Greedo Was My First

The little green alien who helped hold my childhood together.

Most kids remember their first Star Wars figure as someone iconic.
Luke. Vader. Maybe Chewie if you had hippie parents.

Me?
I got Greedo. The green one with the permanent duck-lipped pout.
He may have been the original inventor of it—decades before Instagram filters made it a thing.

He wasn’t the flashiest one—not by a long shot.
I used to think he was part mosquito. The antennas, the bug eyes, those squid-sucker fingers… he looked less like a feared bounty hunter and more like something you’d swat off your leg in a swamp.

He wasn’t the Boba Fett of the collection.
He wasn’t even the cloth-cape Jawa—you know, the one that felt fancy because it had actual fabric and not just a stiff vinyl shroud.

But he was mine.
And he was loved.

But before we get there, let me rewind the tape a bit—back to the late ‘70s, a long time ago, in a Bronx not so far away.

---

Puerto Rico, Prequels, and Punches

I was born in New York City, but not long after, my family packed up and moved to Puerto Rico—fast. The story goes that my dad got into some kind of trouble here. Like, stabbed kind of trouble. Which, if you knew the Bronx in the ’70s, probably wasn’t even in the top five worst things that happened that week.

So off we went to the island. I spent the first eight years of my life there, speaking only Spanish. My only exposure to English came through my older sister’s vinyl records and the occasional radio station floating in from somewhere else.

Then things fell apart. My dad cheated. My mom packed us up and bounced—stabbed the car seats with a sword-like letter opener on the way out, because of course she did. She wasn’t subtle. Puerto Rican moms never are.

Nobody told me what was going on. I wasn’t given time to say goodbye. I was just thrown into motion—torn from everything I knew, tossed back to New York with no context and no toys.

It was sudden. Messy.
And when we left, I left everything behind.

My Megos. My comfort. My sense of place.

---

Landing in NYC (and on Another Planet)

My older half-sisters were thrilled. They’d grown up in NYC and hated being dragged to the island. For them, this was a return to civilization.

For me, it felt like being abducted by aliens and dropped into a city-sized arcade cabinet.

From the plane window, New York looked endless. A sea of lights. Blinking, buzzing, pulsing with energy I didn’t understand. It didn’t feel like a city—it felt like something alive.

And then the first thing I saw on the ground:
A giant billboard that said, “Newports with Menthol – Alive with Pleasure!”

I couldn’t read English yet, but the people on it were grinning like they’d just discovered joy in a cigarette filter. I remember thinking, whatever those are, I need to get me some. Eight years old and already buying the ad pitch.

Then we rode the subway.

It was late morning, bright sun outside—but inside the train, it looked like a gang of art-school dropouts had declared war on every available surface. Graffiti everywhere. It wasn’t just ink. It was noise. Color. Anger. Vandalism-as-vibe. And I was hooked.

Puerto Rico felt a million years away.
This wasn’t a new chapter. This was another planet.

---

The Apartment That Changed Me

We landed in my grandmother’s overcrowded apartment in the projects.
Two bedrooms. One bathroom. My mom, five siblings, my grandma, my uncle, and me. You couldn’t fart without it becoming a shared experience.

But somehow, in all that noise… there was magic.

My grandma had cable. Cable. HBO. Happy Days. Laverne & Shirley. Mork and Mindy. Three’s Company. The Electric Company. I was still scared out of my mind, but suddenly I was watching things that made me feel less alone—made me laugh, made me wonder.

I can still hear that sweet HBO Featured Presentation music. (and sometimes. boobs!)

I didn’t understand half of what I was watching, but I studied those shows like they were instruction manuals for surviving America. I mimicked the voices. Learned rhythm. Learned sarcasm. Learned how to exist in this loud, fast, ridiculous country.

Somewhere in there, I found a lifelong love of TV, movies, and storytelling.

It was a taste of things I never experienced before. Not EXCITING things, but they were wonderful things. Fish tanks full of goldfish. Playing Chinese Checkers with my grandma. My Uncle’s colored pencils collection (he was a great illustrator) and his Hot Wheels collection which I wasn’t allowed to touch (but I did). My other uncle’s huge DooWop vinyl collection which would open my ears to the sweet music of other eras.

Not bad for a two-bedroom ‘in da projects’ crash pad with like a dozen people.

---

Greedo in El Barrio

Eventually, my mom got us our own place—a tiny studio in the spanish Barrio. Just the core family now with little else than our clothes, a black and white 12″ tv, and a sofa bed.

No cable. Just rabbit ears, static, and fear. Across the street was an elementary school I would soon have to attend. I was terrified. I’d never set foot in an English-speaking school. I didn’t know how to be a New York kid.

Then one day, she came home with a gift.
A Kenner Greedo.

I had no idea who he was. He looked like a pouty bug with suction-cup fingers and a permanent expression like he smelled something weird on the subway. For some reason, I thought he was part mosquito. It didn’t matter.

He was mine. And when you’re eight, scared, lonely, and toyless—you treat a plastic alien like royalty.

He sat with me while I ate. Slept next to me like a plastic totem. Stared out the window at the elementary school I was terrified to enter.

He was just a $2 piece of plastic.
But at the time, he felt like a best friend.

---

The Collection Grows (and So Does the Kid)

Things eased up. My dad visited that Christmas and brought a few toys. Relatives started tossing Kenner figures at us like they were passing out communion. Cheap, easy, perfect gifts.

I leaned into the weirdos.
Hammerhead. Snaggletooth. Walrus Man—who we nicknamed “toto face,” because in Spanish slang… well, let’s just say he had a very specific vibe. Kids are brutal.

Eventually, I got Boba Fett.
Eventually, we got color TV.
Eventually, I was cracking jokes in English at school like I’d always lived there.

But it all started with Greedo.

---

Final Thoughts: A Green Plastic Lifeline

Greedo wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t a legend. He walked into a bar, threatened the wrong dude, and got shot mid-sentence.

But to me?

He was the weird little guardian who helped me get through a summer of fear, change, and too many people sharing a bathroom. He reminded me that it was okay to feel strange. To feel other.

I’ve got the Sideshow sixth scale Greedo on preorder. And when he shows up, I’ll review him here. Not because he’s rare. Not because he’s cool.

Because he was first.
And sometimes, that’s everything.

---

Thank you for reading.

This was just my first step into a larger world. Before New York, there was Puerto Rico — where the sacred lived beside the strange, and childhood was both wild and tender. Go back to the beginning: Soy Boricua. Soy GenX. Así Fue Pa’ Mí..
Or if you want to dive deeper into the Bronx years — boom boxes, busted elevators, and all — the next chapter is here: We Didn’t Just Survive the Bronx in the ’80s. We Lived It Loud..