Full of Beanz

Allow me to introduce you to one of two reasons why I developed the "Vader only (and sometimes Boba Fett)" rule of collecting Star Wars: the infamous Spin Master Star Wars Mighty Beanz. What, in the outer rim, made me decide these were something I had to have? A jedi mind trick no doubt.

Originally I only intended on getting a few. It was actually the giant, tin Darth Vader case that got the bean rolling with its exclusive Mighty Beanz Darth Vader Bean (Beanz?) contained inside. The tin holds 40+ Beanz and I thought, well, that won't be hard to fill. I'll probably stop before that even happens. Yeah, right.


The Beanz themselves are little 1 inch plastic capsules with a metal bearing inside. Each capsule (and there are over 60 to collect) is sealed with a decorative tape that has one of many Star Wars characters printed on the surface. The characters range from the Original Trilogy to the Prequels and into The Clone Wars series. Some are considered more rare than others but there is no literature to support how rare they are.

So, tin in hand, I made my first few purchases of the 4-Beanz Packs and was lucky enough to get all but one of who I consider the core OT characters: Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia, Obi-Wan and R2. The collector tin gave me Vader but damned if I could score a 3P0. I ended up buying enough packs to fill my giant Vader and the duplicate Beanz were piling up. Still no 3P0. My kids reaped the benefits of my Beanz addiction and after several months of frustration I finally gave up on trying to find the golden protocol droid. F#@k You, Spin Master.

Time passed and the Beanz withdrawal symptoms were but a fuzzy memory replaced by visions of the Hasbro booth at SDCC courtesy of the world wide web. Some movie somewhere said something like, "You can only find what you are looking for when you are no longer looking for it". I'm relatively certain it was not a Jedi quote but low and behold I stumbled across a pack of Mighty Beanz that had C3P0 proudly displayed in its main window. The long road to recovery was over. I had my gold star and it was in that moment I created my Vader Only (and sometimes Boba Fett) Rule. Never again would I be seduced by the dark side of collecting.