I’ve been collecting action figures as an adult ever since I was qualified to be called an adult (Some who know me might make a decent argument that I’m still not qualified, but that’s a whole different ezine article). Like many of you guys, I’ve gone through different phases of collecting – different toy obsessions with different levels of compulsive hunting for those obsessions. After a particularly long night of hunting DCUC wave 10 the other night, I got to thinking about these phases and how out of practice I am at hunting toys.
Power of the Force
I started off as an adult collector with the then new Power of the Force 2 Star Wars figures when I was in college. It was definitely an obsession informed heavily by nostalgia. Star Wars was a big part of my childhood and I think college is when you first start thinking back to simpler joys of your formative years (a lot of my friends were into 80’s music back then). It helped that Star Wars was going through a pretty big resurgence at the time what with the release of the special editions, the soon to be released prequels and the accompanying marketing blitzes.
My methodology for hunting was fairly casual in the beginning. I’d usually hit a TRU with my girlfriend on Sundays whilst ditching church (I know, I kow, I’m going to hell). It started to ramp up a bit from there and I would soon start hitting the toy aisle or toystores whenever I was conveniently near one. I think I ended up attending one of the midnight release of the prequel toys at the height of the prequel frenzy. That lead to finding the internet toy sites and sightings threads. Toy sites and the fact that I didn’t like prequels all that much lead to me finding a new toy obsession: SOTA Streetfighter and Marvel Legends.
Hadoooooouuuken! SHORYUUKEN! WHAPDATDATALOOJAT!
The Street Fighter figures also tapped into nostalgia. Growing up, my friends and I would spend hours playing the Capcom fighting game. I was horrible at it, but loved the one on one competition of playing against my friends. SOTA introduced the concept of super articulated figures to me as well as customizing. They didn’t have the license to produce a favorite character of mine, Skullomania, so if I wanted one I would have to make him for myself. Looking for tips on how to do that lead to fwoosh, fwoosh lead me to looking at Marvel Legends, and I started collecting those in earnest.
Toy Bizness and Pallet Diving
I started upping my game then. On weekends and days off I would hit Wal-Marts in the AM until 8 when the Targets opened, then hitting TRUs at ten. I had a route where I could cover most of the county before noon. I don’t think I ever had any competition for Marvel Legends figures on those AM runs ( I have no scalper encounter stories), but the Marvel Legends were still too elusive. I would stalk some stores on my way to work at opening, but still somehow miss out on figures in the case. That’s when I started pallet diving.
Pallet diving, if you aren’t familiar with the term, is hitting a store (usually wal-mart) at near closing time (or around midnight for 24 hour wal-marts) when they have moved the pallets of new product to the floor in preparation for the night’s shelf stocking and looking for the unopened cases of figures you are interested in. Eventually your eyes become trained to quickly scan a pallet for that ever elusive toybiz logo. Man those figures were a pain to get, but pallet diving netted great results for me.
DCSH
I was able to find the walmart exclusive waves and most Marvel Legends variants I wanted that way. I rarely found them by hitting the stores in the AM. On my unsuccessful ML runs, I’d often see the new DC Superheroes figures on the shelves. They looked neat, but I was much more of a Marvel Zombie growing up than a DC fan. But still I’d pass by the Batman and Superman figures pretty often on my runs until the wave 3 Batman came out. That figure called to me and it was all over from there. I began looking for both DCSH figures and ML on my runs. At first I didn’t need to pallet dive to get DCSH figures, the regular AM runs or convenience stop-bys netted good results.
Eventually, though, pallet diving didn’t even help finding the figures. Fortunately Mattel had released a case of all unique figures to e-tailers and I got a full case of DCSH series 8. I didn’t really order figures online back then, but the cost of shipping the case was probably on par with, if not cheaper than the money I spent on gas so it was very attractive. From there I went to pre-ordering and haven’t looked back…sorta.
Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in
I’ve dropped the Marvel Legends line and picked up a couple more action figure obsessions (fantastic exclusive, 7th Kingdom and MOTUC), but fortunately for me I can order most of those online with no fuss or muss. I now actually sometimes go to the mall or Target and not even look at the toy aisles – something very unusual for me. That is, except for exclusive waves. DCUC wave 5 last year and now 10 have got me back in my obsessive pallet diving and hunting mode. I now have a late night route I follow pretty closely.
The Route
I leave the house after most everybody has gone to bed, usually heading out at 930 to hit the 10pm closing stores. There are three of those locally that carry DCUC. From there I head out to the one 11 pm closing store. It’s actually a little further away from some Midnight closers, but The midnight closers usually have pallets out at around 1130, so I need to kill a little time anyway for maximum pallet saturation. After that I hit the 24 hour Wal-marts. Sometimes I go with friends and since I don’t really remember street names we end up calling them by different nick names – Magic (for the store we first found a pallet of wave five) South Magic for the other wave 5 place that is by the border, etc.
Got a better way?
I’m getting a little tired of my methodology and would love to hear any different methodologies or tips or tricks you guys have for finding this stuff.
SUCCESS!
In between drafts of this post, all the diligent work finally paid off last night. I found a whole set of wave 10 at my 11 PM closing store. I was thinking of skipping that one because it’s really out of the way, but the obsessive way I stuck to my route was rewarded. Now I can actually get some customizing done. Or maybe some sleep would be good.