RETURN OF THE JEDI TO SOUTH DAKOTA RETURN OR: No matter how much I spend at Toys R Us it will not bring back 1985 (or Toys R Us)

Vintage Space Toast Tour Texas is finally over and after two months, eight states and driving Optimus Lime (and Stroller) more than 3,200 miles with a baby and a dog I am finally back home in Dakota del Sur. It was a holiday adventure where we visited my in-laws in Houston for Thanksgiving and my family in El Paso for Christmas while accomplishing the real mission-which was to grab a couple hundred old toy robots newspaper ads from the Houston and El Paso libraries for the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. And of course there was the side benefit of visiting the town I grew up in and reveling in the robo-nostagicalness of it all. It sort of sucks that the hospital where I was born is now a parking lot but at least the building that used to be where my mom bought Transformers in 1985 still stands. The hospital being gone doesn't bother me much because while I may no longer be able to stand on the exact spot I was born, I would rather stand where I first held Omega Supreme.


THEY DON'T CALL IT THAT BUT THAT'S WHAT IT DOES

During my stays in the various cities along the way I found my cell phone has a cool feature that can navigate me to buildings that used to be Toys R Us. Some might call this feature a "phone book that needs to be updated" or even "a malfunction" but I learned to appreciate it. At first it annoyed me when I'd arrive someplace my phone told me was a Toys R Us but instead I'd be at a TRU-shaped Hastings Book Store (as was the case in San Angelo, Texas). Being at a Hastings that used to be a Toys R Us was actually pretty fun and I felt good thinking at least the building got a second chance at entertaining people. But it was depressing when my phone took me to an abandoned building that used to be a TRU in Pueblo, Colorado. It was like the Ghost of Christmas Past telling me my childhood is dead and one day I will be too through the ghostly impression of Geoffrey Giraffe stained on the front of a giant vacant cream colored building with rainbow tiles. There is no more grim reminder of the harsh chaoticness of life and our fleeting mortality than a deserted Toys R Us, except perhaps a severely beaten Darth Vader shaped piñata.

You have three options with Springer

The vacation is over now and I'm looking at all the new* ads I have to process and put up at the Vintage Spcae Taster Place and I just realized the Texas trip wraps it up for Vintage Space Toast Tour 2008. Holy Hell I ruined a lot of vacations went a lot of places looking for ads last year. We kicked it off at Botcon in Cincinnati, did Anchorage, Alaska in June, then El Paso in July, Denver in October, Houston in November and then El Paso again in December (blog entries for the last two will be forthcoming). Where are we going in 2009? The only one I am somewhat sure of is a return to Fort Lauderdale maybe in October. Although I try to go far and wide I can't be everywhere and I am truly sorry if I didn't make it to your town. People are always asking me, "When is Vintage Space Toast Tour coming to my city?" and of course the only answer is that Vintage Space Toast Tour is always in your city-in your heart. And when you least expect it-in your mom.

*25 year old