so, my kids (girls) will once in a while play with "our" star wars or marvel universe collection, but haven't really had any interest in "our" joe collection. except for the other day.

we have this neighbor kid (let's call him Corey) who's the same age as my kids, and he was over to play. I was away. when I came home, i discovered they had been playing with the collection. which was mostly ok.

other than a bunch of stuff knocked over, I found our GIJCC convention Claymore in the bathroom. Missing his gun.

I asked my kids where the gun was.

"Corey took it"

so I say "Where did Corey take it?"

"He threw it in the swamp. I saw it!"

... and no amount of threats or pleading or bribes could get them to change the story.

That kid is not welcome back.


Anybody else got a story like that?

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Moral: Never trust a boy with a feminine-sounding name...

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Copperhead was gonna get it.

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So either Corey "liked" it... as he always does, and took it. Or the gun is swimming with the nasty fish through the throne portal.

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The "swamp" is the toilet, I guarantee you. Have you flushed since? You could check the pipe...

If there's even one geek on the jury, it's justifiable homicide.

Of course it's Claymore's uniquely grey scoped M-60 that came with a $300 set of figures and can't be easily or cheaply replaced and not Tunnel Rat's common black scoped M-60 that came in a $12 two figure set and can be easily replaced by hitting up Spin Doc's gun shop.

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i wasn't feeling too bad about it, until you reminded me of that ....

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I had a similar incident where my nephew (wife's sister's kid) was over with his family from Florida. We offered them our guest room to save them hotel costs. Kid's about 10, so fully aware of what he's doing at any given time.

I gave him access to all of the toys we keep in the downstairs playroom for my son, including a bunch of duplicate and fodder Joes and MU figures. He had no interest in any of it, preferring instead to play my X-Box.

Later, when he went up into my office (the one place I had told him not to go) he saw my dio display and was totally intrigued. He asked if he could play with those figures and vehicles and I said no, that stuff was for display and part of a collection. But he could play with any of the other stuff downstairs. I escorted him out and locked the door behind me.

Next morning I awoke around 5:30 (their flight back was at 7, so I expected them to be up and about) to a loud crash coming from my office. Apparently he had told my wife he left something in there the night before and she opened the door for him, then went downstairs. He proceeded to have the quickest, most destructive play battle (scattering accessories, vehicle parts and figures everywhere) and then pulled over one of the 100-drawer storage units I keep figures in when not on display. He was running downstairs as I approached the room, so I went in to survey the damage rather than chasing him down.

Next thing I heard was my son screaming from downstairs. His cousin (who is four years older than he) apparently showed him on his way out the door that he had jammed several of my figures in his pockets. My son alerted my wife that his cousin was stealing daddy's figues, so the little creep hit my kid.

After my son told me what happened and what his cousin had on him, the kid denied all of it. My wife said she saw the kid hit our son, so that much was true. I asked his mom if I could check his sweatshirt pockets and she got very indignant. I told her I didn't think my kid was lying, and that there were still several things missing, so she checked her kid's pockets and found three figures: two Joes (including my custom scuba Major Bludd) and an MU Deadpool. He started yelling that they were his and he had brought them with him on the plane. His dad (who was very busy loading up the car) noted that he'd never seen the toys before.

Here's the best part: The kid's mom tried to calm him down by saying that, if he apologized for taking the toys and asked very nicely, maybe I would let him take one home with him. I told her that absolutely would not be happening...and that they were going to need to find a hotel next time they were in town.

She gave me a dirty look and ushered her kid out of the house (he flipped me off on the way out). Her husband thanked me graciously (for real) for our hospitality and asked me to let him know if anything else came up missing. Apparently the kid had done this sort of thing before.

I love my in laws.

eek. at least your brother-in-law is a stand-up guy!

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my name is shannon, and i have hated every other male shannon i have ever met.

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Hell no! If I pulled that crap when I was younger, apologizing wouldn't have been optional but mandatory, and even that wouldn't have mitigated severe punishment. I would have been lucky at that point if my parents didn't take some of the toys I already owned and give those away. I'm not sure my reaction would have been as articulate as what you describe, and would probably have been somewhere between laughing and cursing. If you even kind of kept composure, good on you.

He potentially gets rewarded for it? It's no wonder the kid's a brat.

Lucky for me, my girlfriend's 4 years old nephew understands that when he comes home, the toys on the shelves are only on display and not to play with.
Sometimes, he'll try his luck and ask if this or that is still only for display.

I filled a box with various figures and small vehicles for him to play with.
Let's hope it stays that way as he gets older.

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Back when POTF2 Star Wars figures were huge, towards the begining of the line there was this huge demand...HUGE...demand for "long saber" variants. The figures were originally released with a lightsaber that was longer than it should have been in that scale, so there was a running change where they rescaled the lightsaber. I had all the long saber versions that were available.

One day my cat jumped up on the shelf where I had my POTF2 figures on display, and decided to eat Darth Vader's lightsaber. So I killed the cat.

Okay, so I just got rid of the cat. And I don't let other people's kids in my toy room.

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Next time for your display. "Lock and Key".