{"id":1228,"date":"2008-09-15T17:39:36","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T00:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2008-09-15T17:39:36","modified_gmt":"2008-09-16T00:39:36","slug":"the-gateway-chewie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1228","title":{"rendered":"The Gateway Chewie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/muggleia1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/muggleia1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"muggleia1\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1230\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Remember the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/blog\/?p=865\">Tale of Two Chewies<\/a>? I still have Cute Chewie. He encourages me when I&#8217;m writing myself out of whatever mess of story construction I&#8217;ve managed to build on any given day, and then he goes off to star in his adorable anime-style TV series, which also features Superdeformed R2-D2 and a bunch of Jawas with sparkly, embiggened eyeballs. (Cute Chewie wants you to know that this series is not related to <em>The Clone Wars<\/em> &#8212; not in ANY WAY. Cute Chewie doesn&#8217;t like to use profanity, but he thought <em>The Clone Wars<\/em> was pretty shitty.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, as you may know, Cute Chewie is part of a whole line of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hasbrotoyshop.com\/SearchResults.htm?PG=1\">Mighty Muggs<\/a>, courtesy of Hasbro. Marvel characters, Indiana Jones peeps&#8230;all have been cute-ified. And I keep thinking I need more of them.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>At first, it was just the Princess Leia. I have Princess Leia figs of all different sorts&#8230;surely I need that one, too, right? Then I started considering Iron Man. I mean, that primary-colored costume is practically Mighty Mugged already! Adorable! And Ghost Rider! I don&#8217;t even like Ghost Rider that much, but who doesn&#8217;t want a completely darling version of a flaming skull on their desk?!<\/p>\n<p>And then I started to realize that I was heading down a very dangerous path.<\/p>\n<p>Because, see, I used to be a very &#8220;collect them all!&#8221; sort of girl. I had that completist&#8217;s mindset so common in nerds. And this might have continued to be fun if I had a giant room in my MANSION, dedicated to displaying toys and only toys, the glass cases perfectly lit, the masses of articulated joints dusted every week.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I ran out of space. Action figures and Kubricks and crappy Toybiz Marvel products vied for shelf room, crowding in on one another. Keeping up with all those <em>Buffy<\/em> figures became a chore, rather than a joy (did I really need Sexy Red Pants Willow? Or Military Xander? I am sort of proud of Fiesta Giles and Bunny Anya, I suppose). The toys I was so set on accumulating weren&#8217;t really special any more. They were just&#8230;stuff.<\/p>\n<p>I finally recognized that I had a bit of a problem, pared down my collection, and attempted to acquire only those toys that are So Very Special, I must own them. The toys I purchase must be things I will display lovingly, not just plop in amongst a bunch of other figures.<\/p>\n<p>Cute Chewie fits that bill, but Cute Chewie is igniting that acquisitive desire once again. So I&#8217;m trying to tread with care. I don&#8217;t really need more Mighty Muggs. In fact, setting more of them next to Cute Chewie might somehow decrease his specialness. There&#8217;s something cool about having just the one cute-ified fig.<\/p>\n<p>Although&#8230;he might not mind if Princess Leia joined him. I mean&#8230;they&#8217;re <em>friends<\/em> and all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember the Tale of Two Chewies? I still have Cute Chewie. He encourages me when I&#8217;m writing myself out of whatever mess of story construction I&#8217;ve managed to build on any given day, and then he goes off to star in his adorable anime-style TV series, which also features Superdeformed R2-D2 and a bunch of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[289,128,45],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toys","tag-chewbacca","tag-mighty-muggs","tag-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}