My Star Wars collection as a boy of seven or eight, was quite safe... it was played with, but safe. I had a ton of figures, several spaceships and vehicles (including an AT-AT), and I even had the Death Star playset. (Awesome toy by the way!!!) I would still have most if not all of them if it weren't for the destructive force of my little brother coming into the world. He was seven years younger and always wanted to play with me and the Star Wars "guys". The memories from that particular time-frame about my SW toys tend to get cloudy from there. Things come up missing, parts broken, until one day in my pre-teens I decided to box up what figures I still had to ensure I would still have them later on in life. I also believe that my Mom was throwing some sort of "dark-side-of-the-force" cloud in my brain because I'm sure she had a part to play in my toys disappearing too. I've recently seen my wife "go through" my daughter's toys. I know what happens to toys when a mother is "going through" them.

I finally got some physical evidence against my brother a year ago though. My parents had to fix a hole in the wall of my brother's old room behind the door. He had told them before he got married and moved out that he could remember putting things in the hole as a child. Sure enough, my parents cut out that small section of the wall and found SEVERAL items that belonged to me... including the long laser gun off of my snowspeeder! Oh sure, my family had a good laugh about it. But when mom gave me the laser, I thought of at least 25 different ways I could kill my brother with it.

Lucky for him, in my adult life, I've more than made up for losing all of my original toys. My attic is half-full of Star Wars toys and stuff I've been collecting since 1995. Now I just have to keep an eye on my wife so she doesn't "go through" the attic! She keeps waving her hands at me saying, "You don't need anymore toys... You may go about your business."