Episode 17: The Dark Side of Collecting

Cambridge MSHON is a weird way media podcast plastics. Hello and welcome to episode seventeen if you can believe it of Cambridge Mashon, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things that they like. And we are continuing a thread that we started on the last episode talking about collecting a nostalgia. Ronnie brought up dark looking I have to put some effects on my voice. There as a possibility to do, and we are doing that today.

I am going to apologize in advance for all the swares because a lot of this stuff makes me angry. I promise someone saying more band squads. Yes, if there are any young folks listening to this show, you know you're sitting there playing your games and you have this on in the background, maybe lower the volume so mom doesn't hear and report us for all the f bombs. I'm pretty intrabident that most of most of our listeners are gamers, twelve year old gamers, twelve world gamers. And I mentioned last time the five hundred listens.

Oh yeah, we actually rolled over six hundred since then, and I think I said we were closer to six hundred. But another milestone I guess that's fantastic. Thank you gamers. Oh I am all few and ready to go. Me too.

I ate the second half of my Robertito's breakfast burrito we picked up yesterday. I can't eat a whole one anymore. Speaking of classic Fresno locales for getting damn good burritos, I have a don't Pepe's burrito waiting for me in the fridge, left over from dinner last night. Well there you a. I'm excited to have that for lunch.

So there's our local locales for you folks, Robertitos and don't Pepe. I prefer Robertito's, but I prefer don't Pepe. No, no, no, it's not all of the burritos. A couple things to update from last time, because I'm silly. I mentioned getting the Blues Brothers novelization and a part of that whole thing watching that with Cleo doing an episode on it, finding the copy.

And I also mentioned that I had purchased a Star Wars retro figure because it had popped up because I was checking out and I didn't mention what I was checking out with, and that was the Blues Brothers blu Ray. I finally actually bought the movie plastic, so I don't have to rely on when it's streaming. The movies that we watch on repeat, we got to have a physical copy because you never know where they're going to show up streaming or just disappear from streaming. That's a whole other topic physical media. But I was like, Okay, this is one that I constantly look for and I love it.

I need to own it. And it was cheap, so and I think I made kind of made an error. Talked about biggest collections. Oh. When we got off, I'm like, you know what, I think my Japanese vinyl Oh yeah, not vinyl records, vinyl toys is probably the largest collection I have.

I remember when you hit that phase hard, and then that was when I was living away, I'm sure, and then when I came back and saw your collection, I was just floored. Yeah, and a lot of them are little, but I mean in numbers, I think it's pretty expansive. Mm hmmm. I have a fish bowl behind me somewhere that's probably got fifty something figures in it, so there's like two inches tall. But I guess that wins.

You do have a lot of black Sparrow books, yeah, and paraphernalia associated with Black Sparrow. But fifty little vinyl figures in one glass jar one glass fish bowl is a lot. Yeah. And then I had this kind of goes along with that whole music box dancer thing. And I'm hoping you have a memory of this too, something that had disappeared from my mind over the last because it probably hasn't happened in a good thirty five years or so.

I was scrolling through Twitter and somebody posted some people will never understand the feeling of buying their concert tickets at this place, and it was like a picture of a department store, and I was like, holy crap. Yeah, I used to go to J. C. Penney in Fashion Fair. That's where you bought concert tickets.

That's amazing. Did you ever do that? So I never did that my first Well, my dad may have in that he took me to. I don't know where he got his tickets for the first concert he took me to. That was like.

Stuff that I was interested in was Public Enemy and Primus and Anthrax they did a show together. I was there. That's awesome. Went that's a fantastic show. I mean, I still to this day look back on that show, I was really I mean, that was a really cool experience.

I don't know where he got his tickets for that, but after that, every single show, even small punk shows that I would were fairly well known bands perhaps, but coming to a small venue, I would get the tickets from Tower Records. Yeah. But so I missed out on the j C. Pennies as the place to get movie concert tickets. Yeah, And I was like, I kind of look at it at first, like what are you talking about?

And then those memories hit and I'm like, oh, yeah, go to j C. Penny and by go you know, like to where they do the gift wrap and stuff. Yeah, and by concert tickets. Oh, that's so cool. You know, it's probably a small window of time when that happened because of Tower Records and you could go, like, I remember when we got Beastie Boys tickets at the venue which I think was oh, yes, Royan, I believe, yeah, somewhere downtown anyway, So that was kind of a weird, like I'd completely forgotten that we did that.

That's awesome. I to this day, the last show that I that we and the family went to in Fresno was Kiss. When Kiss came through the last time on their supposed final tour, I purposefully went to the window at the Save Arts Center to buy the tickets. I could have bought them online and paid the extra fee to the service charge or whatever, but going to the window and buying tickets is something is definitely a dying experience, and it was very cool to go and buy those tickets at the window. It just gave me that feeling.

Well, that's nice because you can do that since you're close by. Yeah, that's true. It's right around the corner from my job. Also, I want to apologize if there's any background noise today. I've got the windows open because it's nice here today been a little warm, and we'll only get hotter as the weeks progress.

And it's garbage Day, so there will be garbage tricks. Garbage Day interview fans of Silent Night Deadly Night Part two out there. Yeah, I've got the windows open too, so there could be noises from Ori and as well. Let's oh, unless you have anything you need to bring up from last time or no. I will talk a little bit more about this later.

I think I had a real intense nostalgia moment when Super seven released their Wave two of their sesame street reaction figures, and I had to get on that right away. That was a very pleasurable nostalgia moment for me. I got guys Smiley, Lefty the Salesman, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch and Oscar. You know, when people complain about the twenty dollars for a reaction figure, they could have easily charged forty dollars for that Oscar the Grouge figure. It is so well made, and it is beautifully painted, and it's it's spectacular.

I'm going to disagree with you on that. You would be the only person buying it at forty dollars, I think so, I wouldn't maybe or a three inch I'm telling you the mass produced toy. Here's the difference. I'm going to disagree. There's a Cookie Monster in that wave and it's very basic.

I wouldn't say it's spectacular at all. I would only I would say they should only charge about twelve dollars for that one. And it's bigger than the Oscar of the Rutch. But Oscar, like I mean it when I say it, it's it's a spectacular figure. It's they really spent a lot of time on the paint application.

You can tell there's a huge difference in quality from that figure and the lesser quality of that wave Cookie Monster. I think that there would be people who would spend more than twenty dollars, how about that. I'll just say more than twenty dollars on that figure alone, just because of the quality of it. It's a spectacular figure. Well, it definitely worth the twenty bucks.

Definitely worth the twenty bucks. Give you happy happy? Not would anyone want to be happy when you could be gritchy? All right, so let's get into the door. Ah, Yes, which one of these categories should we dive into first?

I think we could go in order, okay, because the last one is the most is the darkest one. Everything leading up to that one's pretty run of the mill for people who collect, who ride that nostalgia wave and collect based on that, or simply collect because they feel they have that urgency to collect. And then the last one I think is probably the most problematic aspect of being a toy collector. All right, So give us that first category, all right, So the plight of the completionist, this is something that I have not really had a problem with I have I have. I'm pretty good about only wanting particular characters from a line.

I'm saying this knowing full well that I'm going to be hypocritical in just a moment when it comes to a line or an IP, like a series of characters in an IP. I'm pretty okay with not needing to get certain things. For example, a character in the Masters of the Universe Origins line was just released through MATEL Creations and it's like a MATEL Creations online exclusive, and the name of this character is Extendar. And for people who are fans of the Masters of the Universe, they might be they might be thinking, oh, this guy, he's not a true Master's collector if he's not going to get Extendar, well, I just have no connection nostalgia connection to Extendar. He came out late in the line and I was kind of moving away from it as a collector or, as a young collector, a young enthusiast, So I have no problem not picking up a character.

I will say that I have had some pretty fortunate experiences in regards to origins and Masters, and that I've been doing these trades to get figures, so I do happen to that's the origins line is probably the closest thing I've had to having a complete a complete run of figures, but I usually am just aiming for the characters that I want. Yeah, this is I've struggled with this before, and that it sort of trickles down into some of the other dark sides of this at some point. And I'll use let's say New Migos as an example. When Figures Toy Company got the license to do DC Comic Superheroes in the mego format and re released most of the original DC characters as you know, like reproduction figures not and they have whole different kinds now because they did Batman sixty six and they've done all this.

I mean they have hundreds And at first it was like, oh, great, these look exactly like the old ones. They're released in the same figures. Let's get and then they just it wasn't too hard to stop because there were just so many. Yeah, and it's like I can't keep up with this. I haven't bought one of those in years and years and years.

I mean I can't think of other specific lines, but just that idea of variants and and part of that is the companies being to be cynical about it, to want money. I mean, you could say the same thing about Super seven. They released the same figures in different color ways. Oh yeah all the time. You know Universal Monsters just for one example, in multiple color ways glow in the dark.

Oh yeah, there's got to be at least two or three waves of Universal Monsters from them. And if you're a Universal Monster guy, you're going to want all those I guess probably. So yeah, I just look at it and go, no, I'm not even going to get started if you're just going to keep making them in different color ways. And that goes for Japanese Vinyl two, because oh yeah, that molding and all of that upfront cost is prohibitive to releasing small batch figures. So if you've got the molds, you might as well just use a different color vinyl and sell it at the same price, and you've at least cut out that initial cost.

So and you know, all that stuff goes into this. But yeah, I would say I stopped being a completionist at least fifteen years ago just because mainly because of money, Like I just can't keep doing this Oh, I'm going to have to miss out on this. You're saying you would be a completionist if money was no object. Oh, I'm I mean if I won the lotto or something, I'm sure I'm going to go and get whatever I wanted. I mean, I'm not gonna lie about that.

I'm not going to be like you wouldn't know there would be signs there you go, Yeah, I mean so in a similar way, although I will say this, Greedo is a good example, you know, going back to our first episode, if I was going to commit to being a completionist for Greedo, there's a lot of sort of crappy versions of Greto out there that I would feel the urgency to acquire. Sometimes that's a good limit for me, is that the quality of a particular version of something keeps me from getting it. Now, that's not always the case if it's Merman, for example, because releases of Merman are less frequent and more frequent these days, but have been less frequent a version of anytime a version of Merman comes out, I'm going to be interested in getting that.

So when it comes to a character, like particular characters, that's where the hypocrisy comes in for me. I could potentially try to be a completionist for a particular character. I have so many Skeletors it's ridiculous, and I don't have them all, and I'm okay with not having them all. But there are so many versions of Skeletor. I can't even visualize the different versions in my brain, like I'm just thinking about it right now, though I know I have just alone three different reaction versions of Skeletor.

Speaking of Super Seven, that's one of the things I struggle with. If I'm in love with a particular character, I will want to get each version of that that does come out, which can be problematic, especially since there are some companies like Mondo that makes such expensive versions of some of these characters that I and others love. I don't think I could say I have a complete set of anything right that I collect. Maybe if I thought a little harder about it, or I had had these categories a week ago, Yeah, maybe something. But I don't have every Beatles album, for example, I don't have any Devo album.

Right. It's nice to have at least a certain sense of I can stop here. That's good because a lot of people don't. Yeah, this is exactly this is where we get into the dark aspect of being a completionist. There are probably, though I don't think I know any of them, but there are probably people that have every single Disney Funko Pop.

Yeah, just because it's a Disney character. It's under the Disney umbrella that includes Marvel now, that includes Muppets, that includes Star Wars, that includes all the Disney movies, all the Disney characters. And I can imagine this, and I've seen pictures online of people's like Funko Pop collections where it's like an entire room where the walls the walls are floor to ceiling. That to me is I think Funko pops are particularly dangerous. They look really nice as a wall because most people keep them in their boxes, and they put out so many obscure characters that align with certain ips that you could every time I go in and I see I go into Target and I see like an old school Disney character like Mickey Mouse or Goofy or Donald Duck, it's very tempting for me.

I have to think, what are my How can I best limit myself? So who of those characters is my favorite, and of course for me, it's Donald Duck. So I'm like, okay, well I'll grab a Donald Duck instead of getting Goofy and Mickey and Minnie and Daisy and needing to have those because they are all they all look good together, or I feel like I need to have all of them. And there are people who do that, yeah, which is terrifying. I mean they end up on the show Hoarders, they do.

I did see, you know. I was thinking about this, what if I was a Super seven completionist, or what if I was a Funko completionist, or what if I was a not categorizing my completionist act to an IP but to a style of action figure reaction or funco. And there are people, there's got to be there's got to be people out there that it's like, oh, it's another reaction figure. I got to have it. That would be insane to me.

And that's when the money really becomes concerning, Like I worry about folks that don't have that kind of filter. Money is the background thing for all of this. And yes, another good reason for me not to be a completionist or to worry about the next category, which is the illusion of exclusivity. If you've been around as long as you and I have been around and been interested in vintage toys or things from our childhood, like we have for the amount of time that we have, you know that exclusivity is not always what it appears to be at first. That extendar, for example, it's a matel Creation's exclusive, and so the urgency to get that for some people is, wow, well this is I'm only going to be one of a certain number of people that are going to get this.

Therefore, you will it go up in value? Am I part of an exclusive club? That is if you've been around long enough and I'll stop here in a moment, But if we've been around long enough, you know that exclusivity is ninety percent of the time and illusion. You're gonna find it at a yard sale ten years from now, You are going to find it on eBay for five dollars twenty years from now. There are the rare occasions that that's the ten percent where these things actually do increase in value.

But most of the time, going back to power the Forest, so we talked about in the last episode, most of the time these things the excitement is there because this thing's new, This is a new version of something. You feel like you've got to get everyone. That completionist element kicks in because this could go away forever, and then twenty thirty years down the line, they're three dollars in mint condition in some D and D store. That's the truth of it. Yeah, and a lot of this stuff though, when you think back to childhood toys, the exclusivity comes later, yes, And that's when we get into eBay and all that, because those toys were produced hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to Star Wars for example, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of figures can are produced.

Same with Migo, they were probably smaller numbers, but still you can still find them. Yeah. For me, it's more going back to Japanese vinyl where and they are pretty exclusive because maybe maybe five hundred of them are made. Then again, as I just mentioned, they're going to reuse those molds and release it in another color way, probably pretty soon. And this is where I sort of would get bitten and lost interest in that because they're hard to find unless there's someone importing them, you know, Like that little Hamburger was kind of a nightmare for me to get that Japan, the one that looks like a McDonald lan hamburger.

Oh yes, it's not an exclusive figure, and he's very clear that it's not exclusive. They do runs of them all the time, but every time there's a run, they sell out immediately, and it's like, like, you know, I missed it, and then that frustration comes in, and it's it's that not the plight of the completionists, but it's I need to get this right now because I don't know when it'll be available again, or I don't know if all the same thing will happen. And I missed it a couple of times, and then when I did finally get it, there was a whole screw up with the ailien and all that. That was frustrating. But a lot of those Vinyl toys, you know, they produce in small numbers and that's it.

And it's like, I can't compete with these people who have ends with oh yeah, people that are bringing them in to the country, or the people that are producing them, and I have no desire to like try to weasel my way into knowing these people and getting an and it's just it turns into a slimy thing, which to me is how investing works in the first place. I mean, we think about like real estate investment and the stock market. It's just gross. To me. I have no interest in any of that.

I have no interest in any of that. You neither. I don't like to I don't like the idea of not knowing. I don't really have good luck when it comes to gambling. So if I'm going to gamble on extendar and to me is a waste of what is it like twenty something bucks, thirty bucks after shipping and handling or whatever.

I don't feel like investing on this thing that's a gamble just because the potential of it being worth something later on. Life has shown me that the worth of something, or the genuine exclusivity of something is often unpredictable. Who would have known that? Going back to Masters of the Universe, who would have known that scare Glow would have been a character that appeared late in the original Master's line, would have been a character that was so highly sought after later on and worth so much money that to me is mind boggling. I had zero interest in this character because he came out around the same time that I'm pretty sure he came out around the same time as Extendar, that one of those last two waves, and I didn't have any interest.

And then nearly forty years later, that is one of the vintage figures that is probably worth more than I mean, definitely worth more than others. It's highly sought after, it's hard to find him with his cape and so on and so forth. Who would have known. And then there's this other dilemma that happens with exclusivity, which is, oh, this happened with the origins triclops. He came out, he was released in the stores whose heart barely you could barely find him, and then he was showing up on Amazon for double triple the price.

And then it turns out that Mattel just re releases him later on. And the impatience of collectors can be what hobbles them. It's the urgency to have it right at that moment because it may go away for ever, and that gamble of spending more or at full price, just to make sure you have it, and then to find out later on it's not that valuable. It wasn't It was just pretty much in every store, and then you see it at Ross a year later, you know. So that's one of the problems of that illusion of exclusivity.

Well, and you're kind of crossing over already into the next category talking about worth, and I'll just say what it is collecting as an investment, and that never plays a part in what I get. But I see the ramifications of that mindset. And we've talked about this and ojast Yeah, and this is one of the big frustrations for me and why I don't really kind of actively collect stuff anymore, and that is that speculation and it has turned collecting into for me, into a negative thing. So two pretty recent examples, and we've discussed this on the show, that McDonald land or that McDonald's Happy Meal thing, the adult happy Meal with the cactus plant, flea mark, whatever the fuck the name of that. I ever remember going that first day they were available here and being shut out, and I was like, I'm not I'm not fucking I'm not driving all over town.

I'm not certain, you know. And I did, though I looked online a few times, huh. And then I'm like, no, not driving to go get a meal I don't really want. And I like McDonald's as a treat from time to time. I'm not going to go buy a meal that I don't really want to get this four inch tall stupid figure.

Because everybody else is doing this and they're not doing it. I'm gonna say at least I'm gonna be generous here and say at least five of the people doing this are not doing it because they want the toy. They're doing it so they can turn around, come home and put it on fucking eBay. That drives me nuts. The same thing happened when so you keep referring to mo Tu.

I'm going to keep referring to Migo. So when they actually came back as a company, not figures toy company, not Mattel who released a line of Mego like figures back like fifteen years ago or so. But Migo comes back as a company. They start releasing some Universal Monster figures, other pop culture stuff, Charlie's Angels and all this, The Wizard of Oz. They're going to be at Target, and so I would go after dropping Kleo off at school, and I'd hit a target that was sort of on the way to work and search for them, and mainly search for them in vain.

People were putting out like the code so you can look it up and all this shit, and I'm like, after a while, I'm like, what am I doing? I can't do this anymore. It's not worth it. It's so frustrating to get there and know that comic book guy from The Simpsons has ransacked the store, the employees about what they have back in stock, gotten as much as he can fill in his cart, and taken them to sell on the secondary market. And I'm not I'm not going to compete with that.

I can't do it. It's sickening. Luckily, they expanded their market out of Target and they have a store on Amazon now and you can get them up for basically the market value and all that. And so most of the ones that I've purchased in the last few years or so have just been like, I'm just going to order it on Amazon. I'm not going to go trucking around town to try and find these stupid things.

It's not worth my time and energy. If you've been to stores recently as I have, there have often been signs on the toy that say, please only buy one of this item and leave the remainder of these four others. Something along those lines. That's because there were inundated recently with this. These flippers, like they buy the toy at regular price and they sell it on eBay for double or triple the price.

They are vampires sucking on or attaching themselves to that the I'm having a stroke. They attach them themselves to what they believe that collectors are going to be doing, which is really wanting to get it. They go to the store, they don't see anything on the shelf, so they go to eBay next, and guess who's going to have it? The guy who is just in there buying twenty right, I mean that's what I yeah, which I have no interest in competing with. I'm not going to get Target or Walmart or wherever.

Right when they open the doors, go to that spot and again, like I say, bug, the people that work there and what's in stock in the back buy it all up. The most recent example for me, and this is kind of funny, opening today, the day we're recording, which is May twenty fourth, the new Garfield movie opens. Oh yeah, yeah, And I have talked about Garfield on the show. I have zero interest in this. Why Chris Pratt is being tagged to voice.

All of these characters in animated movies. I'll never understand. But anyway, I was scrolling through Instagram last week. I start seeing images of these plush toys for the movie and I'm like, oh, those are really, really, really cute. So I clicked on one of them and saw, oh, these are coming to Walmart, which I don't shop at very rarely, once maybe twice every six months.

Sometimes I go and get Cleo's lunch stuff there. We are target snobs, do not go to Walmart usually. I was like, Oh, that's interesting, and so I went and looked them up and yeah, they're Walmart Exclusive Garfield plush and you shirts and all these other things. The plush figures they're eight inches ten bucks, and I'm like, man, that's that's a really reasonable price and they're really fucking adorable. Yeah, I'm going to get one.

So I look and see. And I usually go to the Walmart if I go, because it's on the way home, the one on Herndon right, and I drive by it every day after I drop Cleo off at school. I look, they don't have them there, but they do have them at the one on Ashland, which is pretty close to our house. Thursdays, I drive kind of close to that one. I come home from the office.

I stop by the office on Thursdays and then I drive home, I'll go by there and check them out, and so I kind of keep my eye on it that Nope, they disappear from the Ashland store and they never show up on the Ingram store. And I'm like, let's weird that they're not getting them. So I keep looking, and now they're at the Ingram store, but only the there's a baby Garf and a regular, a grown up Garfield, and the baby one is fucking adorable and got it. It's got it, it got its hooks in me. Yeah, well, they don't have that one at Ingram, but they have the other one.

I'm like, okay, fine, I'll do that one of the days I'm driving home ten bucks. I mean, how can you beat that for an eight inch plush? And then so I look, I check again, and nope, they're all gone. And now they're not even listed on Walmart. They're only listed below from third party sellers four three times the price asolutely already I'm like, okay, well, you know, maybe their stock count is wrong.

I actually went to the one yesterday on Ingram totally cleared out. They only have like this other baby one that's not animatronic but you know, does does stuff, and it's like twenty five bucks. I'm like not interested. So I go home and I check again. I'm like, well, maybe they're back at seeing I'm doing this and as I know, why are you doing this?

Mark? Yeah, that's part of this problem. I'm like, well, maybe they haven't back at the Ashland one again. No, but they're back. The baby one is back up to buy for delivery that had disappeared, and so I'm like, okay, well let me see.

So I click on it. I added to my cart and bought it, so paid a little bit more for shipping than I would have if I had gone into the store. And it's supposed to show up today. Yeah, And I'm like all the time, going why am I even bothering? Right?

Because it has it has its roots in nostalgia for me as a Garfield fan, as a younger person, and it's fucking adorable. I should I should send you the picture. I guess. My point of this is that there's no way that those sold out of every value. I mean, you know what I'm looking for nearby stores.

It's showing me not just Fresno, it's showing me around the area. They're all gone. Yeah, I'm like, there is absolutely no way that those were all purchased for kids who are so into Garfield and so happy that this movie is opening. There's no way. Yeah, these were scooped up by flippers.

And I'm glad you use that term because that is the appropriate term to sell. And guess where they're showing up? Yeah, eBay for three, four, five times the price because now they're gone, because now you can't go get them at the store for your kid who may actually want one exactly. Guess what this is where you have to go now. Yeah, this goes beyond just the physical shopping and the physical hunting.

This is also a problem online. People are utilizing bots to buy all the inventory before, like within the two seconds that something goes up online for regular folks to purchase for themselves. I don't know the ins and outs of how this works for Walmart, but Walmart and Target exclusives have been very difficult to find during that first month or so that something is a Target or Walmart exclusive, sometimes not even showing up in the stores. Sometimes not even showing up at all, sometimes never showing up. Then one month, two months later, they're suddenly on clearance.

It's crazy. Yeah, that's part of what I had written down as something here living in Fresno, especially as a kid. So that whole Yoda story I told about going every day, Oh yeah, there's toys. Because we are a smaller market, especially back then, we weren't going to get everything that La New York, San Francisco, yeah, all the the big cities, Chicago, all that, but even just in California, you know, La San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, all these other cities, their toy stores are going to get stocked first with this stuff. We're going to be way down the line, not as bad anymore.

We're the fourth or fifth largest city in California now. But that popped up in my head as a thing of like, you know, why did I have to go there every day when I know the toy is out to find this Yoda? And it's the same thing here with the migos recently, like Fresno's not going to get these. I'm seeing pictures of these on the Mego museum board, the message board, you know, people across the country. Are there's walls of Migos, you know, I might go and find one.

Frankenstein. Yeah. I think partly they see themselves as doing a service Flippers maybe for a Walmart and a really small town they don't even get these Garfield toys. But you're not selling it at costs. The defense, the Flippers defense, is I spent the money on gas to go out there to all the different stores to get them for you.

You're gonnabody ask you to do that. You're nobody asked you to do that, asshole, as you can order from Walmart. I'm gonna be fully transparent here. I had back when Origins was still fairly new, there was this two pack that came out called the Rise of Evil two pack, and it was Skeletor and Keldor and you could interchange the parts and it's very very cool, and it was nearly impossible to find. I got two of them.

I put one up on my eBay to bid on, and the amount that people bid to get that quadrupled the amount that I paid for that Rise of Evil two pack. That's fine, it's what the market will bear. Here's the real kicker, people and This is why you need to be careful about flippers and be careful about the illusion of exclusivity. Six months later, the Rise of Evil two packs were overwhelming targets and they were all on clearance for more than fifty percent off. I felt I actually felt guilty.

Yeah, well, that's because you have a conscious and that's not what any That's not what these people feel. I know. And I feel like there's a lot of folks out there, and these are successful business people too. I guess that don't have a conscience, but I just can't do that. Are they successful business people?

I wouldn't. I wouldn't classify them as business people. Yeah, I'm just thinking about I'm thinking about these the mindset of folks that I guess. I just don't understand it. I'm trying to That's not successful business person behavior.

As far as I'm conserved. We can argue semantics, but I would never describe somebody. I would never describe these people in positive terms. What is success? Did you see the fucking baby Garfield picture I sent't you?

Yeah, I'm looking at it right now and I I'm in love. Is he not adorable? He's ridiculously adorable? But This is sad. I mean, this is like, this is so sad to me.

I'm twenty five years old. People, this is what's sad. Not that you love this, because I love it too now, but I've seen it. But what's really depressing to me is this dude, and I know what's a dude going into the store, rolling out of bed, rolling over the worst episode ever, going into the store, filling up a Walmart grocery cart with thirty of these or more and putting his or their entire paycheck that they get from their normal job, working wherever they work, and then going home and making a shit ton of money off of people who genuinely want this, either for their kids or for themselves. That to me is super depressing.

And that's why when I saw that, and this is a recent experience, I saw the sign and target on the wall. It was right next to the newer G I. Joe classified figures, and I don't collect those. I always look because it's like, ooh, what am I going to see out there now? But there was that sign made me feel like good.

Maybe these stores have our back to a certain extent, realizing there's a serious problem and letting us know that hey, we're gonna keep an eye on thesease. But I do know just from experience, because I have gone in. I have been that guy that's gone in with the ISBN number to be like, hey, I think you might have this somewhere. I'm not the person who's going to buy all of them, but I'm gonna definitely want to take one of those home with me. Yeah, I've asked about things like the Migos.

And of course that's probably also why the sign is up there, Runnie, Yes, exactly. You can't do anything about somebody buying something and reselling it. That's what America is. It's capitalism, one o one. It's probably because they get complaints from people.

You were supposed to have this, yes, multiples of this, and now I get here ten minutes later and they're all gone. That's what they're dealing with. And what they want to curb is being having their employees or poor employees complained to about not having something. They don't care what's happening on the secondary market. I one hundred percent agree.

I do want to go out Baby Garfield some more because well, I want to. I want to finish this one statement and then well then we'll get to Baby Garfield because he is adorable. This one recent experience, I went in looking for something. They said it was in stock, but they couldn't bring it out because it was before the release date. Went in again not too long after, and it was still before the release date.

I was just curious and they were all gone. So it's not just happening on the floor. It's also happening behind the scenes. Oh yeah, people have. If you want to be super cynical about it, they pay somebody.

Yeah, I'll give you twenty bucks if you go get that for me. Yeah exactly. I mean, what are you gonna do? What are you going to do? Going to target?

You know? So I'm a fifty five year old man. This Baby Garfield on a FedEx truck right now coming home to me, and it's going on my bed. Of course. I have one squish mellow of Mathra that.

Oh that's cute. Grlita and Kleo got me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and now I have Baby Garfield. Who if people when you listen to that, I'm sure I'll use it as an image in reference to this episode when it comes out. But I'm sorry if you don't love Baby Garfield. Yeah, this is a really adorable thing.

It is, and it's ten bucks. It's ten bucks. Of course you're going to put this on your bed. Can't buy an eight inch plush figure for ten bucks? No, it's it's a really good deal and it's really a beautiful thing to see.

I mean, I have I have a very deep nostalgia connection to Garfield as well, and there's something about Okay, so I didn't buy this, but I'm kind of regretting that I didn't. This thing was about twenty bucks though, But at Target, I saw a classic Garfield with such pups on his paws. Kid Robot makes those, yeah, and it was like twenty twenty five bucks, and I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna put this on my car window. But they have a couple of different versions. I actually went on their site last night to see what they have, and they've got a bunch of stuff that's nothing's under ten bucks.

I'll tell you that, from like sixteen to forty something dollars. You know, they've got him laying on a pizza should be Alasagnia, but it's a pizza. All this other stuff a bunch of plush figures out. That's cute. I love that again.

Ten Bucks. You can't beat that, man, No, that's really good. You're too fat, Garfield. I'll bet you haven't seen your feet in years. I have feet.

Another negative side to collecting that I don't have on this list, but I guess it can piggy back off of the illusion of exclusivity and also thinking about these things as an investment is the fact that companies are well aware of the nostalgic pull for people to be purchasing these things. How they milk a character and try to give as much of this character as possible. I fear for Garfield in a way, because you're hopefully I mean, it'll be nice to see an inundation of Garfield out there in the stores. Seeing that suction cump Garfield made feel good inside. And then I just immediately thought, they're doing this because they know that forty and fifty year olds are going to be all over it.

That's come up a few times before where a lot of the people that are working at these companies are doing this because they remember these things. Yes, absolutely remember that. Remember Stretch Armstrong. Hey, we own the we own the sense for that, well, yeah, why not make them again? Exactly has Bro with all the Kiinners stuff, all the retro figures.

It's like, well, we can make them again. Why not? I love these other people will buy them. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very cynical point of view, and I but accurate.

I think capitalism. As you said, if I worked at modern day Hasbro or Mattel, I'd be like, well, remember those great toys when we were killed. Absolutely, release the big wheel again, Release this again, release that again. Why not? People will buy them.

We bought Cleo a big Wheel because I never had one as a kid, and I was one of the things I obsessed over as a kid. She didn't have any inime if I bought that for her because I wanted a big wheel. Yeah, yeah. I was living vicariously through her. That's what we do.

That is what we do. When I found out that Faith had been watching Shira, it was like a revelatory moment. I was like, thank goodness, I can share this with her. And it was a very brief period of time where I could share it with her, but it was exciting to be able to share that. I never watched Voltron as a kid, but I watched it on Netflix, and then I ended up getting I think it was Mattel again had released a Voltron that you could put together, and I had missed it when it came out.

So even it's part of that whole Maddie collector thing, it's gone now, but you could buy all the separate lions and then put together a giant Vultron and they came with the figures and stuff. So I got Cleo. She played with them for quite a bit during that time. But yeah, it was something we could connect with and try and find on eBay and for you know, secondary market prices. Yeah, that goes back to what we talked about last time.

Black Sparrow books for me, Migos, I guarantee you one of those two things was the first thing I searched for when I got an eBay account, either some kind of Black Sparrow or Migo iron Man. Absolutely, And that was back when it was just auctions. There was no buy it now option. I don't know when that came in, but I remember being extremely relieved when they finally started doing that. Me too, me too, Like, oh, I can just get this, I don't have to deal with that whole thing.

That whole one plastic rock ball scenario of being out bit at the last second. And that's part of this whole deal for me, is that frustration of going to Target not finding any of the new Migos, going to Walmart and not finding Baby Garfield, you know, driving around, I can't I just can't do it anymore. And eBay was a constant source of frustration, losing out on auctions. But then you know, wait a little while, be patient, wait a little while, and find it for a decent buy it now price. I mean, these things happened.

So if you're going out, you're doing grocery shopping, and you swing by a Target, swing by a Walmart and you don't see what you want on the shelf, there's a good chance that five weeks later, when you're doing the same thing, you might see it. There. The fear of missing out, the idea that this is an exclusive thing that you're going to need to get right now, otherwise you're never going to get it. That urgency. Often it's a construct, it's something we've done to ourselves.

It's based on experiences we had as kids. This thing, whether it be Yoda or for me, skeletor beast Man. This thing you see other people have. You never see it in the stores. You missed out on that.

Yeah, if you're willing to wait forty years, you're going to get it. That whole idea I mentioned of us being a smaller market, and I saw somebody recently post about the Iron Man Mego figure, and like you said, I never saw this in stores. I have the same recollection because I remember seeing the ads in comic books for him and going, there's no real reason why I wouldn't have had that one versus some of the ones I did have. Right, Why was it never at the toys r us in Fashion Fair or at Arthur's Toys? Why you know, some of the figures like him and some of the other Marvel ones had shorter kind of lifespans within Mego, Like they weren't made from beginning to their end.

There was a window of time where they were made. And it's like, yeah, because the bigger markets got them. I didn't understand anything about that as a kid. Yes, I do have one now. It did take about well, maybe not forty years, but pretty close to getting one.

I was forty three when I got Skeletor and Beast man vintage figures for the first time. It was a good feeling and it was worth the weight, well worth the wait. I was going to reference a modern toy like just weight kids, but I don't know what any of them are, so I can't. Yeah, I mean the only modern toys that I can refer to are modern toys that are based on vintage toys. So collecting as an investment, which we're sort of straight away from, but that doesn't make any sense to me.

Yeah, that's a speculative market that really it's a gamble. If you're doing something as an investment, just be an investor, Just play the stock market. Don't buy things because a lot of them are just going to be worthless in forty years. Power of the Forests as an example. Power Force is a great example, and there could be people in nineteen ninety six who just hoarded that stuff and now cannot get rid of it exactly.

Yeah, they're giving it away. That's one of the problems of having that mindset. And you hear horror stories of like kids looking at toys in Target and some dude rolling by and just grabbing all of them in front of the kid buying toys Buying anything or collecting anything should be a joyful act, not alative investment act. Folks, if you're a flipper and you're listening to this, what you're doing is you're taking that. You are potentially eliminating a moment of joy for the next person by taking it off of the shelf.

Because there are people who still there are children and families and who aren't hunting on eBay for this stuff, but they do want to experience it. That's a bad thing. Take a look in your heart and find out why you're doing this. Come on, fuckers, because I think generally, for the most part, people really aren't. Maybe there are some who live in larger markets who make a living doing that, yeah, which to me is extremely sad.

But even if it's like a supplemental income, I don't know. I just you gotta. I really don't understand it. Yeah, I mean, here's what I'm okay with being a store. Like, if you want to sell toys, invest some money, get some merchant, I rent a storefront and sell those toys.

If you need to sell your if you're purchasing reaction figures to sell in your store directly from Super seven and they're normally twenty bucks, and you've got them for less than that, and you're charging twenty dollars and forty nine cents at your store. That's fine. You're providing a service for us to go to your store and get it, and you're gonna make some money off of it. But not everybody's gonna be able to buy this particular figure in the world, So I'm gonna sell it to you for double or triple the price on eBay. That's where it becomes frustrating and unhealthy.

Those are two completely different scenarios. I mean exactly plenty of stores that have a wholesale account with Super seven that sell me to or Funco or whoever. Yeah, that's a totally different scenario. Yeah, that is a service. What you're is a service.

What you're doing as a flipper is not a service exactly. This leads us directly into the next topic, which we've kind of touched on already, but fomo, the fear of missing out. This is a real problem. It feeds directly off of the idea or the illusion of extensivity. It feeds directly into the plight of the completionists and even for some collecting as an investment.

Missed opportunity has missed opportunity. How are you with balancing the fear of missing out in your life? I think I'm over it. Yeah, I've been over it for a while. Some of the examples that I've already given.

I can't keep up. I can't keep up with the production of things Mego the other Mego like companies just just too much. It's overwhelming. There's too much stuff I could have ever so much stuff. I've missed out on hundreds of figures already.

I'm not going to start worrying about that now. Almost missed out, but luckily, thankfully for you and a pretty decent price on eBay, didn't completely miss out on Cactus Plant Flea Market McDonald an McDonald adult Happy Toy, Meal Toys. Got a couple of those, But you know what, I would have been okay not getting any of them, because I can't. I can't handle the frustration anymore. If I hadn't gotten Baby Garfield, I'm sure life would have continued much the same as it has been for the last fifty five years.

So I don't feel like I'm missing out, you know, and you mentioned we don't think we've ever discussed the second wave of adult Happy Meal toys that came and went because they were the McNugget Buddies. Now there are ten McNugget Buddy toys you can collect, each with a removable costume to change and rearrange. Did you have any interest in those zero? Yeah, me too. Well here's the reason why though.

They weren't the McNugget buddies that we experienced when when they first arrived as Happy Meal toys, they were Muppet buddies, Muppet Nugget Buddies based on contemporary designs or yeah, I can't remember who the designer was of those didn't quite do it for me. I was like, I'm not even gonna bother. I don't care. Some do not care. Now here's something that I did miss out on that I that was cool that they re released were the Halloween buckets.

The Halloween Bucket Happy Meals. See, I don't have any connection with those. So I was like, again, I'm not going to try because I know that people are going and being idiot and snatching them all up to drive there, go through the drive through, or go inside the store. Whatever. Oh no, we're all out of those.

And then be like, now I have a happy meal, but I don't want here's going back to the beginning, which is the completionist issue. If it's Grimace, I'm gonna wait and fucking line, I'm probably gonna get ten happy meals just to get a fucking Grimace. It's Grimace. Like that is where I'm weak. I'm weak for particular character.

If I had that same feeling for the Halloween bucket or for the McNugget figures, I would have done that too, But I didn't have that same nostalgic pull to get that. I mean, you know, I will say that the Grimace is pretty spectacular. Grimace with four eyes works really well. If it had just been like a PVC Grimace, just to have another Grimace, a new version, I would have probably done the same thing. But here's my answer to this, Like, it wouldn't have been the fear of missing out.

I'm more driven by the excitement of having it, of being able to hold it in my hand. Because I know that you know this too, that ten years from now, it's going to take a while for the cactus plant flea market things, but they are going to show up, you know, when we have these street sales right in front of my house two times a year. I know that in one of these days, one of those cactus plant flea market figures is going to be in some and I'm gonna grab it for two bucks and it's gonna feel great. And even if I have it already, that's true. Yeah, to be honest, they weren't going for all that.

I mean, some people were selling them for ridiculous prices, but at first, Yeah, there was a wide range. And the one, the pair that I got for us was yeah, better than I expected. It was well worth it. Yeah, no price gouging or anything. And there were a number of them that were out there.

But there are some people like that Blues Brother's book. Why are some people selling this for three hundred dollars, five hundred dollars yeah, and some people are selling it for twenty five Yeah, unless they're signed by like the Whole Cast or something, Right, how do you reconcile all that price? I don't get it. I see that all the time too. There's certain things that pop up and they're like, you know, they were even when I was hunting for the Power of the Force Grido on eBay.

There are people selling the Power of the Force Grido for like twenty five bucks. I'm like, dudes, don't you see what other people is selling this for. They're all mint conditioned people, and it'll be up there forever. I've mentioned something, a Diva related item that is in a bundle of toys and it's been on eating for at least five years now, four years at the same price, and I'm like, dude, cut it in half. Cut it in half.

Why is that the price for you? Yeah, if you cut it in half, you'd probably sell this bundle immediately. Absolutely. If somebody maybe just wants one or two of them, I would probably buy it at that price just for the debo the Boogie Boy figure. Yeah, but not for what it's going for and has been going for for the last four or five years.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, it doesn't. Now. I do still have the fear of missing out does still occur to me quite often, mainly because Mattel keeps releasing Masters of the Universe stuff. I'm always afraid it's not going to show up when they first see it pop up online.

I often pre order things and then I end up later on canceling those pre orders for the most part, because I know from it. It just takes me a while to remember that most of this stuff did show up either cheaper later on, or I ran into it at the store, or something happened where I was able to find it. Sometimes they show up a year later at ross or at five below or something, and that's always a really that to me is a better feeling than getting something at full price right away. I don't know what that why that is for me, but maybe it's just because I'm I'm not rich and I like to save. I like to save some money the fear of missing out.

Like for me just recently, there are several things that were released that are coming out this summer for Masters of the Universe. They're opened up for pre order, and I've already canceled some of them because I know, I just know from experience that it'll show up at some point, so I still get it. I'm still victimized by that fear of missing out. I mean, it pops up, but I usually just think can I afford it right now? Yeah?

Yeah? Is it worth the hassle? And a lot of times both of those answers is no, yep. I don't even really think about, well, this will show up later or you know, you might find this again sometime. I honestly don't even like consider that.

It just that's good. I'm going to hold off if it's meant to be. It's meant to be, I don't know. Yeah, I just can't do it anymore. And I have to be really careful with what I spend money on.

And like, I haven't even ordered that Oscar yet, and I'd really like one, But with Super seven, it's not so much of a rush because I know they're going to keep making them. Well, it's not a finite thing, and I know some of the stuff sells out after a while, but it's no big push to like have that immediately. It was either, to be honest with you, it was either that or Baby Garfield, and I went with Baby Garfield. Hey. I think about apparently sometimes in the past when I definitely seem to have more disposable income, But now even something that's twenty dollars, I kind of have to check myself on yeah, because it's not going to just be twenty dollars for one thing.

It's going to be shipping and tax and everything else. Absolutely, I think all the frustration over the years, and that being even more amplified now with competing with everybody for the same things. It's just like, you know, it's just a thing I can't do that. It's not worth it. It's not worth the headache.

Most stuff is not worth the headache. I agree. Most stuff is definitely not worth the headache. Like I said, there's a very good chance it'll just pop up somewhere and it's the right timing for you. That is more often than not the case.

And plenty of things never do, and that's fine too. I saw Bert and Ernie on the shelf at Target a couple weekends ago, and these had already that wave one sold out pretty fast. I saw them too. The Yip Yip Aliens, however, keep selling out. They've re released them once already.

I have that fear, here's the fear again coming back. I have that fear about Oscar just because he's so amazing. Yeah, and if he does, that's okay too, And I can live with that regret, like, oh, I should have bought that when I had chance and didn't. And I don't know, maybe having had so much of that as a kid, I don't really it doesn't persuade me anymore. It's like, well, you've dealt with this for forty something years.

You never had Migo Planet of the Apes figures when you were a kid, and you survived, and you have them now, and that's okay. Even if you didn't have them now, that's okay because I don't do anything with them. You look at the other thing you talked about earlier, you know, having that thing in your hand. So much of it for me is the build up, and then when something finally gets here, it's kind of like, okay, well now I put it down and I have it, and that's kind of it. And so that's another part of it too, where yes, I'm looking at my three plastic rock balls and I still get a big kick out of that whole thing and that story and having them.

My childhood Grito, my childhood Yoda are sitting right there. I've got a Micrond on this desk and that Tomlin cyclops and all that stuff. But I don't I don't know. I don't sit there and grab them and look at them and get them in joy. It's a weird thing.

We're getting it sometimes is a big part of it. And the anticipation and then like when that baby Garfield shows up, I'll hold it and be happy and then sort of move on. That's okay, So there's a sub section that not on. But there's a sub section to fear of missing out that I didn't put on the list. But we can talk about it briefly, and you're hitting on it right now, which is buyer's remorse.

I mean, that's not what I'm describing, but you're describing the opposite of buyer's remorse. That's when you if you know when you hold that in your hand that just by looking at it and holding in your holding it in your hand, you will always acquire a kind of joy from it, then you know for sure that there's not going to be any buyer's remorse for that at all. The ability to anticipate buyer's remorse is something that you that you learn over time, that a person learns over time. My suggestion, and you already understand this, my suggestion to collectors out there is really listen to that inner voice. Right now with Oscar the Grouch, you are listening to that inner voice because you might you could potentially have buyer's remorse if you get it in your hand and you're like, eh, what is this.

You just spend twenty bucks in more on this thing, and you were just doing it because of the fear of missing out, or because you know Ronnie got one and you're like, oh, I should get it, and then you get it and you're like, Eh, Initially you were having hesitancy, which you actually listened to. You listen to that hesitant voice, and that kept you from buying it. There's a ninety percent chance, I've said ninety percent twice on the show already today, there's a ninety percent chance that that voice in your head was absolutely right. And so when I take things off of my pre order list, it's because I'm trying to listen to that voice that's going to regret it once I get it. That is that's that's real, and a lot of people have learned to ignore that voice.

Oh yeah, well, that's that immediacy that especially these days, it's relatively easy to get stuff that you I mean, we've been talking about how it's not so easy to get some want necessarily, but I think compared to when we were kids, it's much easier to get things now, just with the Internet and being able to order directly from places or even just order off Amazon. You can have a book show up at your house in a day or two, you know that you can't find anywhere in your town, or something to that effect. Yeah, or a toy that you know, you know, I mean, we don't do we have toy stores in this area anymore? Yeah, other than Professor Toy and River Park, not really. And they don't stock Star Wars stuff.

So if I want a Star Wars thing, I'm ordering it directly from Hasbro or from Amazon. Yeah. The only toy store that I can do are like secondhand toy stores or the toy stores within supermarkets, which I don't really count in my eyes, but that's where most people get their stuff. So buyers remorse I don't really struggle with because I don't necessarily buy everything that I see that I immediately think I want. It's not so much I'm listening to an inner voice.

It's like I don't really have the money to do this. There's that the money should be a reality for a collector. They should be thinking about that first and foremost. Even if you have the money, you have to think, well, what are the chances I'm going to love this later on, and so time can be a collector's best friend. You're an expert at this.

You're better at this than I am. When we talk often about these things, and we do talk often, whether it be text messages are here or when we get together. But it's like, oh, this thing I'm interested in, and then there's usually a period where you're mulling it over, you're looking at it on eBay, you're thinking about it, you're contemplating. Even with Baby Garfield, as soon as you saw it, you took some time to think about it, and then you determine what from this group of plushies and releases promoting this movie appealed to you the most. You chose the Baby Garfield and it took you a while to figure that out.

That's definitely not going to be a buyer's remort SCCES experience for you. You're going to get it, and plushies are different because you don't really it's less. Buying them on the secondary market is not as appealing because who knows you had them beforehand, or what they're going to smell like. At least with toys, plastic toys, you can clean them off. But I think that having that inner narrative is really important for people who are collecting.

Allow that voice in your head to say hold off. I had that experience recently. I put the video on my channel and it's a trip to San Francisco or where I went to the Super seven store and got to see the weirdest trash Squatch and the weirdest zomb Beef see them in person. I could have ordered them online when they first came out and just done that because of the fear of missing out. But I had this inner voice in me saying, wait until you see them.

And I'm glad I listened to that voice because I was able to buy the and then not regret buying them if I had purchased them and ordered them and they came and they didn't quite do it for me, because online images are always more more appealing than reality because they get professional photographers and stuff like that. So I'm glad I waited so I wouldn't have that buyer's remorse. Now that takes us to the final element of our discussion, which piggybacks off of buyer's remorse in some way. I guess what's the last category. This is the darkest category, folks, The dark side of collecting really is.

And you could put in the clip from the graduate here plastics. I just want to say just one word, Yes, sir listening, yes you plastics exactly. How do you mean it's a great future in plastics? Think about me? What do you think about Yes, I will, I've said, that's a deal.

Honestly, this is the thing that my inner voice is something I pay a lot of attention to. But I have had genuine struggles ignoring this in my brain. And that is the real problem of collecting plastic, of promoting by supporting financially, the production of plastics is almost like deciding kill the planet. To kill the planet, and this is totally ridiculous. I've never really even considered this.

I have. I have been thinking about it a lot, and honestly, just to be totally transparent with our listeners, I totally fucking ignore it because obviously I just do. Hey, Yeah, It's like it really is lily behind you at that case that is filled with plant I know, and it's like there's something about it that outweighs the feeling I should really be having, which is I got to stand up against these corporations that are polluting the planet. And the only thing I can tell myself is that if the floods come, oh, I needed some twine, and I've got a pretty good raft that can probably hold all four of us, and it'll all be here long after we are absolutely. And that's the other thing that bothers me too sometimes is I'm supporting the production of this stuff that will never go away.

Yeah, that's a hard pill to swallow. It's interesting. It's also what has allowed you to collect a lot of the things that you go. I mean, these plastics to have a lifetime in a way. They are breaking down as we speak, yes, but for the most part they maintain.

Again, I'm looking at my original Star Wars figures that are on here, My Tomlin Cyclops that is close to fifty years old, the micro not that's close to fifty years old. Yeah, they're still here. They are and they will be grades. But not in such a fashion. Is that these things are falling apart in front of our eyes or disintegrating in front of our eyes.

Yeah, and even that degradation is not good for the planet. So yeah, cast off from these items is no good. Hey, I just read that in a study of microplastics, one hundred percent of the men that they studied had microplastics in their testicles. Oh yeah, I just all got plastic in our balls. I just heard that.

I think I heard that on NPR. Actually, we've got we've got plastic in our balls. That is that is very real. And also on NPR maybe the title of this episode plastic in our Balls, The dark side of collecting plastic in our balls. There's also I heard on NPR that some companies are starting to incorporate micro organisms that will eat away at the plastic over time.

That's horrifying. Don't do that. It's really scary. You see, what we're talking about here is an organism that imitates other life forms, and it imitates them perfectly. When this thing attacked our dogs, that tried to digest them, absorbed them, and then the process shape its own cells to imitate them.

Just for instance, it's that dog. It this imitation. We got to it before it had time to finish. But also really important, like plastic bags need to be need to disappear. They've kind of tried and then they've given up.

I know stores were doing that whole thing. And yeah, it's just that they're still charging ten cents a bag or whatever and people are still buying them. That is not the solution. It's to remove them from your store and have people buy a cloth bag. That is the solution.

Or just offer paper bags. Paper bags are better than plastic bags, folks, they just are. No matter what you feel about trees, it's better if you don't buy plastic bags. The one thing that keeps me feeling okay about the plastic in my home is that they are all on display. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of creating a collection that I can look at and garner joy from, and that if our daughters sell the stuff off when I pass away, then at least they'll be going to a person, the next person that wants to have them.

Eventually, they'll end up in a landfill. Eventually, they will eventually, that's true. Why toys are not appearing in the Planet of the Apes movies is beyond me, Like, what is this. We're seeing lots of abandoned buildings in the originals they do, that's absolutely right, but not in the newer ones. I'm interested to see the new one to see if there's a toy.

Somewhere in the background, somebody should pull out a Migo Planet of the Apes figure. Oh my god, that would be amazing. What is this? What is this? It looks like Caesar oh Man.

So plastics are problematic, and they're everywhere. I was just getting our I have a fan that I put away half of the year and I bring it out for the summer. You pulled it out, and I was just thinking, thank goodness, these plastic parts have not degraded on this fan, because I don't want to have to buy a new fan. Yeah, we need new fans, actually, but at the same time, it's still that fan is going to be around just as long as my Merman and my gremlins. And it's a little bit sad.

There are lots of negative sides to collecting, but I think I don't want to say, but I want to say, however, how about that. However, if people are collecting for the joy of collecting, and they're listening to that inner voice, and they're not doing it to make money off of other people, which subsequently takes the joy away from others. If they're honoring what they purchase and treasuring it like we should do with objects, that we buy, and then I'm all for it. Yeah, I don't think any of that stuff is going to happen, but I'm all for it too. I Mean, my whole thing is and I think this is what plats Allions signs off these videos with, is collect what you like.

Yes, if you're collector, you should be searching out the things that you like. And yeah, I don't think flippers are collectors. So that's the distinction there. Yeah, kind of calling out, don't collect this stuff to resell. That's not collecting.

So it doesn't even fit. It doesn't even fit the category. Whether or not they're keeping one for themselves, it's still not collecting to me. Yeah, it may have started out as collecting and then it goes bad. I don't even know if those people keep one for themselves.

I think it's a totally different subset of the culture that, like you said, as a vampire, yeah, to take advantage of other people. I don't even consider those people collectors. So whatever what it was that maybe led them to, it could have been from a place of like, I like these things, and then that quickly devolves into the empiric act. I think that happens with people is one of the reasons. One of the biggest changes that occurs when addiction kicks in, the thing you were doing out of enjoyment becomes something else.

Whether it be McDonald's hamburgers or beer, or drugs or collecting Christmas ornaments, all these things can become bad if we let it. We have to learn to be strong and resist those urges to turn something that could potentially be joyous into something that's damaging. We didn't get into that aspect really of because I don't think either of us suffer from it, but that idea of bankrupting your family or something to that effect. Collecting stuff addiction. It doesn't have to even be big things.

I mean, obviously there are people who collect cars or motorcycles or big price items who ruin their lives. But you could do it with the smallest of things. If you go through that checklist of yours of fear of missing out, completion is doing it as an investment, and then you have a house hold full of Star Wars ephemera, yeah, and nothing else in your life because you've destroyed it by doing that. I mean, that's the big that's the ultimate dark side. That's the emperor Palpatine of collecting fever skills and no mention of the power of the dark site.

Absolutely, and that's very real and that happens to people. It does happen old people the time. And it's not even a Hordor situation. I'm kind of joked about that earlier. It's not even that.

It's that I have to have this no matter what, and I, for one can't. It would be too easy. I mean, I'd go broken like a month if I had that attitude because I just don't have that kind of money. Oh me too. If every time an action figure that I wanted came out and I purchased it, that could very easily suck up most of my paycheck.

Yeah, I wouldn't have any money left. Yeah, then my family suffers, right. And I'm not saying I'm good at this because sometimes I you know, I'm like, oh, it's right there in front of mena, I'm gonna grab it. But boy, oh boy, I love having the target app on my phone so I can just return something if I think about it later on, I'm like, oh, buyer's remorse is kicking in, that narrative is popping in. I'm like, God, I don't really need this, and so being critical of ourselves is really important, and putting family and real life things first is essential.

If I wasn't married and didn't have a kid, even with the money I make on my job, I'd probably have way more stuff. Yeah, I'm with you on that too. That's the only scenario where I could see. And I think about it too. Because I mentioned that point, I must have had a much larger amount of disposable income because I went through phases of buying tons of Mego vintage Mego vintage Sugun Warriors and quite a few other things.

And I'm like, yet, I know in my head that I never spent a lot on any of them. I'd always wait things out and try to find by it now listings for a very decent price, and so I've been able to do that. I know over the years there have been things I spent way too much money on, not that I have remorse about it other than spending too much. But maybe I was impatient and could have waited for a lower price at some point. But yes, you know, we all have that.

Yeah, I hope, but these days I rarely do that unless it's a plastic rock ball. Yeah, but again that goes back to what we were saying about the time factor. You've had many, many years to think about that plastic rock ball investment. But if I had waited just a couple more weeks, I could have gotten one for cheaper. Ah.

That's sort of the moral of that story, because then it just came out of the woodwork. Absolutely. Oh that is such a good point. The tree was shaken loose and they were falling to the ground in front of me, and it's just bizarre. You know, that's only because we talked about it on our show.

I don't know what happened. That was bizarre. Go listen to that episode. Yeah, oh man, I've that's the zeitgeist, man, And that that's when it makes me feel like it's something. It happened to me once before too.

I bought what was I think? I bought the newest version of Grizzlore and I got I got him at a regular he was finally back down to twenty one ninety five on Amazon. I was like, oh my gosh, she's a good deal now, and I got him, and then a week later he was half off. Is that because you know, then you have to ask yourself. Is that because I was thinking about it and I was looking at it.

Who knows? Who knows? That's the cycle. That's the cycle. That's the way it is.

They're just things people, So don't get too attached. Yeah, as the moral of the story, let's wrap it up. Okay, Well, Ronnie, since we've mentioned them a bunch on this episode, why don't you direct people to your Super seven affiliate link? Oh my gosh, I this is exciting. This is never of course, like every time I think about this venture into talking about geek stuff and having a YouTube channel, any little thing that's new and exciting is always going to be that way.

And so Super seven have offered me an affiliate link. When folks buy from Super seven, if you type in super seven dot com backslash Skella s k E l E Underscore va d Er, Skella Underscore Vader, that'll take you directly to their website. And then when you buy something, they'll know it was Skelevator or Ronnie that sent you to the Super seven store. And that's cool. It's nice to have a relationship with them.

They do cool stuff and you get a kickback, right, I mean, that's the whole point of this. Let's be upfront about this. Yeah, I get it seven percent. Nice little bit from that, So that's cool too. And that link, I will put that in the description for this episode, so it'll be on there.

You have it on your YouTube channel. Corrects right, yep. Yeah, if you do any shopping at Super seven, please use Ronnie's affiliate link so that he gets some scratch, yeah, to buy more Super seven stuff. That's right. It all goes back to them.

Is it store credit? No? No, that would be great if it was just store credit, that'd be hilarious. I mean I'd do it for that, to be honest with you, I think yeah. And there's a good chance, like after it stacks up and get that check for twenty five dollars, I might go right back into them.

Alrighty. And you can find this show the other shows that I host, Wick Up Heavy and the Chasing Chevy Chase podcast over at weird Inway Media. You can find Ronnie on youtubet, Exkelevator and all the assorted instagrams and all that other crap which you have heard numerous times before on the show. And so Ronnie take us out with our outro because I still haven't written it down. That's just going to be a running gag from now.

I'm not even going to bother to write it down. All right, folks, until we meet again, have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting within your means and responsibly. There you go. No no, no no no no no no no no no bloo