£1.49 FIGURES
Padawan
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2011
- Messages
- 33
Another dose of nostalgia here I'm afraid.
Curious to know the experience of others regarding when they last spotted the figures and vehicles being sold in the 1980s before they disappeared from shop shelves for good.
I moved on from buying Star Wars around about my tenth birthday when I got a home computer and so any spending money / birthday money / pocket money / cash scrimped away from not buying school dinners etc was spent on Spectrum games. However, such was the strength of my devotion for Star Wars which peaked around about Christmas 1983, I always had a look at the new figures and ships etc and remember admiring the look of the B-Wing while also wondering why it had taken so long for the Y-Wing to get released.
The very last time I remember seeing Star Wars toys for sale was around about Autumn 1985 in John Menzies in Kilmarnock where, standing out in the toy section there were boxes of Ewok Villages, Rancors and - oh,to have a time machine now - Imperial Shuttles. All pretty heavily discounted. I remember seeing the discount sale stickers on them saying "Was £24.99 - now £4.99" for the Ewok Villages and Rancors I think were "Was 19.99 - now £4.99". The Imperial Shuttles were discounted down to £9.99.
At roughly the same time I had coughed up close to £20 for a Transformers Soundwave with some birthday money when I could have walked away with one of each of the three JEDI boxed goodies. Such was my level of disdain for the Ewoks however that I doubt that would ever have been a possibility.
I have a vague memory the following year of being with my brother when he was buying some Subutteo stuff in the local toy shop in Kilmarnock and spotting a Power of The Force Tattoine Skiff on a shelf but nothing else. It was such a huge difference to a few years previously where the shop was THE place to buy your Palitoy items and it seemed wall-to-wall Star Wars. Time and toy buying habits had most definitely moved on.
I have no recollection of ever seeing any POTF carded figures , last 17 or otherwise, after 1985 and so was surprised in later years to learn that there were more than the final JEDI batch of Rancor Keeper, Leia in Combat Poncho etc which was roughly the period when I stopped collecting figures - my final purchased figures around about Spring 1984 were Prune Face and Teebo. The only time I ever saw a last 17 figure for sale was on a tri-logo card in a different toy shop window in the Summer of 1985 which was the R2D2 pop-up lightsaber and I can still recall thinking to myself that they must be getting desperate by bringing out a third R2. There were a couple of other carded figures for sale but they were all Ewoks which sent me away from the window pretty quickly. The very last figure I owned from my original time collecting was the mail-away for Anakin Skywalker, I believe, and I remember being none too impressed with it when it arrived. 32 years on and I'm a lot more fond of the figure now.
I daresay that if I had looked around about the main toy shops in Glasgow etc then I may still have spotted Star Wars figures and ships but I genuinely didn't see anything other than what I've mentioned above in my own sphere of local town shops. Nothing in Woolworths, WH Smiths etc - none of the new figure stickered Last 17 at bargain prices or 50p Scout Walkers and Speeder Bikes etc.They really did just disappear from my own small world of shops. I recall the same thing happening with He-Man a year or two later which was my little brother's toy of choice.
Would love to hear your own stories, guys.
Curious to know the experience of others regarding when they last spotted the figures and vehicles being sold in the 1980s before they disappeared from shop shelves for good.
I moved on from buying Star Wars around about my tenth birthday when I got a home computer and so any spending money / birthday money / pocket money / cash scrimped away from not buying school dinners etc was spent on Spectrum games. However, such was the strength of my devotion for Star Wars which peaked around about Christmas 1983, I always had a look at the new figures and ships etc and remember admiring the look of the B-Wing while also wondering why it had taken so long for the Y-Wing to get released.
The very last time I remember seeing Star Wars toys for sale was around about Autumn 1985 in John Menzies in Kilmarnock where, standing out in the toy section there were boxes of Ewok Villages, Rancors and - oh,to have a time machine now - Imperial Shuttles. All pretty heavily discounted. I remember seeing the discount sale stickers on them saying "Was £24.99 - now £4.99" for the Ewok Villages and Rancors I think were "Was 19.99 - now £4.99". The Imperial Shuttles were discounted down to £9.99.
At roughly the same time I had coughed up close to £20 for a Transformers Soundwave with some birthday money when I could have walked away with one of each of the three JEDI boxed goodies. Such was my level of disdain for the Ewoks however that I doubt that would ever have been a possibility.
I have a vague memory the following year of being with my brother when he was buying some Subutteo stuff in the local toy shop in Kilmarnock and spotting a Power of The Force Tattoine Skiff on a shelf but nothing else. It was such a huge difference to a few years previously where the shop was THE place to buy your Palitoy items and it seemed wall-to-wall Star Wars. Time and toy buying habits had most definitely moved on.
I have no recollection of ever seeing any POTF carded figures , last 17 or otherwise, after 1985 and so was surprised in later years to learn that there were more than the final JEDI batch of Rancor Keeper, Leia in Combat Poncho etc which was roughly the period when I stopped collecting figures - my final purchased figures around about Spring 1984 were Prune Face and Teebo. The only time I ever saw a last 17 figure for sale was on a tri-logo card in a different toy shop window in the Summer of 1985 which was the R2D2 pop-up lightsaber and I can still recall thinking to myself that they must be getting desperate by bringing out a third R2. There were a couple of other carded figures for sale but they were all Ewoks which sent me away from the window pretty quickly. The very last figure I owned from my original time collecting was the mail-away for Anakin Skywalker, I believe, and I remember being none too impressed with it when it arrived. 32 years on and I'm a lot more fond of the figure now.
I daresay that if I had looked around about the main toy shops in Glasgow etc then I may still have spotted Star Wars figures and ships but I genuinely didn't see anything other than what I've mentioned above in my own sphere of local town shops. Nothing in Woolworths, WH Smiths etc - none of the new figure stickered Last 17 at bargain prices or 50p Scout Walkers and Speeder Bikes etc.They really did just disappear from my own small world of shops. I recall the same thing happening with He-Man a year or two later which was my little brother's toy of choice.
Would love to hear your own stories, guys.