she-ra

I’m going to be breaking one of my self-imposed taboos. Not that that’s that unusual, but….

Anyway, today, in response to the glorious day, various outings were had. Er, done. No, made. Well, anyway, so in some of my ausgang-ings (yes, I’m combining English and German, so what?) I ended up at one of the local stores that will buy old toys and sell them at seemingly random prices. (Usually under $10, mind you, but why some things are more than others is not always apparent.)

And I found Bow, She-Ra’s boyfriend. When I moved into this house, I somehow lost three of my She-Ra dolls: Glimmer, Bow and Perfuma. Still don’t have Perfuma, but as I mentioned at the time, I found a Glimmer late last year, and now I’ve got a new (lol) Bow. Of course, even if I can find another Perfuma, she won’t be wearing the extra outfit like mine was (the only She-Ra clothes I purchased) but…and then of course there’s the 1986 dolls like Netossa that I never had in the first place… (And of course if I manage to re-complete my She-Ra set as it was at the time, then I’ll start looking for those Galoob Golden Girl dolls, which I apparently had a number of, given the die-cast shields I still have. Or had; I may have lost those when I moved, too…)

But! The point is that the store was only charging $4.99 for Bow, because they obviously had no idea who/what he was. They probably thought he was a He-Man character. (Which, I suppose, in a way he was.) Granted, he’s not in the greatest shape–reddish smear on his face and missing paint on his feet–but at least he’s here, y’know?

More importantly, I’ve now made a She-Ra purchase in 2015, which is important, since it’s the 30th anniversary of She-Ra, and you know Mattel isn’t going to reward my longing by producing perfect new She-Ra dolls. If they do anything, it’ll undoubtedly be based around those hideous new collector figures that look like they want to scare small children.

But I was thinking about it as we left the store, and I have no memory of what I paid for my She-Ra dolls back in 1985. I was ten years old–well, actually only nine most of the year–so I was actually a bit old to still be playing with dolls, but I really played with them a lot. And at that age I must have been using my allowance to pay for at least some of them, if not all of them. But I have no idea what they cost back then.

Does anyone know? (Yes, I know, I could run a search, but I’m lazy. And promised to be somewhere about twenty minutes ago…)

BTW, I find it infuriating that one of the new Barbie lines for this year is called Power Princess or Princess Power or whatever it is. It’s like they remember that this year is the 30th anniversary for She-Ra: Princess of Power and they want to rub our noses in the fact that they’re doing zilch about that anniversary. Despite that women my age are the ones now buying their toys for their daughters. (Except for, you know, lonely losers like me.)