May, 1980. My family and I are living in small-town, Oklahoma. I’m ten, my sister is six. By day, my mom is a homemaker, a “stay-at-home mom” if you will. However, several evenings a week, she works the jewelry counter at the local K-Mart. I don’t know if it was for the extra money or to get away from my sister and me for a few hours. Dad was in charge of us while mom was hocking jewelry and a couple of times a week, he would take us up to K-Mart to see mom in action. It may not sound like a big deal but to us, it was because these trips usually involved a stop at the snack bar (I will forever maintain that K-Mart snack bar popcorn is the best popcorn ever popped. Your argument is invalid.).
Also in May of 1980, The Empire Strikes Back was about to take theaters by storm. Like every other kid my age, I was an enormous Star Wars fan. I had a shoebox full of action figures, the X-Wing, a TIE Fighter, a stormtrooper rifle, and my most prized possession, the Millennium Falcon which had been my biggest Christmas gift a few months earlier. I still have it in its original box up in my attic.
I have a vague recollection of KNOWING that Empire was coming out soon but I didn’t have an internet that allowed me to get up-to-the-minute details about a movie or watch its trailer 241 times so I had no details. It was a trip to K-Mart that gave me all the details I would ever want. Usually, when we’d stop in to see Mom, she’d take her break (unless the jewelry business was booming). Sometimes we’d walk around the store or go to the snack bar. On this trip, however, she took me to the stockroom in the back of the store. That was the moment I discovered what heaven would look like.
In just a few short days, the store would be setting up the displays for the new batch of Star Wars toys that were hitting the market in advance of the movie’s premiere.
But this night, all the toys were sitting in boxes in the stockroom. I don’t know who but my mom had apparently cleared it with someone to let me have an exclusive look at all the new merchandise. Boxes of action figures (IG-88? Hoth? What was Bespin? Who the hell was Lando Calrissian? That stormtrooper in Hoth battle gear looks badass.), something called a Tauntaun (what the heck is this and why is there an opening in its belly), a Twin Pod Cloud Car (what?!). I was mesmerized. It felt like I stared at those toys for hours. In reality, it was probably only fifteen minutes since that’s how long Mom’s break was. As we left the stockroom, Mom asked which action figures were my favorite. Of course, it was Han Solo in his Hoth outfit and Luke in Bespin fatigues. I went to sleep that night dreaming of all those toys and what the new movie might be like. Well, I wouldn’t know anything about the movie for weeks, it turns out, but just a few days later Mom came home from a hard day’s night at K-Mart with two action figures in hand.
Han Solo in his Hoth outfit and Luke in Bespin fatigues.
