Naked.

Why are all the dolls naked?

When a doll or 12″ action figure as guys call them is discarded and makes it way to the tagged baggies at Value Village, why are they always naked?

Where are the clothes going?

It’s not as if someone else is wearing them. I hope. Silly club kids, Barbie’s clothes are for Barbie! When mom or dad realize that their little girl/boy is done with their childhood play things, do they take the clothes off before giving them to Goodwill? Oh, this dress is far too smart to give away, let’s just keep it here in this pink plastic wardrobe for our grand-daughter/grandson when they come along. Sounds good honey, and we’ll tuck these camouflage pants in with the dress, just in case.

I know that one of the most rewarding part of playing with dolls/large action figures, is that you can take their clothes off. It’s just fun. They try each others clothes on, have a laugh then take a bath and completely forget they were ever wearing clothes and remain naked in the toy box for years to come.

I have seen more old laundry baskets full of naked dolls in compromising positions at toys shows than I care to remember. But I have never seen an old hamper of soiled gowns with the shoulders torn off, tiny pink tees with the arms and necks cut out to go 80′s style or little faux denim pants that you can write on with special coloured markers. The clothes are just gone. Maybe the vacuum claimed them. Maybe the dog digested them. Maybe they are with all the missing single socks having a party in another dimension…

Bent and twisted and jammed into a plastic sack face to butt, it is the fate of all dolls and large action figures to leave their employ without dignity. To make it worse, they hang on pegs and hooks, or peer from dirty old buckets with their hair knotted in grey clumps waiting for a second chance at play time and freedom. But it doesn’t look like it will come. They are naked and as clothes make the man, they also do the doll. And or large action figure.

Flakes O’ Fun

I miss the cereal that had the plastic toys in it. I miss the Winnie the Pooh pencil toppers that came in a rainbow of BPA in every box. And the ones that you could hang from the edge of your cereal bowl so that it looked as if Eeyore was trying to eat your soggy Corn Poohs. There was also a strange blue and red disk that when spun on a image from Peter Pan revealed a 3D image of Hook getting eaten by the Crock! I would just hold the pieces of plastic over my eyes and walk around the house looking at all the things that were in 3D.

It was always a battle in my house to see who could get up the earliest on Saturday morning to claim the prize. If it sucked, like yet another wacky tracing thing that drew a sketchy picture of Snow White then it was left on the counter for my sisters and I would proceed to fill my bowl with as much cereal as possible so that a replacement box would have to be purchased sooner rather than later.

I also dreaded the awful “Coupon inside Every Box!” prize. A coupon is not a prize. It is not fun to play with and has a cash value of $.001 cents. Almost as bad were the cereals where the “prize” was a puzzle on the outside of the box. Can you find Count Chocula on the other side of chocolatey castle maze? No, I can’t. And I won’t. That’s just a rip off for kids. And don’t ask me to send away for something. I just didn’t have that kind of energy. It was all burnt out after my bucket of Sugar Puffs and an hour of Kroft Supershow.

I guess kids these days don’t care for prizes in their cereal boxes because they just don’t exist anymore. Now kids just scan the box with their smart phones and log into the site where they can meet millions of other kids scanning their cereal boxes for animated penguins with hockey sticks. I’m not bitter and I’m not being cranky. It would be awesome if my Value Sized Club Pack box of Bran Flakes had something cool inside like a telescope or X-ray glasses but these days I am just hoping it meets my fibre requirement so I can have lunch with Chef Boyardee.

He’s a real Chef you know.

Collecting VS Hoarding: I call it Colloarding.

I have mentioned that some of my first collectibles were Hot Wheels. I was in the hospital for a few days when I was 2 and my parents brought me a new HW car with the tin badge which I would put on my pyjama pocket. Yes, mom and dad, I am blaming you. I loved little cars and among my favourites were the Batmobile with the pulsing tailpipe flames, the pink Jeep with the green seats and the knock off Mach 5, which I didn’t realize was a knock off until my adult years. Thanks mom and dad for ruining everything.

When I moved out to go to college I carefully packed up my toys including my sisters’ Barbies as I felt it was my duty to protect these things from being cast off into the garbage or even worse, given to an ungrateful brat. I had a new collection beginning anyways. Clocks. Not just any clock, cool clocks from the 50′s,60′s and 70′s. I had an old IBM school clock, some pewter mantle clocks and awesome housewife kitchen clocks in pink, turquoise and avacado green. Originally I set every clock to the mysterious time of a random amount of minutes before 4. It freaked people out. Or they were freaked out by the 30 or 40 clocks staring at them from every room in the house with their silent, 3:48 glares. Once someone wound up as many as he could because he felt that clocks should be ticking.  I didn’t sleep for 2 days.

The toys came back out in the 80′s when my friend and roommate Cruella Deville and I decorated our bathroom with them and even made a crayon sign that said Toy Bathroom for the door. There was a Micronaut toothbrush holder, Pee Wee Herman razor stand and Barbie toilet paper dispenser. It was awesome. Strangely enough though none of our guests ever had to pee. Some felt that they were being watched and some people just don’t like to be watched peeing. This was also the time period where I had my first visit to a Toys R Us store to find the Pee Wee Herman talking figure. What a ridiculous store with nothing but empty shelves as a far as you could see.

The toys went away for a time while I was moving back and forth across the country but came back out full force when I went Star Trek Next Gen crazy early in the nineties. I was going to conventions, I wore my communicator badge, had collar pips and started building the model kits of all the starships. Then Playmates toys launched their action figure and play set line and I was tied to a chair and intravenously fed plastic until I admitted I needed every Deanna Troi action figure and variant that came out. I started out small just collecting all the main STNG characters. Then the bad guys came out and I had to have them. Then the specific episode characters were made. I needed to collect them as well. Then the different outfit versions. Well that’s a given, right?  After that it was a landslide of bridge play sets, transporter chambers,  shuttle crafts and adult sized spandex uniforms. No, there are no pictures.

My walls were covered with mint on card figures and my closet stuffed with boxes of unopened environments for the figures to admire safely from their plastic prisons. That’s when the locker rentals started. I had run out of living space so I had to store my collectibles. Now I had added Aliens, Batman, Visionaries and Micronauts. This is the part where we skip ahead or you can read other posts for the next part of the story.

It is now. 2011. I am no longer working for the big box monster and I am at a crossroads in life that I never even imagined. My basement is full of totes and crates and boxes full of years and years and years of “collecting”. I am admitting I have a problem. It’s not the first time I have been aware of this but this time it seems more real and daunting than ever before.  I have watched many episodes of Hoarding. I am scared. I could be one of those people. Both sets of grandparents were hoarders. They got it from the war mentality. SAVE EVERYTHING! They both had garages and rooms and attics full of stuff they had to save in case of some kind of emergency. What would save me in an emergency? The Power Rangers aren’t going to do it this time. Sailor Moon dolls just don’t have that kind of power. Just recently I saw some posted pictures of the rooms of Japanese toy collectors that had been shaken like a martini in the big earthquake. It was not pretty soldier. All those half-naked anime girl figurines sprawled in heaps with glass and half eaten Pocky everywhere. That could happen to me. My best friend and I were talking about our huge collections the other day and he said he didn’t want to drag all this crap to the old age home with him. Wow. That’s a picture that stays with you. Here’s me sitting in my “go where-ever-I-want-get-out-of-my-way” scooter with the pink ranger, a megazord and prototype Sailor Saturn strapped to the basket. I’ll be waving my lightsabre and be shouting obscenities at anyone who gives me that crazy old coot look.

The collection is going. About 90% of it anyways. I am letting my plastic children out in the world where they will be put on a shelf and admired by a new, younger hoard… I mean collector. It was a hard decision but also a freeing one. It will be nice to see my walls again. I won’t have to have 40 totes to store all this stuff anymore. No more worries about what floods and bugs and earthquakes will do to my junk. Everything will go to a new home. I will be spreading joy like a kind of Santa in March. Only they have to pay for their gifts. And by pay, I mean lots of cold hard Paypal credit.

The Pokey Man Syndrome

They are called Bey Blades and they are a spinning battle top that been on the market before and are flying off the shelves. So why can’t people call them by their correct name? Bey Blade is not a difficult word to pronounce but for some reason it comes out as Blay Blay. Or Blaze Blay. Sometimes Baze Blaze. Blade Blade. Blaze Blaze. And just today I witnessed a woman standing in front of a wall of the nonsensically-named spinners while talking to someone on her cell phone and she re-named them Blaze Blazeds. IT’S RIGHT ON THE PACKAGE!

I call it the Pokey Man Syndrome. Or PMS for short. It started a whole bunch of years ago when the Japanese Pocket Monsters invaded North America. Pokemon was a brilliant shortening of the Pocket Monster brand and it was a hit. Pockets were being filled by the hundreds of thousands with cards and creatures and balls. But then the name change began. Pokey Man. Do you want to get some Pokey Mans? Where are your Pokey Man cards? How much is this Pokey Man worth?

I get that most often parents don’t get it, or they just don’t care enough to bother. It’s just another freaky plastic alien that will jam up the washing machine or have to be pulled from Rover’s jaws. It’s when the kids don’t get it that it becomes disturbing. After all they watch the show. They see the commercials. They go online and watch the flash animation websites that repeat the name of the product hundreds of time a second to be sure that the catchy non-words stuck to the insides of their skulls until at least college. So where is the breakdown happening?

It could just be that the makers of these miniscule monster/robot/vehicles have run out of words to effectively describe their products. The more they make up the worse they get. And it is even more difficult when the origin of the toy is Japanese and doesn’t translate well to begin with. Tamagotch anyone? B-Daman? Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon?

So we are stuck being translaters of un-words to help hapless parents and kids spend their pokemoney on Battle Plastic Transfoma Bot-a-bunnies.

And don’t get me started on Lego. Or lots of Lego. Which is still Lego. Not Legos.

Lost Voices

Peter Fernandez passed away this week. Many in my age bracket have been talking about him as he is remembered for his voice work in Speed Racer from the 60′s. I also remember his name in the credits for the barely remembered Marine Boy. From what I can recall, Marine Boy was on just prior to Speed Racer at 6am on Saturday mornings. I guess that many kids were still sleeping while I was glued to the aquatic adventures of Marine Boy, Cli Cli and Marina. I was mesmerized by Oxygum and the electric boomerang. I wanted a red wetsuit with jet boots and a dolphin side kick. I have a recollection of painting a picture of Marine Boy on a piece of scrap wood. Couldn’t say why it was a painting and why on scrap wood, but I know I was sitting in the back yard in the summer sun when I was doing it. Marine Boy was hard to play until we had a pool dug into our yard. Speed Racer was easy if you had a bike. Getting the pool was an important part of being able to live out my deep sea adventures as the son of a marine scientist. My sister had to play Marina. The youngest sister had to be the dolphin.

Cartoons aren’t the same anymore. At least not for me and that’s the way it should be. I just hope that kids these days have the same kind of appreciation and fondness for the characters and heroes that they get to grow up with. Marine Boy came out 43 years ago. Peter Fernandez was about my age when he voiced Dr Mariner. I have taken this moment to remember him and his contribution to childhood imagination. It’s important to remember. It’s important to be a child with dreams and heroes.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers- A Toys Story

A re-post of my toy collecting origins.

In the beginning there was a Japanese animated show called Marineboy that I watched faithfully in the early 70′s. I love my Hanna Barbera Saturday mornings, but it was the Japanese cartoons that caught my eye; Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, Robotech and these takes on fairy tale classics that were often dark and deeply true to their original telling. The best of these was the Japanese version of The Little Mermaid where she kills herself at the end. Disney ruined a lot of really good tales with their glitter sugar dipping but that’s another story.
I have also always been a hoarder and a, I shudder to say the word, collector. I associate the “C” word with those creepy guys that lurk for hours in the Hot Wheels aisle pawing through hundreds of tiny cars looking for that elusive 1957 Chevy-something-or-other so that they can pin it to their wall like a little trophy. I am pretty sure my collector buzz began with Hot Wheels cars in around 1969 but I am also sure it was the little tin badges that I was after. One of my earliest memories was being in the hospital and my parents bringing me a HW car and pinning the metal wheel shaped button to the pocket of my pjs. Full Metal Jammies.
Toys were valuable to me as a kid because we weren’t a family with the usual flow of goods, Christmas, B Days, Easter etc. Our toys were earned and often they were passed over from another family or bought at the flea market we attended many weekends. Many of the games we played were missing pieces, some of the cars had only 3 wheels, the dolls only had one eye that closed so they were in a permanent wink and the Barbies that still had feet were scarred with little bite marks around their ankles. That didn’t stop the playing.
My first real toy love was for the, and here’s where things will start to connect like dots, Micronauts. Yes, little Japanese robotic men with an array of space machinery and futuristic grid cities. I saved up a lot of allowances and paper-route money to buy my own Micronauts as it was decided that I was too old for mom and dad to buy them for me. I am pretty sure it was because they were so expensive but I was not to be deterred. I had a huge collection in short order and even though I never owned the holy grail of the Micronaut universe, the vacu-powered Monorail City, it is forever preserved in the Sears Wish Book in my mind.
The hoarding began when I got to the age where I was ready to move out on my own as a little adult. I didn’t want the awesome memories to end up in the waste bin so I dug out what toys were left in the crawlspace and took them with me. The Micronauts, Barbies, Hot Wheels I saved stayed in my storage for some time until they emerged triumphantly in the very famous “Toy Bathroom” I created with my room-mate Cruella. Treasured toys had a new purpose in my life; home decor.

The Micronaut Battle Cruiser became a soap dish, Barbie and Ken dangled from the mirror, Pee Wee and Chairy watched it all from the back of the toilet. Cruella made a little sign for the door. My childhood toys had made their triumphant return.

My first trip to Toys R Us was to see if I could get the infamous Talking Pee Wee doll. All I could find was empty shelves. I had never heard of such a thing, a toy store with no toys. It would be 1990 before I started to buy action figures and keep them “Mint on Card”, a phrase that would become a mantra in my search for the ultimate collection. The first toys that appeared pinned to my walls were the Star Trek Next Gen figures. I was so excited to collect little plastic replicas of my space roaming heroes. It only got better when I also bought the Enterprise, the Bridge Playset, A Romulan Warbird, the Teleporter, phaser and a communicator. The fever had begun.

Soon my room was covered in Aliens, Batman, Gargoyles and more. In 1994 my partner and fellow toy enthusiast asked me why I wasn’t a fan of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Huh? The What? It was Japanese and robotic, why didn’t I have the toys? I watched my first episode and my head nearly exploded. Yah! Why didn’t I have the toys? Once again I took a trip to Toys R US to admire their empty shelves and blank pegboard. Apparently the Rangers were hot or something. That made them much more desirable for some reason. The hunt was the addiction. I had to have everything. At this time I had moved to Toronto to start a Japanese toy store with my partner and we were discovering that there was a lot of Nihon goods to be found if you really dug around.
Now the trick with the Rangers was that there wasn’t just one or two figures to collect but a team of 5 or 7 and each team member got their own zord, weapon, vehicle and powered up version. I had to have each and every one and all their incarnations, variants and packaging changes. Getting the Japanese version was a bonus.
In addition to my own personal collection the inventory for the toy store had begun to pile up. The bulk of the toys we had amassed was Sailor Moon which was at the very beginning of its huge and almighty reign on Canadian television and toy store shelves.
3 times a year we filled my little Nissan Micra with totes and tried to sell our pricey imports to anime starved college students. Many were impressed with our tables but few purchased our $150 Sailor Mercury or $200 Transformers. We eventually had to call it quits having maxed out all our credit cards and emptied our savings to launch this enterprise. We had one final blow out of goods and took the best of the rest home. After dividing the remains we each had an impressive Japanese doll collection. I had shelves lining each wall in my apartment, each one filled top to bottom with toys, mostly boxed and untouched.
You would think that I would have stopped there. But the Rangers didn’t stop coming out each year with their multicoloured suits and battalion of plastic machinery. Christmas was dubbed Power Ranger Christmas and for good reason. At one point I actually got a job at Toys R Us and figured out why sometimes the shelves were empty. It happens a lot.
15 years of Power Rangers later I had hit the ceiling. I realized that my happy collecting had become the burden of obsession. I was feeling unhealthy and overwhelmed. The purge began when someone told me that I had let the toys become my life and they had become more important to me than my own self. I was letting them overshadow my creativity. I was paying good money for 4 storage lockers full of boxes of unopened plastic. I had become one of “them”. A collector.
As I emptied the totes and let the toys loose into the world I began to feel better. I freed many from their boxes and enjoyed them as the pop articles that they were. I let go of the “need” to fill my life with objects and freed up a lot of space in my home and my heart.
I still have a lot of toys. But I no longer have the compulsion to buy everything. Just some things. I appreciate the collection I have. I have it all on display.
I admitted I was powerless over my need to collect.
The road to recovery is paved in brightly covered plastic but I have 5 different coloured cars to drive on it. And it is fun.

Senior Toy Citizens

Toys get old. Just like people, toys get old and brittle. Broken hips, cracked gun holsters, loose knees, lost heads. Their plastic goes yellow and spotty, hair falls out and for some reason clothes fall off. I’ve seen the baskets of balding Barbies tangled naked and stained in laundry baskets on the floor of a toy seller’s booth. Their feet half chewed off, hair knotted and hacked. But all through this aging process toys just keep smiling. Like the happy three-legged dog, dolls don’t lose their optimistic grin. Super heroes never lose their heroic jawline. You don’t see plastic surgeons for Ken and Theresa. A Power Ranger with a hip replacement? Never. They age with grace. Not always with dignity, see the above comment about the laundry basket. But toys get old and each time I pack them away and bring them back out they are a little less than they were. Weapons are long gone, wheels go missing, a horn is chipped or a shoe has cracked. But they still they are toys, faded but joyful. I wonder when I will tire of them. I wonder if my collection will someday end up in the hell that is eBay. I wonder if they have a heaven like the island of misfit toys. I hate finding their little feet or hands in the bottom of a box. I groan when a White Ranger looks as though he has been smoking for 40 years and is nicotine yellow from exposure to light. I promise to repaint them. I hang on to the little pieces with determination that I will glue them back on. I know that I won’t. And someday some little kid will find it for sale online and be thrilled that he got a super rare original Megazord with one hand and missing his stegasaurus horns. I’ve rescued more than my share of olden toys. And as long as there are sentimental people like me toys will have old age homes to be cared for in. They will have someone to dust them and place them carefully on shelves for admiration. And hopefully someone to find clothes and dress them.