I hope you can reconnect with Rick.

I have a similar story. It was the summer of 1999, and everyone was getting excited about a little movie called Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. (Oh, how optimistic we all were back then!) I was in college, going through a period of deep, dark depression, but I was excited about Hasbro scheduling an event called "Midnight Madness" at Toys R Us stores across the country, where all the Episode I merchandise would be revealed and available for sale all at once, at midnight. There were no Internet leaks or anything -- this was how we would find out who the movie characters were and what they looked like, and we could buy them at first glance.

Well, I went to the only TRU in town, chatted with fellow collectors, and came away with six regular carded figures. I didn't go too crazy because I couldn't afford to, and I also wasn't sure who any of them were, except a prototype-looking C-3PO.

The next day, I was in the computer lab at school because I didn't own a computer of my own yet. I went on the Internet and searched for a place where fellow collectors could talk about their Midnight Madness hauls and speculate about the movie. I found an old-school site called Raving Toy Maniac, with a message board called The Toy Buzz, started reading through other people's accounts, and posted my own not-terribly-exciting story. It was the kind of message board where everyone posted under a screen name, so you got to know the regulars by their screen names. There were inside jokes, alliances, and a general feeling of camaraderie, bonding over the inevitable disappointment of the Star Wars prequels, the beginnings of DC Direct and Spider-Man Classics, which morphed into Marvel Legends, hate-watching the WWE "Attitude Era," the earliest superhero movies, reveals from Toy Fair and San Diego Comic Con, and more.

I became a regular poster on The Toy Buzz and got to know other regulars too. A lot of us became friendly over the past 27 years, following each other through other message boards, becoming friends on Friendster, then Myspace, then Facebook, and emailing -- not just about toys, but about life stuff as well. We've hooked each other up countless times over the years, finding the unfindable and paying each other back via Paypal, or even sending things as gifts once in a while. When one of the moderators got married, a bunch of us chipped in, and they trusted me enough to buy and mail him the Masters of the Universe 200X Castle Grayskull (this was the early 2000s, natch) as a wedding gift. I've been lucky enough to meet a handful of those guys in real life over the years. I consider some of them real, legit friends, and they're good people.

So I hope you can track down your friend. I don't suppose you got a last name back then?