabbed back then had the black cover w/TIE Fighter on it)  I still to this day collect mags w/SW covers on them.


 

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