Today is a big shopping day. I won't be out there. I went once, years ago, teamed with my brother at the urging of my mother who needed something that was being offered at a ridiculous price so we went and dove headfirst into a pile of merchandise and came back with something resembling the item she was looking for.
But no more, not for me. I do 90% of my Christmas shopping online and the rest at Walgreens on Christmas Eve. It's a simple plan that works.
However, speaking of Christmas and shopping I remembered one of my favorite presents of all time-- it was the year Star Wars came out and believe it or not back then they didn't have instant presence in toy aisles, in fact Kenner owned the Star Wars license and for Christmas that year they were offering a postcard that you could give your kid telling him he'd be getting some jinxy Star Wars figures sometime in March-- what kid wouldn't be thrilled to have that?
Well, my aunt found this guy, the Knight of Darkness-- essentially a more art deco styled Darth Vader-- and I thought it was the coolest. He's still on my shelf in my studio.
I know what some of you were thinking-- he's just a lame ripoff of Darth Vader. Well, Star Wars creator George Lucas thought so too and sued Ideal Toys when this came out-- but the case was tossed out of court when it was revealed that the figure was actually a re-purposed Captain Action from the 1960s. The Knight defeated Darth Vader.
Which makes him the coolest figure.
