PART III

Thursday July 14

I remember the alarm going off and thinking “no way in hell is it 7 am already…” – but it was.  The night before, Aaron managed to talk me and my 6’4” frame into crashing on the 5-foot foldabed, while his filthy carcass got to enjoy the nice soft hotel bed.  Jerk!  Anyway we finally talk ourselves into dragging our butts out of bed and get dressed, have a quick breakfast of energy bars and alcohol and we are now psyched up for the show! SDCC Day 1 was here! 

As we walk to the Convention Center, there are a few signs that SDCC is here – big colorful banners, numerous street signs, bus ads – but mostly by the streaming herds of costumed adults roaming the streets of San Diego in broad daylight.  Kinda odd, but cool.  And there’s also a palpable energy, like some crazy fanboy excitement that filled the air as we walked. Or maybe we were drunk. Anyway, we stopped at the Chocolate Factory which has a huge stuffed bear on a bench outside; Aaron decides he needs to put its giant paw on his crotch while I snap a picture.  So amusing.  As we cross the trolley tracks to get to the Center, there is just a mass of humanity. Bikes and cars everywhere, people coming from all over the place, the HUGE line of fans waiting to buy passes. I know everyone says buy the pass ahead of time or get in line early, but my advice is do it – they are people there at like 3 AM. It’s so much easier to pre-pay and not spend a day in line with complete strangers. When we arrived at 9 am, the line to buy passes was already stretched all the way down the sidewalk and wrapped completely around the back of the building. And it’s a big building.

Ok, for you guys that have never attended, I want to take a moment regarding the size of SDCC. The size of the Convention Center Main Hall is not something that you initially fully realize; especially on Preview Night when the building feels like a fairly empty aircraft hanger full of people. With the banners and displays, the main hall itself seems smaller than it really is.  The pace is much more mellow…but it’s the calm before the storm.  Once the show fully starts on Thursday, with the noise and smells and onslaught of fans, do you then realize the enormity of the event and it can definitely be overwhelming, with flashing lights and skanky chicks in costumes and various people trying to hand you crap. You can stand at one end of the hall and not be able to see the other end. It feels like hours pass just trying to move through the crowd to get to the next aisle. And you might not realize that the exhibition area is roughly the square footage of 10 football fields. But trust me, the next morning, when you crawl out of bed, your feet will tell you exact how big SDCC is.  So make sure those boots are made for walkin’, cause that’s just what they’ll do. 

So we head inside the lobby and find more lines, with fans jockeying for position to be the first through the doors when it opens at 10 AM.  We see a giant Uglydoll and decide to hug it for a photo. (We ended up hugging quite a few things that day, including cosplayers and booth girls).  At 10 AM, the doors open and the madness begins. People are literally running down the aisles to get in line for exclusives, since very few exclusives are sold on Preview Night and this is the first chance (and sometimes only chance) people have to get ‘em.  We waited in line and bought a few things and then walked around for a bit to see the sights.  We admired the tasty booth babes that were promoting the Devil’s Rejects, complete with the car from the flick.  Of course we had to get our pics with them.  The cycle from the Ghost Rider flick was on display, very cool looking.  There was also a full-size optimus-prime-ish semi truck promoting the upcoming live-action Transformers movie.  Neat.  We then split up, and headed for different areas.  I checked out the cool new Joe stuff at the Hasbro booth, and went to the Mattel booth to check out the new JLU, and they had protos of the new DC Superheroes line which looks awesome.  Just doing these things takes quite a bit of time due to the crowd.  I then headed to a few artist’s booths to check out art and buy sketchbooks, stopped by Adam Hughes table to snag the prints and sketchbook and went to the DC Direct booth and chat with Georg Brewer and I ended up seeing SDMike for a couple minutes. Then I headed over to my buddy Neil’s booth.  He owns Retro Rocket in Phoenix, AZ and I worked in his shop throughout high school - now those were some crazy times….His guys Dan and George were there too, and we hung out there for a while. We then met up with Mike, the owner of Atomic Comics in AZ, and we all walked around for a bit and reminisced about previous shows back in the 90s when we used to attend every year. Good stuff.

After that I went to a few panels, but for the most part I enjoyed walking around and seeing everything. When I attend to SDCC, I rarely go to any panels or shows because I can read about all the info later on the net. Sure, seeing the new clips and hearing the news first-hand is fun, but many of the panels are packed with people and it’s hard enought to fight the crowds in the main hall, much less the tiny meeting rooms.  And during the times of the big shows, the con floor has less people so you get a chance to walk around and see the sights a bit easier.  Anyway, I hooked back up with Aaron in the afternoon and we took a quick bus ride back to the hotel to drop off our swag and take a quick break from the show. We headed back to the show about 3:30 and just walked around for a few hours and enjoyed the show.  We met some people, grabbed a bunch of free stuff and took photos of all the freaks.  By the end of the day we were beat but ready to hit Gaslamp for some fun.

We went back to the hotel, recharged for a while and then got ready to go back out about 9 PM.  We walked around the neighborhood for the better part of an hour, trying to find a good place to get some food.  It’s tough because the Gaslamp is totally filled with the Con crowd, so getting a meal between 5-8 PM without a reservation is tough.  We ended up at Dick’s Last Resort, and sat outside in front so we could observe all the nutjobs streaming through the area.  We ran into some friends from Palisades and partied with them for a few hours.  I even got to model one chick’s purse.  Not sure why I thought that was a good idea at the time, but our table loved it.  One of the bartenders came out and let me get a photo with my head resting on his ginourmous greasy tattooed belly, and I got a free drink.

Our Palisades crew left around 11 PM, but shortly thereafter a group of cute chicks came and sat with us.  Was it luck? Was it alcohol? Who knows, but we thought we were pretty cool and we ended up hanging out with our new friends the rest of the night, until they closed down the place about 2 AM. We all then stumbled around Gaslamp for a while, laughing and being very loud, and finally we parted ways about 3:30 AM and crashed at our hotel around 4 AM, the filthy drunks we were.

End of Thursday July 14

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PART II

Wednesday July 13

We survived the night in Motel Hell, choosing to not take showers and just get the hell out of there. We heard all sorts of bizarre noises during the night. Very freaky. I felt bad for Aaron since he was actually using the remote for the TV and God knows where that thing has been. I forgot to mention that the night before we saw a little kid swimming in the unlit swimming pool at around midnight. Now, seeing how our room was, can you imagine what kind of things are in that pool?

Anyway, we head out of Vegas by 9 AM and realize while on the main highway into Death Valley that we were almost out of gas. Not a single gas station in sight. Anxiety starts to set in, and we limp along on fumes until we see the sign for the "Last Gas Station Before Death Valley". We barely made it, we were seriously like 10 miles until empty, and were imagining the death march down the hot highway after running out of gas. Whew.

After a long day of driving, we finally get into San Diego around 2 PM; our hotel was the Courtyard Marriott in downtown, a very nice place and only 7 blocks from the Con. Great location for stumbling back in the early morning hours from the Gaslamp District. We checked in and Aaron and I laughed about the other brutal motel from the night before as we keyed into our nice, fresh, clean room.

It had one bed.

Silence. Just our luck, and not exactly what we had planned. We headed back down to the front desk and inquire about a room with 2 beds and they said the best they could do was try to find us another room the next day. They did, however, have a tiny fold-out bed, so we just decided not to be a hassle and just keep the room. We washed the evil from the other motel off, cleaned up and headed down to the Convention Center to scope the situation. In the Center lobby I spotted the giant Uglydolls and vowed to take one of them down at some point during the show. Aaron and I picked up our badges easily, and figured we were in pretty good shape for the show. And then we saw the lines. See, all the other times I’ve been to SDCC as a dealer so I didn’t really think about the line to get in for Preview Night. It was…long. Damn long. I’m not good with numbers, but I’m guessing there were probably a couple million people in line. We headed upstairs to wait around 5 PM. I think the line moved at 5:30, and again at 5:45. As luck would have it, we ran into Cantina-Dan had a great time chatting with him and his sister, who is hot (sorry bro!). Finally, around 6:15 the line really started to move and we were let into the main hall. Preview Night was here!!!

I had planned to do most of the exclusive buying on Wed, since Preview Night has the least amount of people. I guess the other 14,999 people had the same idea. I’ve never seen that many people on Preview Night, but SDCC just keeps getting bigger every year so I’m not too surprised. Luckily, most of the lines for the exclusives weren’t too long, although Gentle Giant already had like 100 people in it. NECA was the first booth we hit, and it already had 30+ in it. I was not surprised to see my luck hold true, as the limit for the King Randor Staction went from 2-per to 1-per when I was about five people from the counter. I next headed to the Mattel booth to check out the awesome new JLU stuff and tried to formulate a plan to steal all the cool new figures, but I was distracted by a bra-less cosplayer and I wandered off. There weren’t many costumes on Wed, but still some other really cool sights to see. The guy dressed as Nazi Kroenen from Hellboy was awesome. Of course I headed to the Hasbro booth to check out the new Joe stuff. Very nice. I was digging the Star Wars Lego setup too. We walked around and bought other stuff too, but decided against picking up all of our pre-ordered stuff (Sideshow, Leia, Mezco, etc) because we were lazy (which I really regretted later). I saw a fairly normal guy who was wearing a raccoon tail out the back of his pants. That was odd. We cursed ourselves for forgetting to hit Joyride for the clear Master Chief; by the time we got over there it was gone.

Around 9 PM I left Aaron to his own devices and headed out to meet the RTM gang for dinner, which was a blast! I think we had around 20-25 people showed up, which was amazing considering how much stuff was going on at the Con. Buca de Beppo was the place, and luckily the gang was smart enough to make reservations; I think the wait for 4 people was about 45 minutes when we got there. I sat with our pal Mike (SDcomics), Rob & Bobbi from RTM and across from the mighty Bill Burns. I didn’t get to meet everyone, but it was still good to put the faces with the likes of Animatedbat, MajorJoe23, BrianMan, FreshMonkey, SpyMagician and the others who unfortunately I’ve already forgotten who have probably already long forgotten me! (sorry!). The highlight of the dinner was the esteemed Mr. Burns showing off his Vigilante & Shining Knight customs. I kept trying to steal them and offering to trade him a soda for ‘em but he thought I was kidding. Seriously, they were truly, truly amazing. Everyone was genuinely nice too, very cool people. It’s pretty funny to be at a table of 25 people and mention the paintjobs on Crisis figures and JLU legs and everyone nods understandingly. Anyway, dinner was excellent and we all bid farewell for the night. At least, I did.

Turns out Aaron was just leaving whatever it was he was doing and he convinced me to go out and have some drinks. Even though we were exhausted, we chose to forgo a good night’s sleep for a good night’s fun. The Gaslamp seemed fairly busy for a Wed night, but some of the bars were virtually empty so we headed to one of the more crowded ones. I don’t even remember where we ended up but it was a cool little place with a live band that wasn’t really playing music as far as I could tell. Just some random playing of instruments and some guy screeching into the mic. And there were some nice-looking females who did their best to hide their obvious attraction. Yeah ladies, we noticed. The scene became a sausagefest pretty quick so around 1 AM we headed back to the hotel for some well-needed rest and to prepare ourselves for the full onslaught of SDCC 2005.

End of Wednesday July 13

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The last time I was at SDCC was in 2005; I usually try to go back every other year but there’s just too much going on this year to attend.  But I can share with you guys some insight into the wild time I did have during the last trip to San Diego. Of course, for those of you that know me, I can never have a simple trip. Some sort of cringe-worthy adventure occurs, and this trip was no different. I wrote and posted this back in ’05, but most of you may not have read it. These musings will be posted in parts, every few days or as soon as I can get to it.

A different view of the San Diego Comic-Con, as only can be told by…The Superfly.

Tuesday July 12

Finally. After many months of planning and details, it’s FINALLY time for SDCC 2005!!! After missing last year, I was anxious to get back there and join other 80,000+ sweaty, tired, costume-clad fans in a days-long drunken euphoric stupor. Huzzah! 

For reasons which seem rather ill-timed now, I chose to mostly wait until the morning of our trip to pack for the trip. Yeah. So I was roughly about 2 hours late to meet my buddy Aaron from ePlanet Toys. Not a great start to our trip, but our rental car was upgraded to a brand new Ford Freestyle from a crap Geo or something, so that put us in better moods. We put some Sinatra and MCChris in the stereo and left Colorado with our pockets full of money and our hearts full of glee.

Our initial plan was to drive to Vegas, sleep in the car for a few hours and then drive to San Diego. But the night before we left, I realized that Vegas may not be the best place to sleep in the car, especially with the temp hovering around 112 during the day…so I quickly booked a room with Cheaptickets for $50 at the Days Inn on Downtown Vegas. It seemed like a good idea, right?

Before we left Tues morning, I decided to check out some extended reviews and rating of the “hotel”. Check this website out and scroll down to the reviews.

GHAAAA! My favorite review quote: “When we went down the stairs the first morning there was a person sleeping on a piece of cardboard. He had better accommodations than we did.” So I’m telling all this to Aaron and he’s just staring down the road, silently stunned. Oh man, what did I do? I call the place from the road and try to cancel my reservation, but I have to go back to Cheaptickets for that. So I call a buddy to do it online for me, but the cancellation deadline had already passed. So we were stuck and just hoped that there wouldn’t be a dead body in the bathtub. If only we were that lucky.

We arrived in Vegas around 11 PM, and headed for the Days Inn. Besides the multitude of Check Cashing/Liquor stores in the surrounding area, we thought the area wasn’t too bad, even though there was a nightclub attached to the motel. I saw a guy grab a bottle out of the trash, smell it and then pour the liquid on his head. (I’m not kidding.) We checked in, went to the room and hoped for the best. It wasn’t too bad (besides the stains and smell) and we figured we’re only crashing there for a few hours. Definitely do-able. I breathed a sigh of relief while Aaron headed to the bathroom and I went to move the car. I’m just about out the door when he comes running out of the bathroom “DUDE! GO IN THERE”. I walked to the bathroom, stepped in and saw that someone already used the toilet, and that person was not feeling well. And I mean like “Horror-Movie-Dysentery-Style-Explosion-Not-Feeling-Well”. It was bad. I tried to help by flushing the toilet with my foot, which caused the toilet to clog and flood onto the floor.

At this point I thought maybe some of these rating were pretty accurate. I hurried down to the front desk to discuss the situation with the clerk, and discover in the 4 minutes between picking up the room keys and walking in on the angel of death toilet throne, there is already someone else new behind the desk. I explain the situation, and instead of an apology or sympathy he says smiles and says “oh, okay” like I asked for an extra towel and gives me new keys for the room next door. I guess this stuff happens all the time there. I get back up to the room, we grab our stuff and go next door. Amazingly enough, this one didn’t have the evil poop but we got the bonus of even more stains and smells than the last one. And it wasn’t even just one smell; it was different depending on where you were standing: wet animal, vomity mothballs, vegas sweat, bad meat, good cheese…a veritable potpourri of hell. (I’m really glad Glade doesn’t make candles that smell like Las Vegas, by the way). This room also had torn curtains, cigarette burn marks on the wall, dirty handprints everywhere, really good stuff. All I could think of was "blacklight".

We left our stuff in the room and headed out to a casino, naturally, and spent a few hours gambling like fools. I saw a big dude with an open shirt right out of Flash Gordon, complete with a ginourmous gold medallion around his neck, and another nut wearing an entire suit made of lime green suede, including lime green loafers. Lime-Green Loafers. That was enough for us, so we headed to the room to crash. I pulled everything off the bed, climbed on and waited for someone to run in and reenact their favorite scene from Oz.

I didn’t take any pics of the room but I found this one online that is pretty close:

End of Tuesday July 12

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So we finally found a house, after roughly a year of looking and discussing finances, schools, location, etc. Since sold our previous house last August, we’ve been renting a townhome and keeping pretty much everything packed for the eventual next move into the new house. This includes almost my entire collection of toys, prints, comic books, artwork and the like. So the other night, while contemplating the thought of moving the 10’ wide x 10’ tall jenga-style mountain of boxes stacked in my current basement, it got me thinking -

How much is too much?

I’ve been collecting all kinds of things since I was a kid – action figures & vehicles (loose and carded), statues, art prints, model trains, baseball and basketball cards, vintage books, WWII items, Frank Sinatra stuff, Norman Rockwell art books, Chicago Cubs and Denver Broncos items…and a bunch of other stuff too.  My family never really threw anything away, so I got to play with all the vintage junk from my siblings – Mego, Planet of the Apes, Micronauts, GIJoe, comic books, baseball cards – so I learned to appreciate and retain this kind of stuff and not throw it out or give it away. And I grew up in the 80s, so I received GIJoe, Transformers, MASK, He-man, Thundercats, etc for every birthday and Xmas.  For whatever reason, I never gave any of it away, or sold it to friends or destroyed it.  Even when I went through the “toys are uncool” phase in high school; I simply packed it all carefully away and stored it until after college when I discovered the hobby again and was glad I kept it all.

But it’s a lot of stuff.  I enjoy having it all, and it has been great fun tracking things down at garage sales, or in tiny antique shops, or on ebay or from friends.  And I feel very blessed and lucky to be able be in a situation where I can obtain and keep all these things without having to sell them to pay my pimp.  But packing it all up and moving it last summer, and now facing moving it all again next month, the reality of the size of my collection makes me think sometimes that it’s just too much.  Maybe more than a normal person should have.  But then what do I get rid of? I’ve sold off some parts of my collection over the years, all my Transformers and Godzilla, and other stuff here and there, but overall it’s still fairly intact and takes up roughly 75 boxes right now.  And that’s just action figures and statues.  Add in my books, art, 24 comic boxes and other stuff and it’s really overwhelming.  I know a few guys who have sold off some of their stuff only to get frustrated and depressed soon after and buy it all back within a few years.  Logic dictates it may make sense to pare down my collection, but I’d hate to get rid of anything and really regret it later.  I just don’t think I can do it.  Too much sentiment, and too much time spent chasing all this stuff down, and of course the cost to buy all this back would be insane.  And of course, where does logic fit into collecting stuff anyway?

In the past, I was much more of a completist, buying everything in a line. Now I tend to just buy what really appeals to me, or what I can realistically afford and that helps keep the amount of current collecting intact. But even with cutting down, there’s still a steady flow of toys, comics, statues, prints and other things coming in and not much of anything going out.  I still love my huge collection, and this collecting hobby.  But at what point do you say, “ok, I don’t have space/money/time for all of this in my life anymore” – literally and figuratively.  Or when it gets to the point where you have much more stuff in storage than on display, then what’s the point of keeping the collection if everything stays in the closet?  Or when the wife looks at the mountains of toys and says nothing, her wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights expression tells the whole story. Makes it tough to logically explain what a grown man is doing with 2 tons of plastic men.

As I’m getting older, maybe I’m outgrowing it.  Maybe my interests and focus are changing, or it could be just the fickle nature of being human where your interests wax and wan depending on outside influences.  Who knows?  In all likelihood, I will find a way to keep everything and keep collecting more…but at some point I may reach the end.  And I’m sure I’ll blog about it.

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This is a post about professional wrestling.  Turn back now if you feel the need.

Or, keep reading and you might learn something.

I’ve been a pro wrestling fan since I was nine.  It was 1984.  I sat on the floor in front of our big TV.  My mother, pregnant with my sister, slept on the couch behind me.  The first match I ever saw was The Junkyard Dog Vs. Steve Lombardi on an episode of WWF Superstars.  By the end of that show, I was hooked.

Until 14 days ago.

Longtime wrestling devotees share a burden unique to their fandom, particularly those of my generation.  Many of of the wrestlers we grew up with, and some who appeared on our TV screens and in our action figure collections within the last few years, are dead.  Wrestlers die young.  That’s become perilously close to an axiom among those in, out, and around the professional wrestling industry.  There are the odd diseases and in-ring accidents, but most wrestlers who’ve died in the last decade or so have been victims of what "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (my personal hero from age nine until Theodore Roosevelt took over about a dozen years ago) described in his autobiography as The Sickness.   

The Sickness is not an easy thing to describe.  No wrestler simply contracts The Sickness and dies.  There is no doctor a wrestler can go to and be diagnosed with The Sickness.  The Sickness is not the 300-dates-per-year schedule nationally televised wrestlers must endure, nor is it the physical and emotion distance from family that schedule creates.  The Sickness isn’t even the cocktail of steroids, uppers, downers, alcohol, and pain killers a wrestler must ingest to maintain the level of fitness and performance commensurate with the upper echelon of success.  The Sickness is none of those things.

Knowing about all of those things, seeing them claim your peers, and wanting to be a professional wrestler more than you want to keep breathing; that is The Sickness.

The Wrestler’s Disease.

Older pro wrestling fans, that is to say fans significantly older than me, don’t have this problem.  Verne Gagne is still alive; he’s 81.  Killer Kowalski is still alive; he’s 80.  Lou Thesz died at age 86.  No one seems to know how old Larry "The Ax" Hennig is, but his son, Curt, died at 44.  Eddie Guerrero over there is survived by three brothers older than him.  All of Kevin Von Erich’s brothers are dead.  As the wrestling business has changed, grown, become national, gotten faster, flashier, more unbelievable, more extreme, more attitude, it’s also grown deadly to the men who risk and punish their bodies for our entertainment and die, not under the bright lights, but alone in a dark hotel room somewhere between obscurity and greatness.

I thought I could handle that.  But then Chris Benoit annihilated his family and himself.  It knocked the wrestling fandom right out of me.  I ebayed my entire wrestling figure collection inside of 48 hours after reading the news.

I’ve always found it amusing that so many of my fellow geeks look down on pro wrestling and then speak of Batman or Optimus Prime as though they are real beings, and the height of complex drama.  Even within the wrestling fandom, I feel there are three levels; those who think it’s "real", those who know it’s "fake", and those of us who know the only thing "fake" about wrestling is the premise that what we witness is athletic competition in the sporting sense.  In fact, wrestling is athletic competition as much as dance or action movies are; perform well and you become a star, connect with the audience and you become a superstar.

Make me forget it’s "fake" and you become my hero.

Just like comic books, just like movies, wrestling is an art.  It’s a pact between fellows based on trust, respect and, yes, competition.   Every wrestler, just like every everything else, wants to be the best.

Batman can never die.  Optimus Prime can’t either.  These characters will go on so long as there are comic books creators, toy companies, and fans willing to follow their exploits.  But when Ric Flair dies, there will never be another Ric Flair match.

Luke Skywalker can never die.  Mark Hamill can die.  Mark Hamill will die.  But, so long as there is video media and fans on the other side of the screen, Luke Skywalker is forever.  But Luke Skywalker cannot change.  Luke Skywalker cannot grow.  Luke Skywalker cannot do anything but what Luke Skywalker has already done.  Luke Skywalker is not Mark Hamill but wrestlers, however masked in colorful attire and steeped in character, are at heart themselves.  When Mark Hamill dies, we won’t lose Luke Skywalker.  Owen Hart is gone.

As wrestling fans, we’re not investing in characters, we’re investing in people. 

Much has crossed my mind since Chris Benoit did what he did.  My first
thought was that not one person more was going to die for my
entertainment.  But everything from the circumstances surrounding Chris
Benoit’s family life to my own Libertarian politics have conspired to
muddy those initial, resolute waters. 

I haven’t watched WWE in two weeks.  I don’t remember the last time there was a gap that big.  I miss it.  I feel like I’ve let it down, in a way.  I supposed that’s the wrestling fan’s Sickness.  Although I know there will be another Eddie Guerrero, another Sherri Martel, another Owen Hart.  Although I know there will another time when we all gather around the virtual table of message boards to commiserate and face ridicule for caring so much, I feel unwilling to let Chris Benoit’s cowardice push me from something I’ve watched for over 20 years.

Today is Monday.  Wrestling fans know what that means.  Tonight I’ll go back to it, hoping for change, but accepting that it will likely never come.  No one should have to do anything illegal to make a living; that’s the sum total of my feelings on government regulation of the wrestling industry and my personal plea to those who create the environment in which men develop a Sickness to succeed.  I feel I’ve lost a bit of integrity in all this, but let that be what I get for allowing one man’s weakness, in the face of another’s avarice, drive me, however briefly, from something I love.

I am a wrestling fan.

 -JJJ
 

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WOW!

That’s what this line made me say out loud, when I found the single Snake Eyes & Storm Shadow last weekend at Wal-mart. I actually said it out loud – how goofy is that?

Now, I don’t get truly excited over very many toys anymore. Sure, I enjoy the hobby and I dig all the new stuff coming out but it takes a lot for me to be really enthused. The technology today makes it tough to be really surprised by anything; we see protos of these toys months, sometimes years in advance. So by the time it hits retail or specialty shops, I’ve already seen dozens of photos of it. But these Joes, these 25th Anniversary GIJoes – just awesome. Just like being a kid again.

Remember how it felt when your parents took you to the toy store and you stumbled upon the new series of GIJoes, or Transformes, or Masters of the Universe on the pegs? I remember finding a whole new series of GIJoes, grabbing the figure and flipping it over to see the painted pictures of all the new Joe and Cobra members. What a great feeling that was, just never knowing what new unknown figures you might find that day.

So walking down the toy aisle and seeing those repro packages of the Joes, with the paintings of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow on the front…

WOW!

Those waves of nostalgia came washing over me, and it made me feel like a kid again. And isn’t that what this hobby is all about?

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One of my most anticipated lines of the year has been Cards Inc’s Harry Potter line, released by their newly formed Popco Entertainment division. 

Despite being one of the most popular entertainment franchises on the planet Harry Potter has had a rather spotty toy history. Mattel original held the Master Toy License and produced figures, dolls, games and various product from Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. But all along it never seemed as Mattel was really sure what exactly to do with Harry Potter, with the style and even scale of the figures changing almost arbitrarily. Ultimately, though they still held the license at the time, they chose not to produce action figures for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So, there’s been something of a Harry Potter toy drought since Azkaban products faded from store shelves.

As most fans know now there are two companies holding licenses to produce Harry Potter action figures. NECA holds the rights in North America and Cards Inc/Popco Entertainment holds the European rights.

Unfortunately for Potter fans in North America, it’s Cards Inc that is producing what could turn into the ultimate Harry Potter action figure line. This isn’t to slight the wonderful work that NECA is doing with the license in North America, but NECA produces collectibles. Popco is making toys. There’s a big difference. Popco’s line is done in the 3-3/4" scale (based on Harry), and features in the neighbourhood of 14 pts of articulation (sometimes less, given the character). As you can see in the picture above there’s a nice sense of scale to the line. Adults are larger than the students, and Hagrid towers over them all.

So, Harry clocks in a 3-3/4", Dumbledore at 4.5" and Hagrid at 5-1/4", just to give you an idea. The figures are wonderfully sculpted. While some are not as outstanding as their prototypes appeared (it’s the rare figure that is), they are still great looking figures. I was able to obtain my figures from a friend in the UK, and out of the figures I received Dumbledore and Mad Eye Moody are the real standouts. They are just fantastic. I shudder to think how expensive this line will be to collect on this side of the pond, but for Harry Potter fans this is really the toyline this property has been waiting for. I just hope at some point in the near future Warner Bros Consumer Products is able to alter the terms of their license with NECA to allow Popco’s line to be sold at mass market in North America. Popco holds the license for films 1 – 6, so this line has the potential to be massive!

Bravo, Popco! Job well done!

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This past Friday, my wife and I saw the new film from the reunited (I’m happy to say) Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, Ratatouille.  The Pixar films are always an event for us, but I went into Ratatouille looking for more than just Pixar’s usual dedication to quality animation, character, and story.  I wondered if, as they had with toys, fish, and automobiles,  Pixar would get rats "right"?

They did.

The way they walk, the way they run, the way they sit up and look at you, even the look of rat bites; Pixar clearly did a great deal of research into the behavior, movements, and habits of real rats and it showed in all of main rat Remy’s actions.  As much fun as I had with the characters and story of Ratatouille, I enjoyed watching Remy BE a rat just as much.

Why the interest in real world rat accuracy?  Simple.

For almost the first half of this decade, rats were a huge part of my life.

My wife and I are pet people.  We adopted two cats within four months of moving in together and bought a bearded dragon soon after that.  We also thought it’d be cool to have a Small Animal pet.  She leaned toward guinea pigs.  I did some research though and come up with something different.  Something out of the ordinary.  Something perhaps, yes, a little bizarre. 

I wanted rats.

This is Warren.  He was one of the first two rats we got (we kept more than twenty over four years) and, when all was said and done, was probably my wife’s favorite.  We got Warren and his cage mate, who we called Malden, from a Petco in the Union Square section of Manhattan and my wife had to trundle them up to our apartment in the Bronx on the subway.  Keeping them out of harm’s way on that harrowing trip was, I think, the first thing that helped bond Warren to her, but there was more.  Rats, you see, are not only quite intelligent, but quite emotionally sensitive, too.  They choose their favorite humans from those available and prefer to spend their time accordingly.  I didn’t quite believe it when I read it in my pre-rat research but it’s absolutely true; rats are like little dogs.  They’re loyal, they’re sweet, they want to spend time with you and, unlike dogs, you can walk around the house with a rat happily riding on your shoulder.  In short, rats are pets that love you back and Warren, though already quite old when we got him and never before properly cared for, learned to trust and love my wife and I for as long as he lived with us, which wouldn’t be nearly long enough, I’m afraid.

Warran and Malden, both "old men" when we met them, died within a year of bringing them home.  But, their work was done and their legacy laid.  We were hooked on rats. 

That’s Bosco over there.  We kept many rats I loved, but he was my favorite.  Unlike Warren and Malden, we got Bosco and his cage mate T-Bone when they were wee.  Bosco is only a few months old in that picture but, already, I felt the bond forming.  Bosco chose me, you see, and would always gravitate my way when the rats were out for play time.  In fact, I remember the first night we had Bosco and T-Bone, we brought them into the play area and I ended up with Bosco in my shirt and T-Bone up my pant leg.  At the same time.  Even though we’d had Warren and Malden for a few months, it was a bit overwhelming to have to two little rats inhabiting my clothes.  It was a good trial by fire, though, and we quickly learned keeping young, energetic, inquisitive, outgoing rats was a different animal altogether.

Bosco grew into a little Sherman tank of a rat.  Once he and T-Bone moved in with Warren and Malden, Bosco established himself as the Alpha Rat in waiting (as you saw in Ratatouille, rats are extremely social animals with a definite hierarchy) but, being the kind of soul he was, never forced the issue.  In fact, when Warren grew hobbled with age and disease, the other rats would move aside to allow him access to the food or water.  And although he was clearly in charge of the cage at this point, Bosco always treated Warren with deference and respect, which only made me love him more.  It was all at once heartbreaking and adorable. 

Bosco would rule the roost until his death but, in the meantime, he and I had a lot of fun times together.  You haven’t lived until you’ve had a rat groom the hair on your arm, or on the back of your neck…just because he loves you.

Bosco was my friend.  I miss him.

Somewhere along the line, we discovered there was another whole world of rats available to us.  Like dogs, cats and rare, exotic reptiles, there are rat breeders, my friend. 

And, as a toy collector, you’ll appreciate that that means variants.

Warren was a an albino, essentially a lab rat.  Bosco was what’s called a Bershire, meaning dark with a white belly; a common variation.  The gentleman on your left is what’s called a dumbo rat…and I think you know why.  In case you don’t, it’s because his ears are on the sides of his head, rather than the top (and there’s another Disney connection to the world of rats).  The thin, white stripe along his snout is called a blaze and is a prized marking.  His name was Gordy and, along with his brother Wally, another dumbo, he came from a breeder in Pennsylvania we drove two hours, each way, to get to.  Gordy was, without question, the cutest rat we ever had, and that I have ever seen.  He was another outgoing, bossy type, though not quite the gentleman Bosco was, who also choose me.

Wally, far more timid and kind of wussy, didn’t really have a favorite human but, as you can see, knew how to look adorable when necessary.  Gordy and Wally were the best of the breeder rats we kept.  They lived full lives and enjoyed themselves as much as we enjoyed them.  Gordy even spent some time as the Alpha Rat.

So, you’ve met Warren, Bosco, Gordy, and Wally.  All awesome rats.  Each of them one of the best pets I’ve ever had.  But none of them are involved in the coolest rat story I have to tell.  In fact, the coolest rat story I have to tell doesn’t involve me, or any of the rats that chose me.  No, the coolest rat story I have to tell involves a rat who chose my wife and bonded to her like none of our rats bonded to anyone.

His name was Julius.

This is Julius.  Let me explain. 

There are such things as hairless rats, it’s a variation (or I suppose some might say, a mutation) of the regular domestic rat.  That’s not what Julius was.  Julius was a double rex, which is another variant in which the rat is hairless but for some dark fur around the snout.  Julius, like Gordy and Wally, was also a dumbo, so as a result he looked more like your Uncle Morty than any rat.  He came to us from a pet store a few counties away along his his brother Irving, who looked about the same, only more so.  Julius really took to my wife.  He always wanted to be with her.  He’d groom her hair.  He’d trim her nails.  No, I’m not kidding.  He was also extremely outgoing and fearless.  We used to keep the rats’ food in a big tub that had once held caramel popcorn.  There were times when, as soon as the cage door opened and he saw the tub in our arm, Julius would jump out of the cage into the tub and begin his meal there while the other rats clambered in the doorway for the first shot at the food we scooped into their bowls.  That was Julius.

But never more so than this one time…

The play area we had for the rats was called The Great Wall.  It was basically a large roll of thin, but solid, plastic that you unspooled and wrapped around to form a freestanding pen.  The wall was about two feet high and we used to sit in it with whatever rats we had to play with them as they played with and harassed each other.  One day, Wally, who wasn’t in a social mood, jumped to the top of The Great Wall and balanced on the eighth-inch thick edge.  Quite the feat of agility, even for a rat.  Wally just stayed up there, out of the fray, and shimmied along the top of The Great Wall; he never went over to the other side.  That was fine with us, but there was something we didn’t know…

Julius had been watching.

Flash forward a few months.  My wife was in the bathroom hosing down the cage.  The rats were all in The Great Wall.  I was on the couch, supposedly watching to make sure none of the rats went over the wall but actually watching TV.  I heard a familiar noise and, sure enough, Julius was on top of The Great Wall, doing the Wally shimmy.  "Make sure you stay there, Julius," I said.  They all knew their names, and most came when called, so Julius knew I knew what he was doing.

But I looked away.  And he made his move.

When I next looked at The Great Wall, Julius was gone.  I checked the immediate area; no Julius.  I was about to call out to my wife to alert her to the breach in security when I heard her say, "What’re you doing, you?"  I went round to the hall and there was my wife, carrying the cage back from the bathroom.  And there was Julius, standing in the middle of the hall in front of her, waiting to be picked up.  He’d escaped The Great Wall and my lax attention for just one reason.

To look for his human.

That’s rats.

We don’t have any rats anymore because, while the joy they bring is unparalleled among any pets I’ve ever had, they’re lifespans are cruelly short which, as much as anything else, led to our scramble to get more of them as the ones we had aged and died.  Eventually, we realized you can’t outrun time, even on a small scale.  If you’re lucky, a pet rat will live about two years, two and and half if you’re really lucky.  Bosco lived about that long, so did Gordy.  In Ratatouille, Django would be about two, Remy less than a year old, though rats live for less time in the wild, so they might not even be that old.

But, like Remy, most of our rats made the absolute most of the time they had.  In retrospect, that’s enough for me.

So, here’s to Pixar for making a movie about rats in which the rats behave as rats.  To those who question the decision to make an animated movie about rats in a kitchen to begin with, I can say only this:

It’s not so hard to love this guy…

…when you used to hang out with this guy.

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