[TheBlueMarvel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Augustus_Cole

i actually would like to hear your views on this...

SIDE NOTE.
while this Silver Samurai may not be the most popular of this wave. I believe it is the best figure of the wave easily.
I hope you get your hands on one with a perfect paint app in the near future.

Without delving into a political diatribe, or derailing the thread too far away from toys, I'll nutshell things and start with stating that I learned (and re-learned) many lessons following 9/11. In particular, when President Bush admonished Americans to "shop" as a measure to combat the terror visited upon NYC, well, it struck me as an odd moment of clarity for our young (by comparison to other industrialized countries) nation.

With the benefit of history and perspective and some (not much) softening of my opinions regarding our 43 president, I will assume he was clumsily (as was his style) attempting to convey a message that other nations who experience much more frequent attacks know well: the goal of sponsors of terror is to disrupt daily life promulgating fear and when you stop living life the way you always have, the aggressors actually succeed. I get/got the intention behind the words, but that didn't prevent the moment from breaking me out of a fugue state, allowing me to conceptualize a macro reality of which I was always subconsciously aware, but hadn't really cognitively processed. That reality is that the only use the rich and powerful have for we rank-and-file Americans is for us to be mindless shopping automatons. That's it - That's all - We are good for little else as far as the upper echelons of society are concerned.

I began to apply this new lens of understanding to everything I enjoyed enough to spend money on, which, at the time, was a whole lotta' shit (ie gadgets, games, booze, comics, cars, etc). I'm not ashamed to admit that it fucked with my head a bit. However, once I realized the truth of the cynical view of humanity held by the powerful and influential, the epiphany became both powerfully transformative and liberating.

How does all of this relate to toys? Well, armed with an altered perception, I started pulling back and taking note of all of the insidious marketing being constantly force fed to me. Movie/toy tie-ins. Shameless marketing. Cookied websites. Arbitrary street dates designed to heighten anticipation. All the programming that encourages the belief that 'buying' IS 'living' and if you can't do so, you're somehow 'lesser than.' The messaging that drives notions that you can't live without 'x' product, or that brand 'y' will change your life. Basically, I learned how to better control my impulses. I learned to control my interests and not the other way around, which has served well in this phase of non-stop waves.

Now don't get me wrong, I still buy the fuck out some toys, but this is one of the few guilty pleasures I still indulge...I've pared back most of the other stuff - games, movies, comics, unnecessary tech, new cars (driving an 08' thank you very much), yadda and yadda.

...also, yeah, Silver Samurai gets my vote for best (by far) of the wave.