'Star Wars' Toy Thieves Stripping Restaurants
Published Wednesday, June 15, 2005
By Alice Cervantes
The Columbus DIspatch

According to my newspaper, Star Wars fans are stealing from local Burger King restaurants. They're forcing open display cases to steal the toys and they're pealing promotional materials right of the walls. What is going on here?

Some would say that this gives Star Wars fans a bad name. But before we go placing blame, we've got to look at some facts. First of all, this isn't the first large, inflatable Vader to be stolen off the top of a Burger King. In fact, when Burger King was doing their SpongBob Squarepants promotion, they lost more then 100 SpongeBobs nationwide.

So SpongeBob fans must be turning to the Dark Side too.

But no worries--these thieves might just be high-enterprising individuals, like that guys who sneak into Toys R Us when the shipments come in and snag up every single figure you've ever wanted and then upload them on E-Bay. Yeah, you know the kind I'm talking about. I think maybe that's what's going on here. Check out E-Bay. I'm betting you my rather incomplete collection of Burger King toys that that's the case here.

We live in a weird world. Burger King spokeswoman Adrienne Hayes even said, "It's pretty typical. When something's as coveted as these toys, [thefts are] not unhear of." These people have been corrupted by the Dark Side, twisted and evil, more machine now than...well...okay. Maybe it's not all that bad.

But for all of us collectors who do things by the rule book, may the Force be with us all.