One Christmas season many years ago, I almost got into a fistfight with a lady at Service Merchandise over a huge Voltron lion. My son wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything else, and there was one left on the shelf, and I picked it up and was hyperventilating over the price, and a woman jerked it out of my hands and started for the register with it, and I chased her down and took it back.

It was so far out of our price range that under ordinary circumstances, I would have put it back on the shelf and gone home and cried over its absence under the tree for Son, on Christmas morning.

But I wasn’t going to let that woman grab it right out of my hands and get away with it. She tried to pull it back into her own hands but I was a lot more determined than she was. I had a little boy at home who really, really wanted the Voltron lions. I had it first. I was keeping it. Nobody jerked my little boy’s Christmas toy out of my hands and lived to tell the tale.

Thank goodness for indignant witnesses. That woman had reason to fear for her life from several different sources. The manager asked me if I was okay. He was concerned. Not concerned enough to cut me a discount, but concerned enough to ask in front of all the witnesses.

I wrote a rubber check and drove home trembling. I knew we couldn’t afford that huge toy. But it was the only thing he’d asked for that year, and there it was, and there I was, and there the pushy bitch was, and before I even realized what had happened, Voltron was mine. Or rather, my son’s.

I don’t remember how we paid our bills that month, but I will never forget the look on his face when he saw that huge Voltron lion on Christmas morning.

It was pretty cool. The lion came apart into the individual spaceships, and each one had its character in it. Keith, Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Sven. Oh, and the Princess Allura. King Zarkon. Hagar. Lotor. Castle Doom. Planet Arus. King Alfor, both alive and dead. Nanny. Those little space mice. Princess Romelle, who ended up stealing Sven. Coran. Robeasts! Prince Bandor. Queen Merla. Dang, my kids loved Voltron.

“Ready to assemble! Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected. Infra-cells up; mega-thrusters are go! Let’s go voltron force! Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I’ll form the head! ”

I didn’t pay that much attention to it myself. No, I probably couldn’t give you too much detail on the story-line or characters. Nope.

That toy sure was cool.

A few years later we got the Vehicle Voltron but it was never anywhere near as cool as the Lion Voltron.

They liked Robotech, too, but I think I’ve done enough random posting for one night.

Knee update: OUCH.

(There’s a Hagar action figure in the silverware drawer. Don’t ask, because I have no idea. . . . .)