>>8930705Very wholesome, wish I'd had a buddy to trade with, heh. Learned the codes hack fairly early on and would try and buy one of each different code in a box, made a cheat sheet and go back for any I wanted multiples of (this was before they really caught on and code lists got posted as quickly as the series came out).
Series 3 was especially memorable for me as unlike the first two, it seemed for the longest time I would be missing out on one of the figs (the AC Elite chase fig of course). After hitting I think five Walmarts I finally located a pristine box, decided to be the nice guy and only took one of the two. As fate would have it, a year or so later in the run-up to Christmas, the Value Village where my mom worked randomly got a couple unopened boxes of that series in, was able to get a second AC Elite.
Have had a couple other random finds of these early series over the years. For a couple years this large building that used to be a Future Shop (RIP) would become a large discount toy store for the Christmas season; one year they had a bunch of that same Series 3, no AC Elite but I got a few others just for kicks. The strangest find I'll share shortly.
