Tales From The Dark Side....

This story is about as grim as the pegs have been looking at retail lately. Just when you think you've heard it all, something like this comes along to once again destroy the faith you've thought you'd built up in other people. JTA longtime reader Darth Eddie has a true tale of terror to share with you. But brace yourself, because it will anger you and you know what Yoda says about anger.... click through for more please.

Hey Paul!

I wish I were sending you an e-mail to report something upbeat, jovial and entertaining for the JTA family to discuss and have some fun with, but a dear friend who lives down in Florida was in a Walmart located very close to where he works and was looking to see what figures it had.

As he turned the corner into the Star Wars aisle, he witnessed the following: a mother and her elementary-school kid were in the process of pulling the freshly restocked The Vintage Collection figures from their pegs, mangling and ripping them open right there in the aisle as my friend watched. He sternly confronted them about their vandalism and the mother asked him if he was a collector of Star Wars action figures. He told her "yes, ma'am, I am. Why?" She replied, and I paraphrase: "because you collecting types always hog these for yourselves and never let kids like my son here get any of them that he wants. So you know what? If my kid can't have them, then you won't and neither will anybody else like you!"

Her little son ripped open and mangled figures that included - according to my friend - the following: Deleted Scenes Luke. Sandstorm Leia. Sandstorm Lando. Cracken. Mon Cal Pilot.
Ratts Tyerell. Bespin Han. Barriss Offee. Rebel Fleet Trooper. Logray. At least ten The Vintage Collection action figures still hanging from their pegs. Apparently, according to my friend, the kid also grabbed a few The Clone Wars, DTF or Movie Heroes figures ("I don't remember which, but they were a few of the ones in the Darth Maul packages"), vandalized them as his mother looked on approvingly and encouraged him and created a huge mess in the aisle. My friend caught some footage of the mother and her kid vandalizing the figures on his iPhone when they weren't noticing and had to turn that footage over to the store manager so the police can investigate and prosecute the crimes. He no longer has the phone footage to send to me so I can show you guys what this woman and her brat kid were doing to perfectly good and intact Star Wars figures (and a lot of them were freshly restocked Deleted Scenes wave figures to boot - go figure), but I thought that you and others on JTA as well as the greater Star Wars collecting community should definitely know about this deliberate vandalism and criminal activity being perpetrated not only against that particular Walmart, but - in the words of the mother herself - to get back at us collectors for supposedly hogging everything for ourselves and not letting her son nor other kids have a crack at any of this.

I think a story of such blatant and open vandalism done in the face of not only a retailer and its security cameras but also fellow, law-abiding and friendly collectors who were just looking for figures that they didn't have (he told me that he missed out on no fewer than five Vintage figures he had been wanting and looking for thanks to this kid and his mother) is something we really, really need to have a site discussion about. A grown adult and her elementary school-age child destroyed Star Wars figures right in front of another customer just because she doesn't like collectors or what we supposedly do. Please, post this. I want more people to know about what my friend in Florida saw and what we as a collecting community can do to prevent this from happening, because it not only affects us but the store, the perpetrators and others as well, and it can't be tolerated.

This goes way beyond switching new figures for older ones, resealing the blister and returning it to a store for a refund or credit. Those idiots and crooks are bad enough. This is rank, deliberate vandalism done right in front of the eyes of others and to spite the Star Wars collecting community as a whole.

Thanks for your time, Paul. I hope you can do something with this.

Sincerely,

EDDIE (Darth Eddie)

    Search General News

Most Recent General News: