Nostalgia Hunter - Episode 1: SOMA Sonic Ranger Figurine

 What happens when a hopeless nostalgia-fueled individual strikes out on a quest to re-obtain lost and potentially unidentifiable toys from his childhood? Keep yourself planted on that couch and keep that VCR warmed up because you aren't going to want to miss a second of Nostalgia Hunter!

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I began this hunt two years ago. Well, longer than that actually, dating back as far as 2018. But my purchases were sparse and only happened here and there. It wasn't until late 2021 that I really began to dive into recapturing lost possessions from my childhood, be it actually unearthing them from somewhere in the house to via a quick search on eBay.

But not every search is as simple as throwing a few keywords into a search engine. Some require extra digging, and that is exactly what I had to do with the first topic, which I dubbed: "The little green and orange robot". 

Above is a screenshot from a home movie dated sometime in the summer of 1996. It was of me playing with my set of Dragon Ball figurines, along with some Mega Man characters and—funny enough—A Scrooge McDuck figure that I'd later find out was from Long John Silvers, but that's a subject for a later episode.

The focus here was on that little robot figuring on the left. Because I was huge on Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger, I had dubbed that figure "Robo" and had him befriend the crew from "Dragon Ball Village", who were doing battle against a giant monster(me!!!) atop a giant tower(My childhood trunk, received for Christmas in 1991 and still have to this very day!), all set to a recorded battle against the Mana Beast in Secret of Mana which I had beaten for the first time that week.

Pictured(Left to Right): "Purr", Elec Man, Chi-Chi, "Gokyuu", "Robo", "Emperor Pielaugh"

 Now initially when I set out to find and hopefully purchase another one of these figures, I honestly felt a bit of hopelessness. As a kid in the 90s, stuff like that seemingly random figurine was everywhere, at every gas station and dollar store. They typically don't have brand names attached to them and are just cheap generic toys for parents to buy their screaming kids. So with that fact mounted atop my shoulders, I slowly began to scour the web for anything similar. Typing in such (personally) infamous phrases as "tiny green and orange robot with a gun" to wield no results. 

It wasn't until I  began broader searches and fingered through hundreds of image results that I finally got a lead. A robot of grey and red color, but was similar and mold and style. I followed that lead and it took me to an actual toy line from SOMA called "Sonic Rangers". Obviously put out to piggyback on the huge success of the Power Rangers during the early to mid-1990s.

With a few more quick searches on eBay, I finally came across a small lot that came with my "Robo". Needless to say, after what I thought would be a fruitless search for a random brand-less dollar store toy that would be lost to the ebb and flow of time, I was once again in possession of a like-new condition figure.

"Robo has once again joined the party!"

Now as to what fate held for my original figure? I vividly remember one chilly winter day visiting my grandmother. The house she lived in at the time had a big yard and what I can only assume had once been the floor of a garage made of bricks. There was still a barrier of stacked cinderblocks from which the wall once rose up. I remember playing with the figure. With gaps from where the blocks had been stacked, creating a hole big enough for a figure to slip through and be lost to time, but not big enough for a hand to reach down and retrieve it. 

Yep, I purposely dropped the figure down into the hole. For what reasons I don't know why, but I was a kid and saw that as cool, so there ya go.