Here we are ...
It is. It's Star Wars.
So although you still don't have an answer, the field of inquiry has gone from being vast to just one property.
You don't have an answer now, maybe you never will -- but -- if there *is* one it's from Star Wars.
Indeed.
I feel as if I haven't explained myself well enough. My point got lost in all my rambling. Star Wars is the one thing I can remember following from my early years till now, as a brand. It was always there, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the foreground. I obviously care enough to still enage with it. But here's the thing. I was never obsessed with it. And that's what's always bothered me. You know how people have this one thing that they're huge fans of? Completely obsessed with it. I've never had it. Every season brought a different distraction.
EDIT: I had this huge timeline here, but turns out like 80% of it was wrong. I've mashed thigns up together over the years, and remember sequences of events differently than they had happened. My takeway is that I've never gotten 110%/balls to the walls into something, and I just became heavily interested in a couple of different things with every passing year. And at this point a few of them remain, with SW being included. Whether I learned of SW before I watched the 90s X-Men or Batman Beyond is hazy, and at this point I don't know if it matters. I know what I still like now, and maybe that's enough.
Sobbing on the Gantry in Cloud City
- darthkostis -- unable to choose, hypothetically maybe possibly something Star Wars
It's not that I'm indecisive, I'm just in a peculiar position is all... No, I am indecisive in general, it's just that this case is also peculiar for me, since my experience difffers from everyone else here. Or so it seems, at least.
To make it easier for the guys in this thread who cannot decide.
Suddenly you have to sell of the collection to pay for a loved ones cancer , who do you keep to remember your collection?
Or what is the first figure your reacquire?
Well, speaking for myself I wouldn't keep anything because I don't own anything "important". That's my whole point. There was no merch here for me to get as a kid or toddler. I collected some minifigures from eBay, big whoop, they're stored somewhere in the storage room. My first toys were random action figures that were long destroyed before I even started using the internet. I have nothing from my childhood. Zero. Nada. The best thing I can remember are random Lego System sets and a ton of Action Men. Those have been storred somewhere, but I can't say that I look back on Action Men as some important grail. I reached my teens and then the expensive world of 1/6th opened up to me. My first figure was a dud, so I held off from the hobby. At this point, I own nothing that'd really hurt me to part with. I have some figues that cost a bit, but again, nothing that, at this moment, means the world to me. Nothing that connects me with every point in my life. Sure, they represent some specific points in time, but not the whole. And that's what being discussed here. The "thing" that touches as many bases as possible. Mostly, I have my memories, but they're all "digital" as far as pop culture is concerned, and are mostly tied to events where some pop culture has a tertiary connection.
I might not be expressing it correctly, but there's no great emotional investment for me. It's mostly completionism that's driving me and a sense of "tidying up" my interests. If I buy a 1/6th fig or an expensive statue of a property, I'm "bound" to it. Which is why I'm analyzing the whole thing. But in this particular thread, one that has to do with nostalgia and merchandise, I can't really participate in the same way, for the reasons I stated above.
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As a general response, I think it's mostly a case of cultural differences. Over here there was no massive merch industry, at least in my day. All kids grew up with Disney Ducks, Asterix and the such, and then moved on. Those of us that chose to be more "geeky" were into videogames, and thus those drove the general interest. Movies too, blockbusters and the such. But people moved on. We didn't have an LCS to go get our weekly pull list, so we hoped from interest to interest. Some survived, some were lost in time. And that's how it is for me. There's no single IP that dominated my life. Different periods had different "obsessions". What's the metric? The character who got the most doodles in my school books, the one with the most fanfics I've scribbled on a notebook or the ones with the most hours poured into? It's all too much. Some things just managed to catch my attention relatively continuously throughout the years, and it's why I still collect dollies of them. Out of the, say, 300 different franchises I've probably engaged with, maybe 100 elicit some response from me. My completionism makes me want to commemorate them somehow, and that's why my collection exists. But there's no actual emotion in it, I'd say. Maybe those 10 or so franchises that I enjoy the most have some significance to them. Star Wars is surely in my Top 5. In the end, I mostly just want some cool dollies to display. I want a Batman & a Joker from TDK, I want a Jedi Vs. Sith shelf, I want Master Chief next to Samus Aran, I want the F4 on the Fantasticar, I want Jack Sparrow stealing Namor's treasure and so on and so forth. That's it, more or less.
So, to finally end my ramblings, I wouldn't say it's Star Wars for the same reason it's not anything else. It could be the perfect 1/6th Vader that I'd keep as a relic, a reminder of all things pop culture. Or the perfect 1/6th Iron Man. Or Samus Aran, or the 10th Doctor and the list goes on and on. Not indefinitely, but there are various contenders. Not Namor or Shepard. But Vader, Doom, Stark, The Doctor, Snake, they could all qualify. They were big enough parts of specific points in my life and I want them all in my collection. Some I like as characters, some got me into a wider universe and I care enough to build bigger sub-collections, like with Star Wars. But at the end of the day there's no thing that represents anything for me. It's all just cheap entertainment. I'm going on and repeating myself, but I just don't know how else to express this. There's nothing in pop culture that's resonated with me on a deep level or left a mark on me. There's nothing that I enjoy 100% on any given day. Maybe very few one-and-done things, not entire franchises that continue ad infinitum. What I like depends on my mood. And each period had its own defining media. I just don't have that "thing" you guys seem to have. The best I can do is that I still thoroughly enjoy Doctor Doom because he clicks all of my buttons as a character. There's that, I guess. I'll finish TCW at some point and I'm keeping up with most things Star Wars. Maybe I'll go back to painting WH40K figures. I'm always on the lookout for new MGS merch. And the list goes on. But there's no one thing I can say that I genuinely
love as if it means something to me beyond cheap entertainment and some nice memories. Heavily stylized memories at that. I like different things and I don?t much think about think about emotional attachment because it?s all just relatively lowbrow entertainment meant for kids and teens. Some break away from that, but by and large that?s who the mass majority of pop culture is aimed at. It's all there is to it, I think.
TL;DR (or in this case "Stop Blogposting; Get To The Point) I have no one beloved IP that I was always obsessed with. Star Wars is permanently in my Top 5, usually Top 3. I've poured tons of hours into it, as I have with a select few others. It remains at the top because a lot of its aspects and traits appeal to me on a base level. Everything else is in flux and it depends when you ask me what I find more enjoyable. I don't have a decades old collection so there's nothing I currently own that I would pick over everything. Push comes to shove, there is one thing however that I've always wanted to buy and never had the cash, so it's still in my "to buy" list, and that's the Legendary Scale Doctor Doom. Doom remains my favourite because he encompases every single genre, trope and theme I've ever enjoyed, being a primarily Sci-Fi fan with a penchant for Space Operas, Cosmic Scales and Historical Influences. Vader was influenced by him, so I feel as if in Doom there exists some Star Wars, and over the years I've seen nods to Warhammer 40K & Dune, amongst others. He's got connections to every facet of the MU, and a direct line to some of my favourites. He's this "perfect nexus" where all my other interests converge. The Legendary Scale is the best representation of him to date, with an ornate armour as opposed to the rather bland classic one he has, and a generally great, "realistic" look. So yeah, I suppose I'll pick this one. I just wish I could buy it... I'll get it one day though, surely.
As for why I like Doom so much, it's pretty simple. He's a supergenius mad scientist sorcerer philosopher artist king. He's appeared in every Marvel content I've come across since I was a toddler, and he's always the biggest guy in the room. As a kid my hero was Leonardo Da Vinci, The Renaissance Man, and I always found Doom pretty similar in that regard. He's got enough depth for a cape character, far more than most, and is so versatile he works in pretty much every single genre. There's nothing I can find to dislike and I've been obsessed (as much I can be with something fictional) with him since I can remember. I even wrote a quasi-film trilogy script for him, not to mention my fanmade comic book series about him. Honestly, with some renaming I could merge that with my Iron Man pitch and create a whole new IP. Something to keep in mind... I'm a Doomfan above all else, at the end of the day. Iron Man comes second as my favourite comic character, so like I said, I could very well choose something like the HT IM2 Stark Expo IM & Gantry. Likewise I could choose the HT ROTS Anakin. Or maybe the First 4 Figures Samus or Solid Snake. The BCS 10th Doctor with Tennant's Signature is probably my most valueable collectible ATM. There is this shortlist that is fluid and ever changing depending on the years, but Doom as a character sits just a bit above them all. Vader or Stark would in next. Vader loses the advantage because I'm a bit of a shallow person and I like self-inserting and power fantasies. Vader's life is so goddamn sad that while I love the character I cannot use him in that way. Well, I have written some AU stories after playing the ROTS game back in the day, with Anakin winning the duel and the whole thing turning out much differently... Anyway, Palpatine's much more fun, especially if you've read the Plagueis novel, but he's not as cool looking and I need my cool looking armours *********! Sheev is still one of my favourites though, no joke. I'm praying for ROTS & TROS figures from HT. Stark's a great power fantasy as well, and I love the character, so usually he's either second or third, depending on Vader's standing. Doom is a spiteful, petty *******, but goddamn is it fun to self-insert and write stories in your head for him. So, yeah, Doom wins, juuuust by a hair.
Thank you for reading my ramblings. But I hope you haven't, this incoherent mess is rather embarassing. My online writing is very "stream of consciousness". Honestly, I just like talking. If you get me started, unless you finish it, I'll keep going on and on. And this to me is like talking, so I always go all out. Whatever comes to mind I write it down. Yeah, it can get awkward and feel like a piss-poor article at times, but eh. Either way, it's been posted now, and I don't take anything back, so... Editing’s fair game though. Shut up, it’s not hypocritical.
) although I'd be gutted to see my other stuff go - the other Terminator figures, Robocops, ED-209, Keaton Batman and Nicholson Joker, Reeve Superman, Diecast Iron Man mark 7 (I personally betray P. with that one 
