Quitting/putting collecting on pause

It's a fair question. I think latter Gen X has had a stranglehold on the boys toy aisle because it was the last generation really into toys and the whole deregulation of the 80s when you could watch G.I. Joe while reading G.I. Joe comics while playing with G.I. Joes while eating G.I. Joe cereal from your G.I. Joe thermos and putting G.I. Joe colorforms on things. Pokemon was the next cultural juggernaut, but toys were always a small part of that.
 
Chooch555 said:
It's a fair question. I think latter Gen X has had a stranglehold on the boys toy aisle because it was the last generation really into toys and the whole deregulation of the 80s when you could watch G.I. Joe while reading G.I. Joe comics while playing with G.I. Joes while eating G.I. Joe cereal from your G.I. Joe thermos and putting G.I. Joe colorforms on things. Pokemon was the next cultural juggernaut, but toys were always a small part of that.
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It’s funny you mention G.I. Joe and Pokémon specifically. Those are the two fandoms I just missed. I was born in ‘85 and just too young to get into G.I. Joe. Real Ghostbusters and TMNT were my first fandoms.

And then when Pokémon hit big in ‘98 or so, I was a young teen and had a brief period of purposefully getting out of “nerdy” stuff and more focused on music and girls until college.


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I feel like it all falls off with the other gens as far as IPs and breadth goes.

I know people who like toys, but they are very specific to modern IP or eternal IP like Pokemon or Batman. And even then it tends towards the higher end. There's a trend of minimalism that's been going on for a while. I know a lot of younger people who would rather have handhelds and laptops than computers are consoles and this also extends to e-readers over books and one premium action figure over a line.

And certainly with the wave of progression we have seen politics wise about content and the way we were, I know a lot of old franchises just don't spark anything for some people.

It's interesting even popular products like One Piece or My Hero have already aged out with some fans because they're that old. Meanwhile, there are people who are excited about The Prisoner getting figures.

I don't see that reverence in any younger people I associate with, I don't even see the curiosity. It's always perplexed me because in the age of streaming and all the things we have access to online, it would be easier than ever to find an old thing someone mentioned and learn about it. But as a whole I find most people aren't even curious enough to do that with the resources.

I'm always curious how the younger generation can even keep up. Action figures are expensive and surely have to be out of what you guys are paying your kids in allowance?
 
Chooch555 said:
Pokemon was the next cultural juggernaut, but toys were always a small part of that.
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Against my wishes. I would've killed for the kind of Pokémon toys we're getting today. You can say that about damn near every property, but Pokémon had nothing. If you were lucky, you could find a 2" unarticulated Tomy figurine of your favorite Pokémon, and those things didn't even scale with one another.
Alt said:
I know a lot of younger people who would rather have handhelds and laptops than computers are consoles and this also extends to e-readers over books and one premium action figure over a line.
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It's a lot cheaper that way.
 
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It all depends on if the IP owners can keep the IP relevant. I mean Superman and Batman are closer to 100 years old than 50 years old. If you had told someone back in the late 30s that Superman and Batman in funny books would still be popular, if not more so, in 100 years they would probably think you need to be in the sanitarium. Then other older, or similarly aged, properties have different levels of popularity. From practically nothing like say Tin-Tin (no shade) to Disney's mainstays (Mickey, Donald, etc.).

I think some of the Gen-X properties are starting to hit that imaginary bump that I have in my mind where they have now been around long enough that momentum could be on their side for longer staying power in the cultural zeitgeist. I think that is around the 50 year mark. I mean GI Joe and Barbie are over 60 years old, Star Trek is just turning 60, Star Wars is almost 50 and then you get into the 80s properties like Transformers, He-Man, etc. and they are closing in on that imaginary bump in my mind. Obviously Transformers and Star Wars are much more popular than say GI Joe or He-Man, but both Barbie, and now He-Man are coming back in the larger media landscape thanks to big movies (hopefully for He-Man).

I think once a property passes 50 years, with some continued (relevant) cultural presence, it has a good chance of staying around for longer than we could know. I mean 50 years gives you what? 3 generations of exposure? That probably has some cultural "seepage" that gets into the larger population. Granted, as I said, it also depends on how relevant it can stay with popular media awareness.

When it comes to toys (especially action figures) that is tougher because much like a lot of physical media, the audience seems to be shrinking in favour of digital and I don't see a good way to counter that trend.
 
canprime said:
It all depends on if the IP owners can keep the IP relevant.
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We also live in a world where certain IP holders would, for reasons no one can explain, rather sit on something they own and watch it die in obscurity than DO anything with it. And I include in that statement people who own some tiny property that 35 people care about but they want millions of dollars to license an action figure or a coloring book.
 
I'm mostly of the mind that action figure collecting dies with what I assume is the generation most in here fit into (late Gen X, Millennial). It will never go away completely because nothing does, but I think it will slide back into even more of a niche where you won't be able to walk into a big box store and buy a figure.

At any rate, I think my collecting will be going on pause thanks to a tax bill I was not expecting. I figured my wife and I would owe, but thought it would be less than last year. Turns out, I owe almost twice what I did a year ago.
 
Misfit said:
I'm mostly of the mind that action figure collecting dies with what I assume is the generation most in here fit into (late Gen X, Millennial). It will never go away completely because nothing does, but I think it will slide back into even more of a niche where you won't be able to walk into a big box store and buy a figure.

At any rate, I think my collecting will be going on pause thanks to a tax bill I was not expecting. I figured my wife and I would owe, but thought it would be less than last year. Turns out, I owe almost twice what I did a year ago.
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I'm definitely going to focus more on individual properties than my previous all expansive logic of "Hey, that looks cool", which lead me across any action figure that even piqued my interest. Which lead to far too many impulse purchases. Which lead to an overfilled and overflowing nerd room and office.

Mainly MOTU for me. Chronicles and whatever Mondo puts out in there 1/12 line.

Anything Evil Dead/Army of Darkness. One of my favorite movie series, so I am down for whatever gets put out, which is actually somewhat few and far between. Currently waiting on the Asmus re-release.

If they come out this year, there's no way I can pass up NECA's Disney Afternoon stuff. And of course anything Jim Henson they do. But those are so few and far between and spaced out that it doesn't even really feel like it's a "line".

Other than that, the occasional Trick or Treat Studios offering of something that I'm nostalgic for.

I know this all seems like a lot, but for me, this really is reining it in. That is me paring it down.

And above all else, I am done and over with the Zips and Sezzles and other payment plan bullshit. What I can't afford in that moment is something I'm not getting. Period, the end.
 
Do we have any collectors here that didn’t actively play with action figures as a kid?

I ask, because my perception is that kids really don’t play with toys these days once they hit elementary school age…which is where my prime toy playing years truly began.

I don’t know how you develop a love for collecting toys if you never developed a love for playing with toys, and I think that has more to do with it than specific IPs. I could be way off base though.
 
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Not here, but I do know adults who collect toys and didn't really play with toys, mostly upbringing whether that was affordances or they just had another things going on.

So I can tell you that there are people that collect because it's like a sense of recapturing youth or never being able to afford it. Funny enough, those are the openers and posers and photographers than I know. Still a nostalgic call, though, like they did still watch cartoons or had memories of some cousin or friend with that toy.

My middle sister picks up figures here and there because it reminds her of when I'd drag her on toy hunts and her own childhood, but it's not Barbie or Littlest Pet Shop, which were her end all be alls.

Back to the FOMO youth, one of my best friends is a die hard Nintendo fan. Except they didn't grow up with Nintendo because it was a Sega household (remember those days), and he just got the n64 late in life in high school. And now he's just die hard Nintendo and everything else is garbage and retroactively was garbage. But he doesn't even collect retro things, he has only played the 8 and 16 bit all stars when it became available on the Wii shop or Gameboy ports, but he will gatekeep anyone else like he was there day one. And just based on conversation, that tends to come from how feels like his family had the wrong choice (Sega vs Nintendo), and he missed out on all these discussions everyone else would have about Metroid and Mario and Final Fantasy, and now he's over correcting. He was Othered in the recess yard. There's a lot you can unpack with him on this, but the point is didn't grow up with it, no experience with the products, and yet that is his collecting life.
 
I will also add that another toy groups I used to be a part of, there's almost like a desperate need to feel a shared experience. How to say this....

Example, the new COPS figures. I remember the show. I remember the toys. I did not own any of the toys. It was not a show I went out of my way to watch. Banger theme song though.

It's just something I don't really have personal nostalgia for. And yet in my example, in prior circles, they were collectors who would almost bully you about something like that. What do you mean? They're making new ones. Why wouldn't you want them? Don't you remember the show? We all grew up with it. You have to get it.

I do remember and I don't care. It's just not interesting to me. But. You don't have to validate your collecting choices based off what I do. Not my money or space. If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.

Except on the whole, so many of them did validate their choices off of what everyone else was doing, again, I think there's a lot you could unpack there about childhood and emotions with a therapist or enough beer on a lonely night.

Those are also the personalities that it might experience tend to buy two to keep something boxed, or they just keep everything boxed anyway, and they definitely are vanilla posers who pick up, drop on the shelf, check it off, and then find the next thing that's going to fill their void.

If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad.

And I feel like it's less if they played with toys or even had the toys, but they're just looking for some sort of connection, and if it's not the frequency you hit, surely the problem is you not them. They're already way invested so how could it be.
 
There is a lot of gatekeeping in this hobby and community, and a lot of them are very cliquey. Case in point, the Technodrome forums are some of the worst for that. If you don't know every bit of minutiae about the Ninja Turtles, are you even a fan? Do you truly even care about the property? These people actually think that they are friends with Kevin Eastman, they feel that entrenched in the fandom. Like, the level of defense/outrage is above all others, to the point that it almost makes you hate TMNT. They could ruin it for you if you allowed them to. They also almost get offended if you even try to integrate yourself into this little commune/cult that they've created. Very univiting folks there.

In the same vein, there are people that reach absurd levels of offense if you're not into something at the same degree that they are, and it baffles me. They will defend whatever that thing is tooth and nail, to the point of obsession. They truly don't understand how psychotic it makes them look.

It's almost as if they're trying to convince you that you MUST feel the same way that they do, otherwise, everything they have ever felt has been invalidated. Like their enjoyment of something is washed away because others aren't into it in the same fervor.

Meanwhile, you just want to wring theirs necks, because...nothing I do or say prevents you from liking what you like. Not everyone has to like the same thing. That's why I'll never understand tribalism. Nintendo/SEGA...had both. Xbox/Playstation...have both. DC/Marvel...read both. The people who don't or can't allow themselves to like anything out of their specific chosen *thing* have some serious arrested development, I think. There's an immaturity involved there that isn't mine to unpack.

Broaden your horizons, and stop being so laser focused on one thing. You might find more joy in life.
 
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One of my social hacks I used to use once I learned it made people open up or "like" me was playing dumb.

Just Cady Heron in math class with Aaron as they regale me with their expertise in Final Fantasy or X-Men.

Wrong.

No.

Not the first appearance

The limit break does not exist.

But I never really cared about correcting because to me I was just happy these people liked the thing. And then I would kind of shuffle in my own expertise and even figure out what kind of foil I should be for this person. Maybe that's masking. I never figured it out.

But that gets really old once you realize most people don't know what the hell they're talking about, and especially when the people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, act like they are the authority figure and use that as leverage against the people they deem lesser.

That I can't abide by.

I remember even in high school the same nerds that would complain that women didn't read comic books or like cartoons, as soon as we met one, instead of welcoming, it would just be this big gatekeeping checkpoint which eventually led to ridiculing and ostracizing.

And then without self-awareness they would wonder how come women didn't share these interests.

As example.
 
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