Jude, at three, loves Star Wars.  Not just any Star Wars, mind you, but the Clone Wars cartoons.  When Bradley puts the original trilogy or the prequels on, Jude says, “No, Dada!  Dose your movies!  I wan MY Star Wars wif Anikin and the Snowpoopers!”  No matter what they watch, though, at least once a day Jude gets out his guys and starts sorting, arranging and playing with them.  On this particular day, the scene must have been Naboo, where Jar-jar lives deep under the water .  Jude loaded his figures out to the hot tub to get some serious Star Wars play in.

Bradley first saw the galactic heroes right before we conceived Guinevere.  We were in Target, and just having begun to own that he was indeed a full-fledged Star Wars geek, he began trolling the toy aisles just to see what George Lucas had been green lighting during his decades away from the force.  What he found left him drooling: a Millennium Falcon (Aluminum Falcon anyone?  Ha ha!  I kid.) that rivaled the Millennium Falcon that he always wanted as a kid.  I told him to buy it, encouraged him to get it for our future children, but being the thrifty guy he is he passed and we walked away under the assumption that it would still be there when we and if we did finally ever get those babies.

 

With Guinevere safely encased in my expanding belly, we returned to Target one day to look at the toys again, stopping specifically at the Star Wars section, looking specifically for the Millennium Falcon.  But, it had been discontinued.  Bradley was crushed.  He had let the moment pass him by.  At that point, he decided that he wanted to collect these toys for our unborn child who would be here in a few short months, and seeing how they had discontinued the Millennium Falcon after such a short run, he became very interested in buying the toys before they were discontinued.  Thus, we have quite a collection. For ‘the kids’. We did manage to find a Millennium Falcon on Ebay later on.  The going rate at that time was around $100.00 – which we paid nowhere near – and within three months they were offered exclusively at Wal-mart, so we broke our pledge to never shop there and bought one, a new one, so now we have two Milleni Falci.

Gigi and Bradley played with the Star Wars guys quite a bit.  Gigi loves Star Wars like her daddy.  She was often found play acting different scenes as Leia in her room (often as slave Leia, tied to Jabba/the bed in her bikini, which was a little disturbing…) or bathing with the ladies of Star Wars in the bath tub.  But then Jude came along as Spaceboy: The Rocket Powered Baby, and it was like the clouds parted and we were given the final piece in our collection of Galactic Heroes – the boy who would be obsessed with them.  And he is.  Before he was even one year old, Jude was carrying his guys around in his mouth and clumping along in his little sweaty fists as he crawled through the house.  And some things just don’t change.  He now says all of those toys that his Daddy and sister collected over the years are his and only his, though he will share from time to time.

The entire Galactic Hero line of Star Wars pre-school toys has now been canceled and has been replaced by something similar, but slightly different.  It was a little weird to say goodbye to an era so soon.  Jude is only three and Gigi is only eight.  Our prediction is that soon Jude will see these Galactic Heroes as baby toys and he’ll return them to his dad, in favor of the 3 inch characters that big boys like to play with.  For his part, Bradley is sad at that thought, but also looks forward to the day when his toys are returned to him.  But until then, Naboo (hot tub) Star Wars parties, kitchen table Geonosis battles and Hoth AT-AT snow scenes with our Galactic Heroes will be a part of our lives every day.


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