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E.T. phone home.

It seems like such a long time ago, but also just yesterday.  1982.  As a ten-year-old kid, life was about waiting for next Star Wars movie.  But in between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, we saw this incredible, powerhouse year of movies.  Movies like Tron, Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Rocky III, 48 Hrs., First Blood, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, The Dark Crystal, The Thing, Night Shift, The Man from Snowy River, The Secret of NIMH, Tex, The Last Unicorn.  Then there were the re-issues in theaters that included Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Bambi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Peter Pan.  Somehow I managed to get to almost all of these in the theater that year.  What a year of movies to formulate your world view.

But then there was one movie that blew even these memorable films completely out of the water.  We saw cryptic trailers that didn’t quite give us the full picture of what we’d see, but the names of Steven Spielberg and John Williams were all we needed to hear to put our money down (actually my parents’) in faith that we were going to see something good.  And this awesome new Halloween candy called Reese’s Pieces were part of the marketing for the thing.  E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, one of the all-time biggest box office successes and fourth most successful film of all time, doubling the returns from the next in line movie Tootsie that year.

I’ll be right here.

A heart-warming, exciting, fun combination of science fiction with the feel of a fantasy movie, all bundled in a coming of age movie.  Today–November 2–is the anniversary of the day Elliott and friends were finally successful in getting E.T., the first interplanetary botanist, the help he needed to take his spaceship back to his home full of what we could only imagine was a world of spectacular plant life.  Thirty-four years later Funko toy company’s ReAction Kenner-style retro action figure line is finally creating a set of 3 3/4-inch action figures in the same scale as all those other classic Star Wars figures and figures Funko has released in the past three years.  And you can order them now exclusively from Entertainment Earth.

But you better hurry because they will be a limited number release set.

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