Video on the current and future state of Star Wars merchandise.

[huedell]

I have never collected Star Wars; the few I had as a child (an odd assortment of Lobot, a couple of droids, and Empire Han) were birthday gifts that I integrated in with other figures. I did get the Tarkin figure in the late 1990s, as he was my favorite character. That said, I have joked for years that I would collect figures for actors who were in the Royal Shakespeare Company. That joke started with a friend in the mid 1990s, when all I really had to worry about then was SW and a stray figure here and there, such as Patrick Stewart as Picard. (Since then, there's been all the Tolkien-based films, Harry Potter, X-Men, etc., so it's just as well I never got into it, but I was tracking as the prequels came out who I might get, and I admit Valorum was on my list. A mild Terence Stamp? Oh yeah!

My friend did something similar and a bit more "crass" in an ageist way... he just had a "Star Wars old guy" collection display.

12-inch Tarkin, Dooku, etc.

Me?

I was so detached from those aforementioned 3 and 3/4 inch scale TPM figures that I defaced my Valorum with scissors, black paint, etc. to make a figure that pre-dated Mattel by more than a decade---a General Zod in that same scale.

And that sculpt was so good... that even with my meager customizing skills... it looked pretty good.