As a toy collector, I tend to want toys of things I like. There’s even a scientific law for it: for every action, there is an equal and expensive reaction, and that is wanting to chuck a bundle of money in the general direction of cool crap. In the same way gravity nails us to the Earth despite the fact that the Earth is moving—in Newtonian terms—“really effing fast,” there is also a similar tug to get toys of stuff that is neat. I like to call this “toyvity” which is a word I just made up that describes the deep, invisible force that pulls you towards the act of getting stuff.
Old Isaac got hit in the head by an apple. I got beaned by vintage droids and have never been the same. This was when I though Artoo was really a mobile cannon that Threepio could fire at the bad guys if he tipped him backwards. Before you actually saw the movie, those were your only two options for Artoo Detoo: cannon or trash can.
I often hear the term “I have zero interest in _____” on the forums. I tend to look at that statement with the same curious interest/bemused wonder that the first person who ever saw a cow being milked probably had, right before the milker pushed a bowl of cheerios under the cow and grabbed a spoon. I wish I knew what “having zero interest” meant, because I would be able to keep a lot more of my disposable income. I have the opposite affliction. I think I’d like to call it “omni-interest” but that just sounds like something a bank would offer me if I agreed to keep my money there.
In this scenario I am the cow, and the toy companies are dangling from my tits with white-knuckled glee.
Specific iconography tends to tickle me in my standing ovation. Show me a nifty design or something that I think could be toyted up nice, and I am already pushing a phantom preorder button. The same way Pavlov’s dog could be shoved into a box and not know whether or not to salivate until he saw a cat, I can finish a comic and reflexively start throwing money at it in the hopes that FedEx will deliver an action figure by the end of the week. I have been known to use the phrase “I have no interest in _____” before, but time holds both a polygraph and a riding crop and I have learned that I’m both a liar and a slow horse. It’s better to assume interest, because the unrelenting toyvity of a new experience will engender inside me a crushing, palpable need to have a representation of that thing I just consumed. It’s all perspective. We think of the Hubble telescope as a magnificent device that unlocks the majestic grandeur of the universe, but someone on Alpha Centauri just thinks of it as “that damn paparazzi, at it again.”
Neil Armstrong’s first moon-words have gone down in history. His little-known second words were “do you guys think there’s a Walgreens up here?”
You would think, knowing myself on at least a handshake basis, that I would stay away from brand new media, in the same way crack addicts probably know not to step inside that new store down the street called “Bed, Bath, Spoons, Syringes, Crack-cocaine and Beyond.” But here I am, joyfully sticking my face right into the spine of some brand new comic, knowing that when I finish turning the pages I will probably look up at the wall opposite me and say. “Gonna need a toy of that!”
Recently that comic was I Hate Fairyland. Before that it was something else. It doesn’t exist yet, but if the toy showed up tomorrow I WOULD PREORDER SO HARD YOUR BRAINS WOULD SPIN.
That’s why I just go ahead and buy the new Star Wars toys from the movie I might not have seen yet. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but that’s only if you like eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Robin Hood, who famously robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, knew never to nock an arrow against a narrow sparrow, but instead to throw his bow at a slow doe. There’s a lot more meat there. I will regret not getting something way more than I will regret getting it. Take Purple Mezco Catwoman. “I’m going to get the black, I don’t need the purple” I said to myself until five minutes after she sold out and then I’m giving myself the disgusted side-eye and the bunched up mouth-corner. “You fool.” I say. “You damn fool.” Scientists say that much the universe is made up of something called “dark matter” but they don’t really know what they’re talking about on most weekdays. Well, I think the universe is made up mostly of calcified regret, a substance officially called “Dammitol.” It’s not really useful except for filling in potholes. You can easily get a half-pound of Dammitol at pretty much any Lowes. They are well-stocked.
I wasn’t terribly enthused about buying the entire MCU Thanos wave—although I did–,and I didn’t buy any of the Cull Obsidian wave at all. I hadn’t seen the movie, and I’m not a hardcore MCU figure collector. LL Bean Thanos wasn’t really what you would think of as exciting, and I figured I could do without Cull Obsidian. I don’t know why I thought that, other than mental glitch. Now I’ve watched the movie and am regretting not building Cull Obsidian harder than anybody that decides to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, which is something so stupid only white people would do it, which is where the restaurant name “Cracker Barrel” came from, true story why would I lie.
If I went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, I’d be halfway down and wondering if I could buy an action figure of myself going down the Falls in a barrel, which would be simultaneously the stupidest and most awesomest toy I’d ever die before being able to preorder. The toy would be made out of one hundred percent Dammitol, and would have no articulation, because dead.