Toy Collection

As a child of the 80s toys and later console gaming were a big part of my childhood and it’s something that never really went away for me. Till this day I still enjoy collecting toys and playing video games. I’m forever a “Toys R Us kid.” If you’ve read any of my posts on this site I’m sure that you will already know this. For the most part, though, for toys, it’s been mostly “anime” based toys from large two foot tall Dollfies to small figmas and the occasional Transformer, but more recently I’ve started to dabble in collecting old-school loves like Lego. Over the last couple years I picked up several sets from the Lego movies, which have been a lot of fun. My favorite sets are probably the Destiny’s Bounty and City set from the Ninjago movie.

Beyond that, though, what you might not know is that I still have a small collection of my old 80s toys from my childhood as well as a few old consoles and a medium-sized collection of comics. However, for the longest time they’ve been boxed up and in the closet.

It was always a little dream of mine to dig them out and put them on display, even if just for myself. It has become even more of a desire now that the 80s and toy collecting have become popular recently and many modern toy companies are producing amazing high-quality toys based on the characters I loved as a kid.

Thanks to my new work that started early this year I’ve been able to start collecting some of these modern takes on old classics and relive a bit of that childhood. A month ago I finally pushed myself to open my closet and pull out my old collection. I spent a good week organizing and cleaning my old toys, gathering my old consoles and their boxes, and rummaging through my comic book collection.

I picked up a few cheap bookcases and got started. Now this isn’t the best display setup, but it’s certainly a start for me and it’s been a lot of fun so far. Even with all this I STILL have several old toys I didn’t have room to put on these shelves so there is still room for growth whenever I figure out how to fit more shelves.

For now this is what I have setup:

In my old shelves I still have my video game collection, mostly filled with large MMO collector’s edition boxes. I also have some DVDs, Blu-Rays, Anime, and consoles games. I moved things around a bit and added a couple related collectibles and gaming statues.

On the side of these shelves I have this little unit with most of my figmas and some of my manga.

Next are the newest shelves nearly stuffed with toys. I took a while to set everything up neatly. I left a little bit of room here and there for some incoming new additions, but as they are they are pretty much full. These photos are actually already out of date since I’ve been getting new stuff regularly. I’m sure I’ll share those additions later on.

On the first two shelving units you can see some of my Lego sets on the top. In the first set of shelves I have some modern mainstream Transformers from the Siege and Earthrise series and a very awesome (and silly expensive) Masterpiece Optimus Prime with a repro G1 Soundwave and some of my original remaining Transformers from my childhood. Next is some characters from Star Wars and Star Trek, many comic book heroes across many eras and two shelves of about a two-thirds of my comic book collection.

On the next set of shelves I have a mostly empty shelf, but below that are most of my Dollfies currently protected in bags, a repro Voltron, an old Sailor Moon doll, and some random Micro Machines. Below that is my collection of portable gaming consoles, something I’ve loved since the Lynx/Gameboy era. Then finally is a stack of my old gaming consoles. I mostly missed out on the original Nintendo/Super Nintendo and Genesis days, but I have several consoles from since then still.

Finally on the last two shelves are a lot of older items. In the little shelf I have my growing collection of old 80s cartoon DVDs and some books from Star Wars/Trek to Lego and Transformers. On the big shelf I have more Lego Ninjago Lego sets and then my remaining Mask toys from my childhood. Then there are two shelves of my StarCom toys, a rather obscure series, but one I loved as a kid and probably sparked my interest in space. Then I have what’s left of my collection of Dino-Riders. And last there are boxed Star Trek toy sets and an original K.I.T.T. car.

You may have noticed that the bottom shelves for all of these are mostly big items and not toys. That’s due to my two new kittens that would play with anything that was at their eye level.

This is just a “quick” rundown of my current setup, of which has grown since even these photos.

I’ve recently picked up several more Masterpiece Transformers, some modern day He-Man figures, and I’ve started to collect a couple Playmobil sets based on Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, which are really neat.

I really love a lot of the modern toys based on the originals. For one I have an example of a G1 Transformer with his modern-day Masterpiece equivalent. I can only imagine what my younger self would have thought of this stark difference. Heck, many of the old G1 Transformers couldn’t even bend their legs and now these new ones are so possible, even the mainstream ones like Siege and Earthrise. Then you have things like the modern He-Man figures. Like some of the Masterpiece Transformers, these are much closer to what you saw in the cartoons compared to the toys back then—I mean, where the heck was Man-At-Arms mustache!