Well I will give you the good news first. This is how my day ended today:
This is what we give the box designThis is how I felt after finally getting my hands on itAs you can see it is just minty case freshI just love the vintage nods everywhereNow for the rest of the story. Well my daughter had a specialist appointment early this morning so I got up around 3:30am which means out the door for us at 5am. I ended up walking back through my door again just a little before 9:30pm. Wow, what I won't go through for a walker. I must admit the real reason for the trip was my daughter's doctor appointment, but even having said that it only took about five hours to get that done. The rest was in search of a toyrus non damaged item.
Ok so the only toyrus on the route was about three hours back towards where we came from so no problem. I called first, they said they had one and so once we got back on the road we went straight through. The parking lot was empty for the most part so I strolled down to the SW Aisle and found the one smashed under the bottom shelf with the front of the box crushed beyond all recognition. At that point a store employee asked me if I needed any help. I said, "I want to find the tool that crushed the life out of this box as that is the only reason some joker like me will pay $130 for it!" I must have walked back into the aisle half a dozen times trying to talk myself into taking it, but no dice. So, time for some food. I checked the next store with the dcpi up the road two hours only to find out they aren't allowed to carry it. And yes, I asked why they weren't allowed to carry their own stores' exclusive to dead silence. I was starting to loose patience I must admit (long day on the road). She came back quickly and said our next store down the road has two on the floor. I called the store and they said yes and that one looked "good".
Well that store was two more hours away from that one, but my wife knew I would drive her nuts so after we ate away we went through a funnel cloud! I have never seen one before till now. Luckily I don't think it did anything beyond that but a bruiser of a storm was blowing through, but I haven't checked yet. At that point I thought perhaps a higher power was trying to tell me to lay off the walker. Still I got past that and halfway there till the storm caught back up with us and then I got lost in the torrential downpour trying to find the store, but I did find it. I think the look on my face when I walked through the door white knuckled was enough to scare Hades himself as the store manager greeted me. He didn't even asked who I was he just pointed to the walker. It was perfect. I swear the downpour stopped and the sun came out as I pulled out my expired 20 percent coupon and they said, we will honor that. And the rain held off long enough for me to get it in the trunk. And I mean just long enough. All in all I am chalking this up as a win.
On a more serious note, I am finding it horrible that toysrus employees are either damaging these by literally force feeding them into their existing shelf displays or in the case of the better toysrus they are using cables with the theft prevention device and that is causing them to be moved by grabbing the cables which ofcourse is gouging the boxes. There was a 250 dollar falcon that was in even worse shape than the one rotj walker they had left. It was just a travesty to see those vintage boxes damaged through sheer negligence. Now I know I am something of a carded eccentric, but seriously. This is a lot of cash to dole out and many are getting it for the nostalgia it brings to us from out Kenner days of old. I have to admit I am seriously worried how Amazon is going to do with the Slave I.
I am writing this while its still fresh and I am very tired so please forgive the spelling and grammatical errors till I revisit this tomorrow.