After writing all day, when Jaime got home from work we went out to TJ Maxx so she could return something. I was eager to see if they still had any of the WWE Retro series 2 figures. Last time we were there about a month ago they had some Stoncold's and Triple H's but I didn't get either because I already have an in and out of package Steve Austin and Triple H has the stupid jumping mechanism so I passed on him when I first found series 2 at Walmart. And since seeing them at TJ Maxx for a few bucks, I've regretted not getting them. They had one Stone Cold left so I grabbed him, probably to use as a custom somewhere down the road.
A couple days ago we hit up the mall on Saturday night. Man does our mall suck, I think literally over half the stores are empty. It's nothing like southern New England where the malls are packed and there's no available store fronts, well, at least the major malls, the one in my hometown is practically non-existent. At least Game Stop gets in some pretty cool figures now, and we have two of them, one in the mall and another in a plaza across the street. They still had some of the Funko Savage World Mortal Kombat figures, which I wanted when they came out and even saw them on clearance at Target, the whole set, but that was shortly after losing our jobs so I couldn't get them. Today they were on clearance and on sale on top of that so I picked up Scorpion and Kitana. I hate how they put giant ass price stickers on the front of the package but I did a pretty good job of pealing them off. When I first saw them there, they even had the chase variants of Sub-Zero, Scorpion and Rayden which was pretty cool to see even though I couldn't afford them at the time. I'm hoping to be able to add Sub-Zero to my collection still.
I was telling Jaime about the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter GI Joe collection I had and how I recently just found Rock Trooper Guile's entire weapons/accessories set in my GI Joe box. Unfortunately I sold off all the figures a while back when we needed money. When we got home, she made me buy him on eBay, but rather than get the out of package version who came with all his accessories I didn't need, I instead got the in-package figure for the same price, $20. I wanted one of the movie Guile's to display in package so I could have the cool artwork and the Rock Trooper version has always been my favorite. Most people hated the movie but I loved it as a kid and it holds a special place in my heart that we'll get into in a later blog post.
Two days before that, on Wednesday the 8th, the Ninja Turtle figures I ordered on eBay arrived, Tokka and Rahzar from the second TMNT movie, The Secret Of The Ooze. The first Turtles movie was great but I loved the second one even more, I can't tell you how many times my sister and I watched it as kids. When I needed the money back in 2010, I sold off my entire TMNT collection. All I have left are a few random weapons I've found in boxes since then and Mutagen Man who I had in my weapons bin because I was trying to piece all of his parts back together. So now that I'm rebuilding my TMNT collection, well, the bad guy portion of it, he was my starting block. Shredder was always my favorite and Super Shredder was the most bad ass thing ever so Jaime got me him for my birthday last year. Naturally, the next two figures would be his experiments from the movie, Tokka & Rahzar. I actually have Tokka's belt in my cache of Turtles accessories and possibly one of his weapons as well.
My lost collections are finally starting to resemble some of their former greatness once again. I'm sure I'll spend a lifetime trying to acquire what I once had and that's fine, it makes having them so much more rewarding. Maybe it's true what they say and you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Or maybe, like me, you know what you have, but sometimes it's necessary to let it go. Will it come back to you if it's meant to be yours? No. It'll come back to you if you take it. Don't let life happen, make it happen.
