Against my better judgement, last night I ventured out to my local 24-hour Meijer store for Force Friday. Rogue Friday? Does this thing even have an official name now? If you don't know what Force Friday is just take a gander at this link here to learn a bit about it on Wikipedia. But basically, it's a merchandising event where all of the new Star Wars toys of a particular wave are released at 12:01 on a certain day. Sometimes big parties have been held, lines have formed, things sell out, freebees are given away. And sometimes no one shows up but a handful of nerds at a small Meijer store to politely sort through the new toys and pass things around.
Apparently, events of this nature have been around for quite a while, but I never truly participated in them when the prequels were around (yay for age limitations and parents - love you, Mom!). I guess back then, though, we didn't have a name for them. But after speaking with a couple of fellow Star Wars fans at last night's Force Friday unveiling, I learned that folks had attended similar toyapalooza's during the Attack of the Clones (AOTC) and The Phantom Menace (TPM) releases. When one gentleman told me he had been there for TPM unveiling, I think my eyes got pretty wide. I audibly said, "Dude, that's crazy." Because it had to have been. I remember the merchandising that went into that movie - it's still joked about today in some circles. I cannot imagine Toys R' Us putting out huge bins of figures so you could "dive in and get what you wanted". That's just insane to me! Insane! (I would have loved it, but - alas - age limitations and parents - love you, Mom! ;p).
So when this type of thing because official before The Force Awakens (TFA) was released, then of course I had to be there. I have a 24-hour Meijer and a 24-hour Wal-Mart nearby. Frankly, I prefer Meijer, so I selected that as my "home" store to attend the event. I think there were a dozen or so of us for TFA, and there was an entire aisle of things. Then they wheeled out displays with more and more things. It was insane. I walked away with so much loot (plus the only Rey action figure I have ever been able to find on the shelves).
Last night, I didn't expect an event quite as large as TFA because the movie seems a bit off the beaten path of Star Wars. I expected a handful of people, a smaller display area, just something low-key.
I did not expect 4 people picking over a little 5x5x5 rolling, 4-sided display of toys. Another fan who got there much earlier than the others had already spoken with an employee about what had been received in their shipment. The employee let them know that - unfortunately - the entire shipment had not been received by the store. So they were going to put out whatever they had received, and they apologized. It was kind of sad, to be honest. However, I picked up the two figures that I truly wanted to get my hands on - Sergeant Jyn Erso (Eadu) and K-2SO.
After that, I figured I'd pop into Wal-Mart just to see if they had anything else. I went inside, walked all the way to the back to the toy section...and found nothing. Absolutely nothing new. Everything that they had was the old TFA toy selection that they were slowly marking down on clearance. No one had bothered to put out any new merchandise at all. I walked away pretty sad. There was such a build-up in my mind, and then here I am with two figures. That's it.
I do understand that this isn't a "main-stream" movie in terms of how it fits in with our standard Star Wars timeline. This movie is new. Fresh. Different. That makes me so, so excited for it. I hope that excitement spreads to others, as well.
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