Takin' Me Back....

I wish someone would hand me $8,600.00 and tell me I had to buy one thing with it, and had to buy it for myself.

When I was a kid, my favorite toys were my He-Man playset. Yes, I know I'm a female and yes, I had Barbie dolls too; but there was something exciting about setting up Castle Grayskull and yelliing at the top of my five year old lungs "BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL - I HAVE THE POWER!", taking the Prince Adam get-up off of my He-Man action figure and getting him ready to battle the evil skeletor on our living room floor. I mean, let's face it - if Barbie and Ken battled, that wasn't awesome - it was modelling domestic violence. And domestic violence isn't cool.

Defeating Skeletor and freeing Eternia from his evil grip - that was cool. Especially when he was defeated with the He-Man action figure that you loaded pop-caps in the back so that when he punched he made a "POW!" noise.

See? Cool. And it was even cooler when he had a chick sidekick in Teela and then a sister named She-Ra who could help with all this evil butt-kicking.

So what does my childhood love for He-Man action figures have to do with wanting an extra $8,600.00 to blow on something?

I'm not sure how I found this article, I think it was one of the headlines on my GMail RSS feed. There's a guy named Robert Burden who found a box of his old childhood toys and instead of throwing them away made these awesome paintings out of them. There's a gallery in Seattle who is currently exhibiting Burden's work and they're viewable online. These paintings are just incredible, and my favorite one is of BattleCat - He-Man's trusty tiger-steed - that is selling for $8,600.00.

Really if I had the ability to buy this painting, after 2 or 3 years I'd beat myself up for buying it. After all, it is just a large picture of a plastic green tiger and in your living room would be kind of tacky. But you have to admit - this is a pretty cool idea that this fellow had and I wish I lived closer to Seattle so I could see this exhibit live and in person.