As the youngest of 3, my parents had learned a few things by the time I came along. The seven year gap to my brother had given them time to ruminate on the meaninglessness of stock Little Lord Davidy pleas such as I’m not tired, I’m not hungry, I am hungry, I’m only hungry for certain things or, most emphatic of all: I NEED THAT.

I grew up at the dawn of a sinister new era of marketing today known as pester power, but which should be called playing on your parents darkest fears that not buying you this thing will lead to social alienation, crime, alcoholism and ending up like Gerry, our village hobo who used to hit bins with a stick while shouting the names of horses.

 While my brother and sister had somehow managed to get through the 70s with a bag of Lego, some modeling clay and drawing paper, this was the 80s now. The hippies had lost. It was time to turn off our imaginations and buy shit.

I had been too young for Star Wars and Empire Strikes back, but by 1984 the marketing boffins at Kenner toys and Lucasfilm had identified me as their ideal goon. The ads had children who looked like me in ecstatic states of joy playing with their Star Wars action figures. So for birthday 1984, my 8th, that’s all I wanted.

On his day I felt I could get on the right side of my dad. After a sustained campaign of hinting, lobbying, and leaving catalogues on his bed, I had convinced him to get me a BMX. I think it helped that he was a jazz musician, which I’m sure people told him was a craze in the 50s and he should stop spending all his money on Charlie Parker records and stop putting the family piano out of tune playing boogie woogie.

The thought must have crossed his mind, if I don’t get him a variflex skateboard or a Mongoose BMX or a Swatch, what if he misses the opportunity to become the Charlie Parker or Miles Davis of BMXing or skating or wearing a swatch.

With the Star Wars marketing push came a level of hype that had never existed before, and my stupid jazz parents were very reluctant to buy into it. In retrospect, their aversion to hype probably came from dad eeking out a living, while much less talented musicians were living high on the major label rock and roll hog. Dad used to give these dudes lessons. And they’d be terrible and get picked up from our house with the worn carpets in limos.

So my intense campaign of lobbying was ignored and on the morning of 18th December 1984 I opened a dreadful package that contained a new tracksuit and a boardgame - loving gifts thoughtfully selected to untap my physical and mental potential and thus of no real value to me. “Thanks,’ I said smiling falsely.

But all was not lost. I had a Godfather who could usually be relied upon for a decent present. I’d sent him a three word birthday list the week before: STAR WARS MEN, and that evening he didn’t let me down. He arrived with a flat parcel which I sneakily squeezed before dutifully opening the card and laughing at the lame cartoon (8 dogs in the shape of the number 8 ahahaha), knowing I was now the owner of my first two Star Wars action figures.

Would it be Luke and Han, impatiently waiting for somebody else to give me a millennium Falcon to take them on their adventures. Maybe Luke and Leia and their weird plot that I didn’t understand, but still roused something in my underdeveloped loins.

I didn’t immediately recognize the two faces in the parcel so I took them in to school the next day to show Paul Keogh, a boy who had three different Luke Skywalkers and the thing that looks like a dog and the thing that looks like half a dog.

He immediately identified them. I had got Medibot and Ree-yees, about the two most obscure Star Wars action figures you could get. Medibot appears for a few moments sewing Luke’s new hand back on in Empire Strikes back and Ree yees is in a tracking shot in Jabba’s lair. In modern celebrity terms they were the guys who did the raps in Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

But I wasn’t going to give up. And for a full year I’d attempt to replicate the ecstasy of those TV ads with my two figures who had no plot, no backstory and no adventures to go on. They were characters with no characters. Although I didn’t know it at the time, our games closely remsembled aspects of the work of Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett.

“Shall we go down the end of the garden,” Ree-Yees would say.

“Seriously, what’s the point Ree Yees?” Medibot would wonder.

“Well it might be a nice way to pass the time, you know, till something happens, till someone comes along.”

That someone was a friend, or an adversary. Someone who would give meaning to Medibot and Ree Yees lives. Or maybe a dog or a half a dog shaped vehicle to take them away from it. But it never came. Mum and dad were unmoved by the advertising push for these badly moulded plastic soldiers that didn’t do anything and cost too much money.

Medibot and Ree Yees continued their jeopardyless , pointless existence for another year. Sometimes they would get in the bath with me, sometimes they’d come to school in my pockets, all the while, unaware why. Like two work colleagues on a perpetual business trip, with no idea who they worked for or what they were supposed to be doing.

By the following Christmas a new toy had come along. “PLEASE MUM AND DAD. It’s all I want. You could be making a huge mistake.

David they are awful. You’ll be sick of it in a week.

Thankfully they relented and for my 9th birthday I received my first Yamaha Portasound PSS 260 Keyboard. 

Later that year while doing nothing in particular, Medibot and Re Yees were eaten by the actual dog.