1993 Shark 9000

I'm not really sure why it's taken me almost 25 years to talk about the Shark 9000.  It is a great vehicle.  And, I acquired it very early in my adult collecting days.  I found it at a K-Mart store that was going out of business.  It was $10 on clearance and the only Joe toy they had left.  It was in the days before Christmas in 1995: a time when Joes were really starting to disappear from retail.  But, that's not the point of this profile.

I've talked about my younger brothers from time to time.  In general, they weren't as into toys as I was.  My younger brother really didn't much care for action figures.  And, once I was done buying Joes, he was, too.  My youngest brother, though, enjoyed them quite a bit.  And, after 1988 when I packed all of my nice Joes away in a red Lego container that was hidden in my closet, it was this brother who often sneaked in, took a few choice Joes from the container and left me scrambling in coming days trying to track down all of their accessories.  When, I added the 1989 Snake Eyes to the container, it was he who was most often missing.  Even into 1990, when I bought a lone Night Viper to add to my small collection, my brother was still stealing him out of the box.

Most of the 1988 Joe figures that entered our house were through my youngest brother.  And, even the lone 1989 figure that we owned: Scoop, was his.  He even got a Target Paratrooper Hit and Run.  As he aged out of toys, he still maintained a casual interest in collecting.  As the late 1990's began and I was falling into the trap that is toy collecting, he was also interested.  While he didn't fall into the abyss as much as I did, he did like toys and would often accompany me on my limited toy runs.  It was he who suggested stopping by the Castleton K-Mart on that rainy pre-Christmas day.  The K-Mart was tucked away in a corner of the shopping complex that was difficult to get into and even more difficult to leave.  As such, I never went there.  But, he suggested it since our day had been mostly fruitless.  And, once inside, I found the joy that is the Shark 9000.  Best of all, it was on clearance for a paltry $10.  I still have the box.  Though, the yellow clearance sticker finally dried out and fell off a few years ago.  

So, I bought the Shark and took it home.  Here, I opened it up and put it together.  I kept it under my bed while I was home and left it there when I returned to school a few weeks later.  On the occasion when I'd come home, I'd invariably find that the Shark 9000 was either disheveled and filled with different figures than I would choose for it.  Or, it was missing altogether.  I'd then venture upstairs to find it strewn among my brother's possessions in his all too messy bedroom.  I'd find the parts, put it back together and push it further under my bed, hidden by boxes of baseball cards before I returned to school again.

Eventually, as my brother neared college age, this stopped and my toys were undisturbed.  We did, though, bond over some of the weird mid 1990's cartoons and shows that were around during that time.  Right as I moved back to town after college, he left to attend school on the East Coast.  We didn't cross paths too often.  I moved to Arizona in late 1997.  But, when I came for Christmas that year, I brought him a box of loose Tick figures.  At the time, treasures like Man Eating Cow were $100 figures: more than the final 17 figures from the vintage Star Wars line would run you in those days.  And, the cow was in the box.  Along with most of the other late series rare figures.  I had gotten the lot on early Ebay for a song and decided to give the figures to him instead of trying to flip them.  At some point, after I'd left for home, he went to Toys R Us and bought himself a 1997 A-10 Thunderbolt with Ace and Hawk.

Over the years, I'd see the toys in his house.  Every now and then, he'd ask about value.  At some point, though, both the Tick figures and the A-10 became the domain of his kids.  And, they disappeared.  It's a better fate for them than to be tucked in a shoebox in some closet.  And, it's kind of depressing to me to see how the Tick figures, once one of the treasures of the 1990's, have become left behind relics.  Were they better toys, I might try to track them down.  I did take some pleasure, though, in showing the classic Tick cartoon to my boys.  While it wasn't all that enthralling for them, they did end up kind of liking it.  And, as I've used the term "Thrakkorzog!" as a euphemistic expletive in front of them for their entire lives, some of my weirdness started to make sense to them.  

The point of all this, though, is my youngest brother passed away this week.  He was born with health problems.  And the fact that he lived as long as he did is a testament to medical science.  But, his death was still sudden and unexpected.  In recent years, I moved just a block away from him.  Despite that, we had differences that put a permanent wedge between us.  I really want to say that those seem petty, now.  But, frankly, they don't.  We had become different people in our middle age.  And, there were certain things that neither of us were willing to compromise on.  But, I was outside his hospital room when he passed.  And, I'm grateful for that.  

This is a blog about toys.  But, really, it's a blog about me and the relationship I have with toys.  They are something that permeates my life.  And, it's through them that I often shape memories of the people who matter.  I recall a guy who gave me two vintage Star Wars figures he found in the engineering lab.  I can still see the Skystriker sitting behind the metal bars of a closet that was in an acquaintance's magnificent house in Dayton, Ohio.  And, I can still see the K-Mart on that rainy day when I was riding in the car with my brother.  Undoubtedly, we were listening to some bootleg cassette of an undiscovered punk band from Chicago.  And so, I write.  Mostly, because it's a way for me to process what I'm feeling and record my thoughts at a time when I can't really make much of them.  

My Shark 9000 is now badly discolored.  The photos below are old...but not all ancient.  Sure, the photo in the pool with the Hydro Vipers was taken in 2001.  But, the photo with the 1989 Deep Six was taken in 2016.  The Shark 9000 hadn't discolored badly, yet.  But, the tinges of yellow were there.  And, that was also 8 years ago.  Now, my Shark 9000 is a yellowy disaster that really makes it impossible to enjoy the toy any longer.  But, I'll never get rid of it.  There's a lot of memories that are incorporated into it.  Some time, probably on an around the web post in 2029 or so, I'll explore all the other good memories that I have with this toy.  Until then, I'm going to just stick with that day at K-Mart.