Apr 10, 2012

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! APRIL 10, 2012

That's right, strangestarwars.blogspot.com has been around for one year! That's twelve whole months of funny looking collectibles!

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It all began with a site that I had started back in May 2010, if not earlier. It had the uncreative but straight-forward name "Star Wars Action Figure Collector" and featured posts about licensed Kenner and Hasbro figures. I really didn't do much with it... I wrote about rocket Fett, vinyl cape Jawa, and other interesting stuff, but it was territory that had already been explored many times before on other sites and in physical sources like Star Wars Galaxy Collector magazine. I pretty much ditched Star Wars Action Figure Collector, feeling that I didn't have anything new or exciting to offer.

Below is the actual banner I used (my current banner uses this one as a base).

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With or without a site, I continued collecting Star Wars figures. Those weren't my only interest in the Star Wars collecting world, though. I also searched flea markets and garage sales for bootlegs, knockoffs, and any production errors I could find. Something's always drawn me to them, they seem special. They're unique and usually funny. Well, one day I was at an indoor garage sale or an estate sale or something, digging through toys in a basement. I found some weird looking action figure with a head that looked like a Biker Scout's helmet. It was the Delta-6 Biker Scout knockoff figure, but I didn't know that at the time. In fact, I had no clue what it was, but I really wanted to know if it belonged in my Star Wars knockoff collection or if I was just overreacting to some spaceman wearing a motocross-style helmet. Later at home I scoured the web for any leads, and it took me a fairly long time to figure out what it was, but in the end I did find two or three sites that talked about the toy. After all my hard research, I didn't want the information to just go to waste, I wanted to put it somewhere. And that was the first step in creating my current site. I figured if I started a site that organized info on what I had in my collection, I would enjoy it and maybe others would too. I also really liked the idea of spending time with my collection and getting to appreciate all its weirdness.

On April 10, 2011 (or at least near this date), I turned Star Wars Action Figure Collector into a home for bootlegs, knockoffs, production errors, and other such goodness. I wasn't sure what to call the site, though, I didn't want the name to be too long like "Star Wars Bootlegs, Knockoffs, and Whatnot". After trying to find some common ground between these areas of collecting, I made the obvious observation that most of the collectibles that would be displayed were pretty weird looking. I ended up settling with the name "Strange Star Wars Collecting".

Well, it's been a year now, and I've since written over 80 posts, displaying most of my collection, which continues to grow. I've received several comments here on the site, all of which I'm happy to report were positive. Thanks, everyone!

As you can see below, my collectibles have been celebrating Strange Star Wars Collecting's birthday, and they even invited some of their knockoff and bootleg friends to the party! I wasn't invited, but I snuck in and managed to snap a few photos.

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I'd like to thank my brother for helping me with a few things along the way (in fact, he came up with the "Pika/ peeker" joke), and thanks again to all my readers! Let's see how many more years I can keep the site going...

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