A Journey Into Toy Collecting

When I was a kid, before I started going to school, my mom used to buy me comic books to help teach me to read and keep me interested in reading once I learned. Most kids usually frown upon reading. Me on the other hand, I loved reading... as long as it was comic books. I can't even remember a time in my life that I didn't have any comic books. This fascination with comic books was my first step on my journey into toy collecting.

The bulk of my toys growing up were action figures of my favorite comic book and cartoon characters. Early in my childhood, I had mostly G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Ninja Turtles figures. All these characters have comic book lines, and I had comics from all of them, but I've always associated them more with their cartoons than their comics, and therefore, I considered them toys based on cartoon characters, not comic book characters, and I was dying for some comic book toys. In my town, comic book toys were hard to find, so I had none. Finally, the first Batman movie hit theatres, and I got my first comic toys.

Those Batman toys were played with so much, that every single one of them ended up broken. It was ok though. I re-bought a couple of my favorites, and a Batman sequel helped replace the others with even better toys. I had a new problem though. I was getting tired of having nothing but Batman toys. I wanted toys from all my favorite comic book characters, especially characters from Marvel. I love Batman, and I like other DC characters and characters from other comic lines, but my favorite characters (except Batman) have always come from Marvel, the most prominent being Spider-man and the X-men.

I wanted some Marvel toys in the worst way, and for a while, I thought they'd never come out with any. But, a few years later, I got my wish. X-men and Spider-man hit the tv sets and their action figures hit the toy shelves. I remember the first one I got was the magneto with the magnetic hands and chest. I wanted Wolverine, but he was sold out, so I got Magneto instead. (I still have it.)

We didn't have much money when I was growing up, so all my rosters from all my toy lines didn't consist of too many characters. But I always managed to get a hold of some really good ones, and I always had a blast playing with them. Still, I'd look at the back of the box, see all the awesome characters they were coming out with, and wish I could have them all.

Eventually though, I grew up and I forgot about toys and comics. I hit my teens and started doing more social things like going to parties and what not. (We won't go into too much detail on that, this being a family friendly article and all.) But I still watched a lot of cartoons though, and one that I got sucked right into was Dragonball Z. I became a huge fan of the series and still am to this day.

One day I was checking out the toy aisle in zellers, which I still did from time to time to see what cool toys they were coming out with, and I saw they had released a Dragonball Z toy line. I saw a Vegeta action figure, and something came over me. It was that same feeling I had as a kid when I was in the toy aisle and saw a toy I wanted. I'm sure most of us, if we think back hard enough, can remember that feeling of wanting a toy so bad it felt like your happiness depended on it. I'd checked out the toy aisle many times, seen cool toys, and not cared anymore. This time though, when I saw that Vegeta toy, that feeling just washed over me and I knew I wasn't going to play with it, nor did I have any desire to play with it, but I wanted that toy in the worst way.... I had no Idea what I was getting into.

I bought the toy, took it out of the package, (I take all my toys out of the package by the way) and set it up in my room. I had no intentions of buying another one, but every time I saw one, that feeling would come over me, and it wasn't long before I was once again buying toys on a regular basis.

At first, I was only collecting Dragonball Z toys and I had managed not to go any further than that. But it wasn't too long before comic books started coming back into play.

I'd never really stopped reading my comics over the years, but I stopped buying them and didn't mind just reading the old ones over again. (Because I didn't read them as much) But, after I started collecting the DBZ toys, I started getting that feeling again when I'd read my comics, and it wasn't long before I was hunting down back issues to pick up where I'd left off.

Then, the Spider-man movie came out, and a friend of mine found one of the action figures for it on the school bus. He brought it with him when we went to see the movie and I was looking at it before the movie started. It was the coolest figure I had ever seen. It had so much articulation that I could pose it any way I could think of. A couple of days later, I bought Spider-man and the Green Goblin for myself and put them up in my room in the most detailed fight scene I had ever put together.

Once again, I thought I was done. But a couple of weeks later, I saw a Hobgoblin toy that was fully articulated and amazingly detailed. I had thought they only made those kind of detailed toys for the movie. I didn't know the comic book line was getting the same treatment. I had to buy it. "Now I'm done" I said to myself..... I can be so naive sometimes.

A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a comic book convention in Toronto. I had been having a hard time finding back issues for my comics, so I jumped at the idea. That convention was the final nail in the coffin when it came to me becoming a hard core collector. Not only did I double my comic book collection while I was there, I started my favorite toy collection there, Marvel Legends.(Hobgoblin was technically a Spider-man toy, although now, I consider Spider-man classics the same as Marvel Legends.)

I was walking around and I saw a Marvel Legends booth. At first, I tried not to get any, but one was so nice I couldn't resist. It was series 3 Ghost Rider. I'd always wanted a Ghost Rider toy as a kid, and this was the coolest Ghost Rider toy I could've Imagined. I bought it and walked away. 5 minutes later, I came back and bought 2 more, Wolverine and Daredevil. This time I knew, there was no stopping.

Back home, I'd taken a job at a local call center, which was a nightmare to say the least, but it had one advantage; the local comic book shop was directly across the street. I spent almost every break there, and when I was working, I started dreaming about working in the comic shop.

I tried to apply for a job, but they wouldn't accept my resume, and never are accepting resumes. So, I started dreaming about opening my own shop, but I had no idea how I could do it. I looked into business courses, but that just ended up confusing me, so I came up with another idea. If I couldn't start a regular store, I'd do the next best thing.

I started an online toy / comic book store and it worked out even better than starting a land based store. Now I get to run the store of my dreams, and I get to do it from the comfort of my own home. Now I buy my toys and comics from myself. What more could I ask for.

The moral of the story... No matter what your dreams are, there's always a way to achieve them. If I can do it, anyone can.