Collect Call

... in which childhood is avenged.

I suppose my favorite collector, if I have to choose a favorite, is the guy who’s bought, as of last count, 212 Greedos. He doesn’t have a Star Wars action figure collection, as such – no Chewbaccas or Obi Wans or Death Star Pipefitters – just Greedos. That’s the only character he likes, and hell, maybe the only part of the movie he enjoyed.

I appreciate how his singular focus distills the OCD collector drive down to its essential idiocy. I like to imagine he traded all his other action figures in childhood for extra Greedos, and then carried the quest into adulthood, traveling from toy conventions to antique barns with only one goal: Gimme the Greedo. Perhaps a Greedo figure was the last thing his father gave him before he ran off with that Waffle House waitress. Maybe his twin brother choked to death on a Greedo, and he’s working through the survivor’s guilt.

Whatever the spark, the desire is not simply for Greedo, but the most Greedo. As the legendary Art Guys conceptual art duo used to say, when excusing their exhibits of American cheese slice grids and multiple quarts of Tang, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” One Greedo is a nostalgic childhood token. 212 Greedos is an act of civil disobedience.

Because it is, in effect, a resistance to consumerist norms, a refusal to shop reasonably. Typically, whether stockpiling Hummel or Faberge, the collector’s goal is to acquire the complete set, including the elusive misprint prototype with illegal uranium highlights, of which only three are known to exist. Hoarding only one variety – say, multiple Sun Lovin’ Malibu Kens or hundreds of Catfish Hunter rookie cards – not only rebels against collector conditioning but upsets the balance of supply and demand. Greedos are not as easy to come by because Greedo Guy is, well, greedy.

He’s a guy, naturally, because the collecting disease typically affects males. Yes, Aunt Ida may have her Spoons of the Great Lakes displayed in the kitchen, and your sister may have all her old Nancy Drews on the shelf. There are grandmas with an abundance of knick-knack unicorns¹ or a decorative Pyrex surplus. But dedicating an entire basement showroom to Evel Knievel or Robocop memorabilia is a guy thing. This, so the psychologists tell us, is a leftover hunter/gatherer impulse, meant to impress potential mates with the man’s prowess as a provider. Even though there has never been a woman who chose a man because of, rather than despite, his expansive collection of Hanna-Barbera lunch boxes.

It’s a strange irony that the trillionaire class of today, the bitcoining dudebros currently spearheading our modern armageddon, pride themselves on the chestbump manliness of their Master of the Universe financial dominance while filling their superyachts with…rare He-Man figures. Such is the face of ultimate acquisition today. William Randolph Hearst had a warehouse full of ancient Athenian treasures and Renaissance tapestries. Elon Musk collects James Bond toys.

And there’s that geek factor adding considerable quease to current conditions. I suppose the classic breed of tweedy academics still represents the world of collecting with their limited-edition stamps and extinct butterflies. Certainly, the traditional mancave dwellers accumulate autographed jerseys and homerun balls as they always have. But the modern collector who identifies as such is most likely stockpiling a shit-ton of Thundercats.

My grandmother, who wielded an impressive, old-world vocabulary of condescending phrases, would refer to such collections as “playpretties.”² As with Laura Wingfield’s beloved assortment in The Glass Menagerie, an adult’s obsessive attention to playpretties was indicative of social maladjustment as far as Myrtle Holt was concerned. Naturally, my insistence on fiddling with Superman dolls in her presence well into my teens was an act of rebellion. The same Playpretty Rebellion, as it turns out, that every stunted babyman of my generation had joined. Someday, we reasoned, we would have enough adult money to build an armada of Supermen, to stack Burger King ALF glasses floor to ceiling. Or A-Team Underoos. Or any other pop culture object of desire that taunted us from K-Mart shelves when we were six, to be purchased at Sotheby’s prices in adulthood as psychic revenge against our skinflint step-dads. No Greedo under the Christmas tree? We’ll see about that!

I did try. For some time, passing eBay whims filled the house with a smattering of Justice League alumni and affiliated kung fu grippers, radiating nostalgic glory in Danish Modern display cases. But my rebellious nature soon forced me to rebel against the rebellion. I realized I was just keeping up with the jonsers, trying to jumpstart an addiction without the internal fortitude to see it through. I wasn’t man enough to Collect ‘Em All. Worse, submerging myself in childhood nostalgia revealed a childhood I’d rather forget, particularly that recovered memory of having to get the Play-Doh surgically removed.

Meanwhile, my contemporaries piled their double-wides high with Fisher-Price Barnyards and Hot Wheels racetracks. Every superelastic, lite brite, rock ‘em sock ‘em, speak & spell, etch-a-sketch collectible from their elementary years now lines living room shelves intended for adult literature and self-respect. They seem quite happy.

One wonders what future anthropologists will make of all this as they one day sift through the ancient rubble of the Zuckerbergian Era. In one dwelling, they’ll find shards of pottery festooned with hamburger-evangelist clowns, and in the lot next door, thousands of totemic figurines that distribute engraved ingots from their necks. They will rightly conclude that these are the icons of a religious order, and that each vinyl-sided cloister had been charged with the preservation of particular amulets or sacred dioramas.

And when they excavate Greedo Guy’s secret stash, kept hidden from the trillionaire yachtsmen who couldn’t complete the set, they’ll know who was the true Master of the Universe.

- A.H.

(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)

1. It’s always a great day at the thrift store when Grandma passes away and her entire collection of 500 ceramic owls, acquired over 80 years, is suddenly lining the shelves all at once. How, I ask you, could you buy only one and leave the rest of the collection behind?

2. And yes, one’s collectible, Wolverine-first-appearance four-color pamphlets were “funny books.”