In continuing my star wars memories, I will briefly give another short Star Wars memoir. This one is about grown men and them racing out to buy toys—action figures!
May 2, 1999. Star Wars Celebration had ended not with a whimper or a bang but sadly with a simple passing moment of time. We were exhausted and dirty. I recall that I had driven home and dropped the wife off. We took quick showers and grabbed bites to eat. I had called my friend Lance and a confirmed the time he’d swing by to pick me up for tonight’s big event. He’d be by around 10:30 PM. With it being only 7ish at the time, I figured I would grab a quick catnap. In a nervous worry I would totally fall asleep and not awake for days, I had set the alarm for 10:15. I dozed with my Star Wars T-shirt, Jeans and ball cap on. As the catnap turned into a full sleep, it was a good thing I had set the alarm. It beeped in that annoying style that made the sound perfect for an alarm clock. I raced out of our apartment and down the stairs to wait for my friend.
He sped through the parking lot in his Jetta a few minutes late but nothing to worry about. We were off. 10:45 PM we decide to hit the Toys R Us on Mississippi and I-225 first. Arriving with five minutes to the TRU, we quickly changed plans. The Toys R Us had a line that went from the front door, around the corner, around the building and down the perimeter of the parking lot. I had never seen so many people lined up at a toy store in the middle of the night before. We ran down some alternate locations. For some reason we decided to cross the street to the Media Play (the store would close in 2007 and the building is now vacant). The good news was there was no line. The doors were open and you could walk right inside. There were about 50 people mingling through the store. I remember that we had total access to all the merchandise and could peruse the books and trinkets. While at the time we thought this very cool, it never dawned on us that when it got closer to midnight to move our purchases to the registers. See, we could look at the stuff and buy the stuff but we had to wait until 12:01 AM so that the store technically hadn’t broke street date on the merchandise. The street date being 5/3/99. In a moment of distraction, we had missed an opportunity to grab our novelizations, CD score and posters and step third or fourth in an already crowed check out lane. As we raced to the registers at 11:45 PM, we had to wait until that moment of 12:01. I remember the girl at the counter kept checking the registers time and when it clicked to 12:01 she quickly used the little laser gun on merchandise as fast as she could.
The unfortunate part was we wouldn’t leave the Media Play until nearly 12:25 AM. That was literally an eternity in Star Wars collecting time. Every second counted in finding Star Wars merchandise and acquiring the most important Star Wars toys. Although Media Play was a great place to find the merchandise and media of The Phantom Menace, they had not action figures. Toys R Us across the street was a failed attempt. I quickly suggested the 24-hour Super Kmart (the store eventually closed in 2003 and is now a Home Depot). It was the store I still worked at part time in the evenings and the store I had worked all though college. The store was 20 minutes away but we ran to the car and raced out of the parking lot as if we were a Pod Racer.
As we drove by the TRU, the line outside had shrunk but there were still people outside. Meaning: there were still some poor fans not even near the figure pegs. How anxious that must felt like.
Twenty minutes later, we had parked in the parking lot of the Super Kmart 4918 in Greenwood Village Colorado. Lance and I nearly sprinted to the toy isles. Yet it was eerily quiet. There was no one around. I quickly picked up a store phone and paged a co-worker who was both a good friend and Star Wars fan. I remember the conversation not even getting past a “hey”. It was simply, “the figures are up here at the east doors, hurry!” We raced to the east doors, the grocery side of the store. There sitting on pallets were dozens and dozens of action figure cases. The sides read: Star Wars Episode I Figure Assortment I Street Date 5/3/99. The stock crew hadn’t even bothered to hang the figures on pegs or shelves. They had just allowed the collectors, the fans, the enthusiasts to pick through the cases. I feared we were too late. There were dozens of empty cases. I quickly found my friend Mark, the co-worker I had paged only moments ago. He saw our disappointed faces. Yet he had foreseen our tardiness in the Force. He hand gestured a “follow me”. We followed. He led us into the back of the store where another pallet sat full of fresh unopened cases of TPM action figures. I quickly grabbed a few cases and snapped the tape with my keys. The feeling was more electric than I had ever experienced.
I had been collecting the action figures for nearly 5 years and I had never felt the rush I felt that night. We grabbed our cases and he walked us back up to the front of the store. He pulled the pallet of new cases behind us. We spent another half hour looking through and confirming we had what we needed and I had my two of each. At the time there weren’t many people looking through the boxes, but I do remember everyone was willing to help a fellow fan find that one figure they needed to complete their collection. I specifically recall pulling at least one Darth Maul out and helping a fellow fan, a fan that had bought his 7-year-old boy out to participate in that memorable night.
So with my two of each, one to open and one to leave sealed—yes, that was the my collector mentality back then—I slowly walked to the registers. I look back on that night with a bizarre fondness, especially since as I don’t buy any of the action figures today. I still clearly remember walking to the check out lanes of that Super Kmart at 1:30 AM feeling like I had just won a lottery, watching dozens of action figures being scanned and carefully placed back into their cases. I even remember swiping my credit card to a tune of $341.72. In addition, that amount didn’t even count toward the nearly $200 I had spent on books and music at the Media Play only an hour earlier. That night was the first Midnight Madness I would experience. And it wouldn’t be the last Midnight Madness either. However, I will say, those nights were some of the most fun I would ever have as a Star Wars fan.
