Censorship and apartheid South Africa was ridiculous, films such as Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th had a 2-21 rating, something that I never truly understood.
I was a small boy when films such as Phantasm 3 and New Nightmare made it to our video stores and the lady behind the counter wouldn't let me rent the VHS, so I always heard about Freddy, Jason and the other boogeymen.
One day at a mall in Johannesburg. I saw the poster for Freddy vs Jason, and watching the film something in me happened. I loved it, and the sheer craftsmanship of the film impressed me immensely, it was the gateway movie to other horror movies for me.
Now, I was aware of NECA and I got my 18” Crow figurine several months later, with it I got a catalogue of other figurines… the Freddy vs Jason figurines were advertised too.
I had no idea that one of the first 18” Freddy and Jason figurines to be released in South Africa was the Jason part 6 one, quite essentially the zombie Jason, a horribly brilliant figurine, one of the original gangsters and a holy grail of many collectors, and one that was on the shelves for a limited time here.
I missed the Jason Pt. 6 figure, but I promised myself that it would not happen again. Boy was I wrong, because there were probably a thousand other guys thinking the same thing.
Suffice to say, I only saw the 18” Jason Pt. 6 figure in a shop once, before it disappeared into the woods, I saw the Freddy vs Jason 18 inchers twice before I saw them at private collections for the next few years.
I almost gave up, until I acquired the Freddy vs Jason boxset at Animeworx in Randburg, and realising how awesome they were, decided to try and hunt for the three that got away; Jason part 6 figure and Freddy vs Jason, if it took forever, so be it.
I bought the remake 18” Jason the moment it came out at comic stores 4 years later but the road to acquiring the classics took a turn in the right direction when I found an 19” Jason (from FvJ) at an online vendor (man I love the internet), it didn't help me further though, because no one had either Freddy or the Jason part 6 figure.
Two years later, a figurine scalper from Johannesburg announced that that he was going to auction figurines, I don’t quite know how I knew but yes, he had Jason part 6, and through a Jedi mind trick and shady and a ridiculous deal putting me on the thinnest end (I offered him figurines he couldn't refuse) he rigged the auction and I got the bad boy.
Less than a year later I met the stepmom of popculture from my neck of the woods and traded a 12” Gremlins brain for Freddy, and just like that I had the four figurines that are my four of a kind, four figurines that took almost 10 years to get.