Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The One That Re - Started It All


When I was a kid I had a ton of action figures. From Big Jim to GI Joe (the 12 inchers) to the Mego superheroes I had everything. My Evil Knieval and Six Million Dollar Man figures were among my favourites. However when we moved back from Europe we lost two crates. One was my mothers beautiful Christmas ornaments and the other was from my room. ALL my childhood toys and comics were gone forever. I totally lament that loss to this day and I never thought I would rebuild my collections. However in the late 70s I started buying comics again and have a collection of more than 12,000 now. However, they have been so overpriced lately that I would rather find something else to spend my money on - since there are other avenues to read the great comic adventures that I love. One day in the early 90s I saw this figure on the shelf. Now in a world where the 3 3/4 inch figures ruled the shelves he was a fresh take on the superhero. (The Star Wars and small GI Joe figures just didn't do it for me. Neither did the Secret Wars or Super Powers figures) It was a beautiful realistic version of Dr Strange with a cool paintjob and sculpt. Add to that a vinyl cape that could be manipulated to allow the good Doctor to appear like he is floating above the ground. NOTHING smelled better than that vinyl cape and even today my favorite smell is action figure fresh from the package. From this guy I managed to rebuild a decent action figure collection - one no where near the great one I had as a child but good enough to soothe my pain and for me that is enough. So thank you Animated Spider-man for giving us a plethora of characters and thank you Dr. Strange for giving me something else to obsess over. Not bad for my 800th post - no big celebration till post 1000 cause I don't need Lisa Mynx rolling her eyes at me - again.

2 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Great post! I have a collection, but of all-Aquaman figures, mostly obtained as gifts. When I was a kid, my brother and I had such a melange of stuff, from Hot Wheels to Star Wars... Just randomness, whatever we were into. I had the Six-Million Dollar Man figure as a kid, but it was lost to time. Until my wife gave me one she found on eBay a few years back. Red track suit and all. Sweet!

Happy 800th post! Celebrate anyway!

Darius Whiteplume said...

I think I still have that figure somewhere. The Doc is my favorite Marvel character - to bad they turned him into a commercial for all the other comics - "This month, The Avengers stop by the Sanctum to let you know what they'll be doing in the five comics you need to read to understand the story!"