Crystal Mall

This morning, Dad and I headed off to Grandma's house in the Norwich area. And whenever I'm near Grandma's house, I'm not too far from the Toy Vault at the Crystal Mall in Waterford CT. This was actually the first Toy Vault store I visited, before I even knew such a thing existed. We were down visiting one summer and met up with our friend Kari at the mall for lunch, and across from the food court was a beacon of light. It was in a much smaller location back then but I can still feel my heart begin to race just at the memory of seeing all those vintage action figures behind the glass. I knew stores like that existed, but not around here. We were broke as could be at the time but Jaime told me that's what credit cards are for, go ahead and buy some stuff. I only bought a few things that time around, but I'll never forget that day.

A few years ago, they moved to a bigger location upstairs beside FYE, in the old Suncoast Video store, lot of memories from my childhood there as well. I can't count how many WWF Coliseum Home Videos I got there, still have some of them today. Recently, within the last year, they moved back downstairs to an even larger storefront right off the food court with a huge window where they display all the statues.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to get anything or not so we perused the mall while I thought about it and decided to go ahead. If I came home empty handed and Jaime found out there were toys I thought about getting but didn't, she'd make me drive back to get them. Yes, I have a great wife who supports my hobby, and really everything I do, including me right now since I'm technically unemplyed. So I saved myself a 45 minute drive and picked up the four figures I couldn't stop thinking about. Monkian, Commander Waspax, Leatherhead & Evil Lyn.

Monkian from the Thundercats is a bit of a sore subject. I sold all my Thundercats, well, almost, I kept four of them. We were poor, we needed money, they were worth quite a bit, and I listed them on eBay. I tried watching the old cartoons and couldn't get into them so I figured I didn't need my collection anymore. For a couple years I was fine with it, then one winter when I was sick, just a year into my new job, I downloaded the 2011 series. Oh my f***ing god! I was blown away, and the Thundercat fan in me was back. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats... Nooooo!!! My collection was long gone and we were still too poor to buy me the new Bandai figures, even when they got clearanced out at Walmart. So I've slowly been rebuilding my collection.

Commander Waspax from the Sectaurs is a new recruit among my action figure army. The only Sectaur I had growing up was General Spidrax, the most bad ass of all the Sectaurs. I believe he'd been a hand-me-down from my cousins, which is where I got quite a few of my earliest toys, from Transformers to Go-Bots to Star Wars. I never thought much about the Sectaurs honestly, until I wrote my first novel in 2008 and made mention of them in it, just a random painting the main character did for a commissioned piece. That novel, still unreleased, is what started off my new career, so the Sectaurs hold a special place in my heart. And I just found out they're coming back! Oh man I hope we get that second series that never made it to the shelves. I'll add Sectaurs to my collection whenever I find them, which isn't very often, in fact, this is my first time seeing one. Sort of, I saw him last time we were down back in October and have regretted not getting him since coming home.

Leatherhead from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vintage line is also bit of a sore subject. Again, I had him, I had all of them, then I sold them because, you know, poor college student. I didn't even regret it until I saw bags and bags of them at Salvation Army a few years back, but they were in someone's shopping cart. I was tempted to grab them out of the cart and replenish my collection and sell the ones I didn't want, but I couldn't do that to the woman that was buying them. Then I hear some dirty backwoods hick of mother in need of a shower yell to her son "oooh look at dem dare, go grabs dem supahero figures, theys worth money". It wasn't until then that I realized the woman near the shopping cart was merely moving it out of her way to look at something else. The cart of toys was stuff they were putting out on the floor. So Redneck Mama got all four bags of TMNT figures. Since that day, I wanted my collection back. And bit by bit I'm rebuilding it, just my favorites, the bad guys of course because for some reason I've always loved the villains.

And onto Evil Lyn from the original Masters Of The Universe line, who I have because I don't get rid of He-Man figures. So why did I buy this dirty, beat up Evil Lyn you might ask? Well, back in 2005-2010, I was making custom action figures. One of my first was a simple repaint of Evil Lyn, giving her the classic cartoon color scheme because, well, why the hell does she have yellow skin? She's not a Simpsons figure. And that's not how she looked on TV. Someone offered me $50 for her and, poor college student, remember, I gladly accepted. Now, I haven't done a custom in 8 years but someday I plan on getting back into it when I have the time. I saw her for $4 and couldn't pass her up. She's not even in that rough of shape. I've been thinking about her since earlier in the year when I wrote a book about a guy who made custom figures when he was a kid and gets back into it as an adult, like me, this was one of his first. What can I say, I got jealous and wanted a custom Evil-Lyn.

At FYE I was looking for the new Masters Of The Universe retro figures, which yes I just bought, but they're $5 cheaper at FYE and I wanted a second She-Ra to take out of package. So wouldn't you know she was sold out. They had the other three, but no She-Ra. They did have a nice little MOTU endcap though, complete with Skeletor cereal. I was also hoping for the POP Vinyl Battle Armor Skeletor but no such luck. I'm honestly not into the Pop Vinyls but that Battle Armor one is kinda sick and come on, it's Skeletor. Oh well. We also checked Hot Topic for the exclusive MOTU Loyal Subjects figures but they didn't appear to have them so I figured that series must have already come and gone. But I'm happy with my four new figures, well, one new, three replacements. One day I'll learn my lesson and stop selling off action figures when I think I won't want them anymore, because clearly I will.