I was reading my old film guide on the loo like every morning and I came across a movie that has some significance for me.
Not as a film - it sounds like dross - but as an object. The Comic, from 1985, was the last big box VHS horror video I saw at a car boot sale. I didn't know it at the time but the writing was on the wall as the sub-genre's presence at boot sales was clearly on the wane. This will have been about 10 years ago. After that, apart from the odd fishing tape, they were gone.
I did try to buy the video but the seller, a rather obstinate weekly trader, wanted a fiver and I wasn't willing to pay that. Haggling didn't get me anywhere either so the Comic stayed out of Moonbase.
Irritatingly the seller's reluctance to deal put me off something else he had, a loose Kenner Boba Fett figure, which was in a flat glass case face-up, along with old school Prefect badges, Esso keyrings and assorted dusty tat. I wanted to look at Boba and maybe get it with the Comic video. Whether it was the fabled mail-away rocket launching Fett I will never know but its very very unlikely, so I don't know why I keep thinking about it after 10 years. I suppose it's the Fett that got away and all that.
I've been back to the same car boot countless countless times over the last decade - its our local sale and I love going in summer and autumn - but like a released wasp I occasionally retraced my steps looking for that obstinate trader again just to stare at those lost items, but to no avail.
I've never seen either the Comic VHS or an original Kenner Boba Fett at any sale since then. No doubt they are available on Ebay but it's just not the same as finding them on a stall in the summer sunshine.
The cover of the Comic, a typical Eighties video nasty, is too gruesome really for me to show on the blog but should you wish to look Flashbak have an online example https://flashbak.com/terror-tape-horror-vhs-boxes-yesteryear-388223/the-comic/
Do you have any items that got away from you reader that you still think about?
I was at an event once where they auctioned the torch that Davison used during his tenure as the Doctor. It went for less than I had in my pocket. To this day, I still can't understand why I didn't bid!
ReplyDeleteYes, I know that feeling Kev! That's the one!
DeleteThe Kenner Boba Fett figure is a tricky one. As it was released in advance of Fetts actual appearance in Empire, with Fett only appearing briefly in the awful Holiday Special, It has a peculiar significance for collectors. The infamous rocket firing version never actually made it into production, but some pre-production examples did appear on the market. As the figure was being made, Mattel fell foul of a lawsuit wherby a child swallowed a missile from one of its Battlestar Galactica toys and choked to death. Overnight, toy makers pulled or changed and rocket firing mechanism in their toys and poor Boba had his rocket firmly ultrasonically welded into his backpack. The extending lightsaber versions of Luke and Vader also met a similar fate, although they did actually reach the shops before they were stopped. Any item in a glass case or in a special position in a car boot has to be a warning sign that the seller is out for big bucks, I just don't even bother looking in them now. Car boots should be the place where stuff is sold cheaply, hence the name, not at auction level prices.
ReplyDeleteI have many sorry tales of having to walk away from stuff, the newsagent with a wall full of carded Matt Mason toys, the spacex II toys in the closed shop, the submarine aircraft carrier that was too expensive and the countless items at boot sales in which I was just too damn slow to grab them!
Your submarine aircraft carrier story always gets me! But you did get the Hover super rocket didn't you! Now that was a find!
Deleteahh yes - the SpaceBird by Hover - yes. I think Arto has a boxed version now. It still makes me inwardly weep to think of all the toys that I had to pass by over the years. How i wish time travel was possible!
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