Real time toy hunting

I live in the dark abyss of nowhere when it comes to toys and toy stores.

Hasbro has started producing 6 inch SW figures

Seriously, our toy stores are completely useless, compared to what I've seen in bigger cities around the world. Remember that the biggest city in Norway is really just a tiny town. It's just very provincial, and the stock of our stores reflect that.  

But today, an instant message ticks in from my good friend, Runar.

"They have 6" Black series in a store here!"

And it's on. For real. My friend goes on a toy hunt all over the city, while keeping me updated in messages. And it's fun. It's toy talk, anticipation and enthusiasm. Because finding toys in stores is so much more rewarding and satisfying than buying them online. We haven't experienced this in years.

The Black Series looks good. 

I could of course just buy these toys on ebay, or through any of the other online stores.
But the feeling of finding a toy you like, holding it in your hand, skim through the rest of the toys to see if there are more. I miss that feeling. The toy hunt.

Apparently, each store got four figures - one single case of 6" Black series. It's almost hilarious, you'd think that with our economy, the position Star Wars has in our society, and the constantly growing mass of enthusiasts, that one of the biggest toy store chains in the country were smarter than this.
At the same time, this limited stock intrigues me. Am I not a collector after all? Do I not appreciate the toy hunt?

I really do, even today, when the toy hunt is done trough another person, in real time.

Well, at least they were smart enough to price them correctly - at around the same price Hasbro sold them for in their very own store. I appreciate that.

My friend picked up a Darth Maul for himself, and a Jumpsuit Luke Skywalker for me - thanks buddy. Can't wait to get this in hand!

And I suddenly have a reason to visit local toy stores again.

Nostalgia and the Reason We Collect Toys

Let me apologize immediately for the pretentious title. I don't plan on writing a scientific article on nostalgia and toys, but I want to put into words something that has been on my mind. I've tried to figure out why I have this fascination for vintage toys, why modern toys fail to bring me the same excitement, and I'm not alone in asking these questions, and for the outsider, it can be very strange that grown men and women still purchase, store, display, and sometimes plays with toys for kids.

Basically it can be boiled down to "Why do we collect toys?", but it's not that simple either. Read on for a rather long article on collecting. Agree, disagree, additional thoughts, personal similar stories? Leave a comment below!

Reading will make you a better person

I've read a few books in my life. In fact, I would argue that I read a lot. At least if you include comic books.

Pictured: "High literature"

My parents and my sister read significantly more than me, and they would probably say that reading novels and other types of literature are their hobbies, and if you include comics - mine as well. It's a weird thing, my closest family read a lot, and I feel the effect of this. They are smart people, with many interests. I've said so before, and it's worth repeating: People with interests are usually interesting. You can't attribute everything to the act of being able to read texts longer than newspaper headlines, but there's no question that a person who likes to read will accumulate more knowledge than a person who only skim through the pictures in gossip magazines.

And I'm glad I've been raised in a family where reading has been encouraged, and both books and comics have been in available in abundance. I'm lucky, as I believe an interest in reading has ultimately made me more creative, curious and reflected. The broader family, with aunts, uncles and what not, have with just a few exceptions no interests in reading.

Of course today, you cannot simply use the lack of a bookshelf in a home as an indication of people who have haltered their own potential (all though in many cases this is true). Times are different. Bookstores and publishers are struggling. But that doesn't mean people will stop reading, it just means that our reading habits have changed.

I had my sister and my nephew over for a visit the other day, they spent the weekend. I have personally avoided the Lego Lord of the Rings sets, as well as the absolutely fantastic sets based on The Hobbit. I can't collect everything, all though I wouldn't mind the 79003 set, "An Unexpected Gathering". My nephew, on the other hand, is a die hard fan, and wants all the sets. Only 8, he has yet to read the books himself. I seem to recall that when I was at his age, I tried reading The Hobbit on my own. Of course, it was best when I got read to.

The weird thing is how my nephew prefers to obtain these stories: Through Lego, and the Lego video games. It's not unheard of to get good stories from a video game, but this just has to be a new way of experiencing the classic stories. It's an adaptation, first through Lego, then through a game.

Now, I'd argue that The Hobbit in its original form of a novel already is the optimal way an 8 year old could experience the story. But what ever makes the kids these days "read" quality material, right? For other, more mature books - like the Lord of the Rings trilogy - maybe a Lego-adaptation is the optimal way?

And if that in turn sparks an interest for actual reading, then the video games have absolutely served their purpose.

Anyway, Lego sets were bought, opened, assembled and played with. Pictures were taken, and articles were eventually written.
The sets were 9470 "Shelob Attacks" from Lord of the Rings, and 97001 "Escape from Mirkwood Spiders" which is a preview set for an upcoming part 2 or 3 of The Hobbit.

Why do you travel?

Every time I visit new places, I try to hold on to the good memories of that trip, to the point where the memories becomes stories of their own. It's not necessarily a big issue, but I'd like any excursion or journey to matter. I try to thoroughly enjoy any travel, specially when visiting other countries. I like to experience something unfamiliar. Not only limited to food, but most relevant to this blog, I'll say that trying out local food is a big deal for me on trips.  And that's probably not that uncommon. What seems to be uncommon is to remember what you experienced. What you ate, saw, heard. What specific places you visited. The good and bad of a certain place. The people you met and talked to. I fail to see the reason of travelling, if you don't make an effort remembering this.

I expected to come back from New York with a wealth of stories, because in the end, that's really what travelling is about. Experiencing - and if you're like me - retelling the stories.

For this blog, I'll leave you with two of those stories, the first was when I looked for the toy stores of NYC. The second one is a big article about various restaurants, where to get good food in the big city. It will take a little more time to write that one, and I aim to have it out Thursday.

But the remarkable thing is.. Am I the only one that does this? Surely I can't be alone in actually remembering what I experience when I'm out travelling? Wouldn't other people also have specific memories connected to certain places they've visited? I mean, what other reason would you have to travel?

Here's the thing, leading up to my trip to New York, we did a lot of research. We tried to locate places of interest, or rather places we could be interested in visiting. And in this process, I talked with a lot of people who also had visited New York. I asked them: Got anything to recommend? Any places I should try to visit? Anything interesting, out of the ordinary I should know? Any stories of interest to share?

The answers I got usually went along these lines: Oh, you should totally go to see a show on Broadway! Oh, you should totally go shopping on Times Square! Oh, oh, oh... And that Statue of Liberty is worth checking out!

Don't mistake me for an asshole, I appreciated their advice, I took their advice and did see a show on Broadway, I did go shopping on Times Square, and it was great! Sadly I did not find time for the Statue of Liberty.

But these are probably very near the top five tourist attraction of the city, and nothing I couldn't read in any and all tour guide of NYC. No one suggested good areas/museums/monuments/art galleries that I should make an effort to visit. No one suggested specific stores of interest. No one suggested what to say/not say to people. Places to avoid. Mistakes not to be done. No one suggested a good place to eat. No one even suggested what food to try.

Obviously it got me wondering. Am I just as clueless were I to give recommendations on the places I've been?

I doubt I can give specific names and addresses to restaurants, but I'm sure at the very least I can give a suggestion what food to try from all of the different countries I've visited.
Italy: Go to any place that has ice cream and get a stracciatella. Amsterdam: Try the most random pancake you can find. London: go to a pub, order a pie.Visit any restaurant that has swordfish on the menu: Go for it! I guess I'm not breaking any ground with these suggestions, but this is just off the top of my head.

And I know I can share a story or two from every place I've visited, that could be interesting for a potential traveler.

I guess it takes time for people to dig out memories. And I really hope that later that night, these people thought for themselves Oh, I should have really suggested that awesome coffee place over at 14th and second. 

But I'm honestly not sure. Why do people travel, if they can't remember anything from the trip?

There are Toys in New York

But it's not a Mecca for toy collectors.

And that may actually be a bit strange, because New York had literally everything you could imagine, and lots of it. Shopping in NYC was an amazing experience, and if you were looking for shoes, clothes, jewelry, food. I hoped the toy stores would match the quality of the other stores. I guess they did, it's just that my expectations to the toy stores were significantly higher than those towards clothing stores. There's also the fact that I know where to find toys in abundance: online. The online toy stores and forums are the best places to buy toys, and that's not even a secret. I assume this "new" market has more or less destroyed the potential for having truly great toy stores in New York.

But when completing my excursion of the toy stores on Manhattan, I may have discovered what the point of toy stores today should be. It's about presenting a selection so great, and in such a way that you'll want to want something. It's about giving an experience greater than the price reduction you'd get from buying online.

I had a blast visiting these stores, so much in fact that I decided to take a couple of pictures and write a few words on the various stores. I guess you can see this as a review of the toy stores in New York, but it's definitely not complete. I know I missed out on a couple of stores (like Midtown Comics), and I'm sure there were some I don't even know about. And we were only sticking to mid/lower Manhattan. But for the stores we actually did visit, you can look at this article as somewhat of a guide.

So come in for more, and leave comments if you want!

Caution: This is a long article with many pictures, and the gravy is all the way at the bottom.

Finding the Christmas Spirit

These days it's difficult, for many reasons. The biggest reason is that Christmas starts way earlier than it used to. You don't even have to go that far back. 15-20 years ago, Christmas decorations in late November was unheard of, let along early November. This has watered out, weakened the esoteric emotion of a potential Christmas spirit. Then there's the fact that Christmas no longer is about emotions. Well, that's not entirely correct, but the emotions connected to Christmas today are different, in some way stronger.
Ideally, the holiday should be about getting together with family and friends, having nice meals and showing you care about them. For many, it's still like that. But there's the added pressure. The extremely high expectations. The rabid consumerism.

Make no mistake about it: I like to buy stuff, and I like stuff in general. I have closets filled with stuff.
I also love to give stuff to others. I take pride in finding tailor-fit gifts for the people I care about. But I'm not sure I like the pressure of having to buy and receive gifts just because the stores, the market forces tells me to. I don't shy away from the responsibility, I take it as a challenge. But that's just it, it shouldn't be a responsibility - and I know many people, especially parents, look at it that way. Where have we gone wrong?

I will  get back  to this topic, with even more rant. And hopefully some good words as well, because there are tons of elements of Christmas, and gift giving I love. Home made gifts, for instance. Love it! Whether it's custom made piggy banks from my sister, cakes from my mother, or a scarf from Roxi.

The point today was finding the Christmas spirit the right way. No Coca Cola commercials, no 24 hour open malls, not by spending thousands of moneys on gifts, not by being forced to live up to expectations.
But by getting together with good people, eating and drinking, having a good time.

We got told to bring seasonal cakes and cookies. We got presented with Christmas brewery - and after a while some really nice single malt whisky. A great evening, Christmas spirit the right way.

Figure Friday: Storm Shadow Anecdote

As I'm back home for a birthday celebration, this will have to be a short one. But non the less an interesting - and for me, an extremely potent experience as a toy collector. Basically, this is the story about one that got away. Storm Shadow. The ninja.

Storm Shadow was released to the toy stores in USA in 1984. He didn't come to Norway until '86, and was discontinued in around 1988-1989. But we all know that some toys sat on shelves for months after being discontinued. Years even. Only last year, I heard about a guy who found 1994 Joes in the far back of a provincial toy store. Typically, the toys that sat on the shelves that long wasn't the popular ones. They were the boring, filler characters, the wacky toys, the extremely expensive ones.

Storm Shadow was really neither. He was, and continue to be one of the most popular characters in 80s pop culture. He sold out, even in Norway. He was a fantastic action figure in every way, he was a cool character in the comic, and as a toy he came packed with great accessories. A deliciously simple, yet detailed sculpt. Magnificent card art, and a relatively low price. Kids loved the white ninja.

So I had really no expectation of finding him in my stores by 1990, when my interest for Joes really kicked in. I had already read about Storm Shadow in the comics, and he was by far the coolest character, in my opinion. He was sort of a villain, yet still able to fight alongside his ninja buddy, Snake Eyes. After a while, he even joined the G.I. Joe team, in their battle against Cobra, his previous employer/captor.

But there we were, on a holiday in Denmark, me, my sister and my parents. Just doing a pit stop for gas and food, before heading off further down the highways of Europe. I fulfill my duties as a kid, and instinctively head straight for the nearest toy store. This wasn't even a real toy store. It felt more like the good umold fashioned multi-purpose store. They had a little bit of everything.

Near the exit, in a crate, I come over a bunch of Joes. This wasn't all that surprising. In Norway, Denmark and the rest of the western world, G.I. Joe was a pretty popular toy line. But I immediately notice that something is different. These figures are far too old to be in store. These are the discontinued figures from a couple of years back. I had never even seen these in stores. I panic. I frantically search through the lot, craving pretty much every single one of them. I know that's out of the question, but I may be able to get one or two of them from my parents...

And that's when I find him, near the bottom of the bin. Storm Shadow. On clearance sale.
I shouldn't be this lucky. And I wasn't either. I ran out, trying to find someone with the money to buy me the grail, but my father couldn't be bothered, and my mother wasn't nearby.
I was never the type of kid to cry when I didn't get a toy I wanted - because, honestly, I got a shit ton of toys. This wasn't the case with Storm Shadow either. The very next day, we stopped in Germany, and I got the two-pack with the Crimson Twins - toys I still have to this day, and I had momentarily forgotten about the Cobra assassin.

But it has always been there, the memory of the one that got away. A reminder that I should be better at jumping opportunities that arises, and that I should always have saved up a couple of coins, should a fantastic toy deal come around.

Enjoy your weekend, people!


Epilogue:
I never got Storm Shadow as a kid. A friend had him, and I was really jealous, but at the same time, at least I got to play with him from time to time. And honestly, it adds to the mythology of the toy that I never had him myself. So what happens when I become an adult and notice that it's possible to buy old toys through the internet? I get myself a couple of pristine examples of Storm Shadow. No big deal, just getting my self the grail. Satisfying? Sure. The surge of nostalgia, the possession of a wonderful toy. It's all there. But it doesn't make me forget that I had it in my hands two decades earlier.

G.I. Joe Month: Conclusion

I initially did this full month of G.I. Joe related articles because my collection returned from the museum. In the process of storing them away, I took hundreds of pictures of them, and wanted to share both pictures and stories. But I also found my self playing with the toys. Not necessarily in the way I did when I was a kid. I wasn't lining them up and "playing war" with dialogues and action sounds. It was more looking closely at them, noticing new details, contemplating about paint and sculpt. I posed them in their vehicles, put on their accessories. I talked with fellow collectors about it.

In essence, it was playing with toys.
And it made me realize that these were - and continue to be - amazing toys.

I'll end the G.I. Joe month not with pictures, but with a story. I have many stories of experiences as a kid, and almost anything I write can be considered stories of how it's like to be an adult collecting these toys. This story is neither: It's the story of how I got back into collecting G.I. Joe.

This was when I was in high school. during my years in junior high, I had abandoned any ideas of collecting toys. Willingly? Not really. I had just stored away all my toys. It was just socially impossible to be interested in toys as fourteen year old boy. Some will say it's similar as an adult, but I'm fairly confident in my self. I know what I like, I have some extremely weird interests, but they are my interests. They are a part of me, of who I am. And collecting toys is one of the greatest things I know of. I am glad it's not my only interest, nor is it the only thing I collect.
But I am proud to be interested in toys. And it didn't really start at childhood - I was just being careful with any toy I was given. It started when I finally left junior high, and could start being myself. You see, where you would commit social suicide by admitting to such childish things in junior high, no one cared in high school. It was ok to be different, and in my school it was actually expected of you.

Not far from my high school was a store that sold used comic books. At this point, I was reading all the cool stuff that came out on Image. Then there came a day, we had a no scheduled class, so me and a friend decided to head over to the store and look for comics. I wouldn't say I was a regular, but I had been to this store quite a few times, and knew what to expect. They had the usual selection of locally produced comics, translated international comics and the occasional US/UK release. I wasn't expecting anything else this day.

"What's this? Where does this come from? Are there more?" I asked the lady in the store, as I had gone through a few comics. I had noticed something I didn't expect to find, and I can safely say that I panicked. It wasn't fear, it was more urgency, feelings I couldn't really describe.

Hidden under a few irrelevant comics was G.I. Joe #1 - US release. From 1982. Dead mint.

And #2, #3, #4, #5, and so on.

Relevant to the story is this. G.I. Joe didn't arrive in my country until mid 80s, when the line - both toys, comics and cartoon - had already been going with full strength in the country where it originated. The comics I had read (under the name Action Force) were only part of the entire story.  We got to read the story from US #44-90, so any stories before that was virtually unknown to me. But I knew of them. I knew I was missing something.

And now I suddenly found these comics. Every single one of them.

What had happened: a person - obviously one who subscribed to these comics (as well as certain superhero comics) had stopped caring, and turned them into the store for... I don't know, store credit? A small amount of cash? Definitely not worth it.
I was rambling at this point to my friend, and to the lady in the store. I bought every issue I could afford, and told her to hold on to the rest for me. I came back every day for the next week, picking up 5-10 issues at the time, and I would sit home reading the beginnings of G.I. Joe. I have mentioned how good these comics are in many previous articles, including the very first Figure Friday. And all though I'm not sure I'm entirely objective, I still argue that they are just as good, if not better today than they were to me as a kid. That obviously goes without saying for the comics I didn't get to read until I found gold that day in high school.
At that point, reading #1-43, it occurred to me that I still liked G.I. Joe, so I dug out my toys from the closet and started sorting them out, categorizing and structuring the collection.
This was where I went from being a kid who had many toys, to becoming an adult collector.

G.I. Joe collection

First of all, happy new year. 2012 looks just as promising as any previous year, and while I'm cautiously optimistic as usual, it did feel like a good start to the year. Just before Christmas, I got back my G.I. Joe collection. It has been at a local museum for the better part of two years. I will simply start the new year by letting you see how the exhibition looked like. I will also admit that I missed my toys. Most of them are connected to good memories spanning two decades. While those memories will be saved for Figure Fridays, I will tell a bit about how it was to make an exhibition at a museum.

Read on for many pictures.

Ocean Week: The Monsters of the Sea

When you're in the ocean (and you have a fairly active imagination), even the smallest fish seems a bit scary. But when you think of it, we treat the ocean with far less respect than they did before.
Ever since man began creating tools, the ocean has been a place that gives life - and takes it.
Now, we just eat fish, make the occasional boat trip, and it's no big deal. If we do swim in the ocean, stuff like jellyfish and seaweed are a minor annoyance.
It's not like it used to be, when you had to make sacrifice to the gods so the Kraken wouldn't sink your ship. Or that you go through intense rituals to have good catch.
The ocean still inspires us, it still gives us great food. I guess we just take it for granted.

Read on for.. I'm not really sure what this, but read on anyway!

Single Malt Space Shuttle

I believe that the good things in life should be combined, no matter how unlikely the combination may seem. I'll explain this inside, and I suggest you make the jump, not only for amateur-level philosophy, but also for more pictures of this delicious combo!

Read on for more on the Lego Space Shuttle and the Laphroaig Single Malt Whisky.