Collecting dolls and action figures can overwhelm someone like me with hoarding disorder (and a Grandmother and Great Aunt who hardly had room to walk around their homes because of piles of collected stuff that they simply could not part with). There have to be rules and limits to save me from myself. I try hard to keep Disney Princesses from flooding my home and drowning me in a sea of plastic. The toymakers are constantly updating and modifying their designs to entice fools like me to keep buying.
A round of new designs with glittered-up clothes and new faces. Can I resist buying them all? Well, not the first four times.
I have to stop and take stock of where I’m at. I rounded up all the Disney dolls I have that are not mint in boxes for collecting purposes and potential resale in the collectibles market. Here they are;
There are several ways that I can go about trying to limit and prune this massive obsession. First and foremost, I can break this gigantic feeding frenzy up into smaller bites and pick and choose how long I chew. This part of my collection, is based on the Tinkerbell movies and is limited to only one edition of these dolls. It took over a year to buy all four;
There are just four dolls in this set. I chose only the size consistent with the 12-inch figures I always choose. No little ones. No second editions. No doll costing more than $20.
Some of the dolls are rescue dolls, either bought naked at Goodwill or another thrift store, taken home to be cleaned, repaired, restored, and dressed (like the Ariel doll I posted first in this post). These are probably my most valuable acquisitions, because they are previously loved and played with. (The Jasmine doll in the middle belonged to my daughter, who had a tendency to mangle and experiment on dolls as well as strip them permanently naked. This doll’s survival is a minor miracle.)
The rescued dolls include two Snow Whites, a Jasmine that belonged to my daughter, and Mulan… mostly dressed in Barbie clothes.
The remainder of these collected dolls are recent edition Disney Princesses that I waited for some time to acquire so that they would come down in price. A couple of these, like Tiana and Repunzel, and all the Frozen Dolls are not also represented in my collection by mint in box dolls. I do have Belle and Aurora and even Tarzan’s Jane, but boxed only, so they are not pictured here.
So you can see what a trippy-type trial it has become to keep a collection like this from taking over the house. I have to impose limits on myself so I don’t become a weird old man living in cardboard box under a bridge with hundreds of dolls and action figures.
Even though I am sixty-plus-years-old, I am stressed enough by everyday life that I need to take some time to get the toys out of the toy box and play with them, making up fantastical stories in my head and pretending the world is the way I want it to be.
I mean, why can’t fire-fighter Barbie fall in love with the Black Panther?
The two of them are so very different. One is a vivacious young working girl ready to put out fires, while the other is a dark and moody superhero dead set on bringing justice to villains, no matter how powerful they might seem. Shouldn’t they be able to find happiness together despite what the drummer bear may think about the appropriateness of two such different plastic people being in love?
And money woes, deteriorating health, recent car accidents and ratcheted-up premiums on car insurance melt into the background. Especially if you hum to yourself as you pretend to make them kiss. “Love is a Many Splendored Thing…”.
Not all the toys are new. In fact, only the double-headed dragon is actually new to the over-all collection.
It’s good that the dragon can so easily make itself at home in the cardboard castle.
It would be good if it didn’t decide to eat the cardboard castle.
Wonder woman, sitting on my underwear drawer is also new. Maybe I am buying too many toys. But in my defense, I am in my second childhood, and sometimes I just need to play with toys. It solves a lot of problems that I am too old and tired to make go away otherwise. And it also makes a good short post when the idea bag is short on short topics and the time for writing is limited.
Yes, Mickey couldn’t help it. The toys hit the shelves in Walmart. He discovered the silly superhero junior highschool romance thing first on Pinterest, then on YouTube. Miraculous, the Adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir. The silly thing is on Netflix now too.
So, why would a goofy old man like me be interested in a thing like this… a thing aimed at an audience of pre-teen girls? That’s disturbingly creepy, isn’t it?
Well, I never claimed to be cool. I was an English teacher for 31 years. Cool was never an option.
And I collect dolls… erm… action figures… uh… well, I might as well be honest. I have more Barbies than G.I. Joes. I have a hoarding disorder fixated on 12-inch dolls. And when I saw this doll for less than 15 dollars at Walmart, I had to buy it. And it has the other super hero, Cat Noir right beside it. Both under 20 dollars so they fit under the 20 dollar limit. And both together only cost 30 dollars, so it fits under the 50 dollar per month limit as well. Those collecting rules are important in saving me from my own juvenile regressive self and helps me have enough money to buy food all month long.
The people in the store don’t look at me funny. I am not the only old man buying toys and dolls in Walmart. I am just the only old man there not buying for his grandkids. I don’t have any grandkids yet, and my own kids are definitely older than the toy-wanting stage. The people would be far more disturbed if they knew I was now struggling with the question, “Do I preserve these dolls mint-in-box? Or do I take them out and play with them?” And if you have read any of my lunatic “he-plays-with-dolls” posts, you probably already know how that one will turn out.
People might also be deeply disturbed to know that I have already watched two episodes of Miraculous, and (shudder) liked them in spite of the moronic romance and love-triangle bull poop. I can’t promise that I will not watch more and turn away from this new filthy habit. The stories are stupid villain-of-the-week stuff. But the CGI animation is brightly colored, smooth, and highly interesting… to the point that I and any available chimpanzees or monkeys will be enthralled with it. Oh, and pre-teen girls too. I won’t go into the connections between those things.
I could probably spend a lot of words telling you more about how this cartoon is set in Paris, France, and how Marinette and Adrien, the secret identities of the two superheroes above, are both in love with each other, but don’t realize it because neither one knows the secret identity of the other. But I won’t. This post is not a review of the cartoon show. This post is a goofy commentary celebrating the fact that I bought myself two more dolls, and now must somehow rationalize that weird, compulsive act.
Collecting dolls and action figures can overwhelm someone like me with hoarding disorder (and a Grandmother and Great Aunt who hardly had room to walk around their homes because of piles of collected stuff that they simply could not part with). There have to be rules and limits to save me from myself. I try hard to keep Disney Princesses from flooding my home and drowning me in a sea of plastic. The toymakers are constantly updating and modifying their designs to entice fools like me to keep buying.
A round of new designs with glittered-up clothes and new faces. Can I resist buying them all? Well, not the first four times.
I have to stop and take stock of where I’m at. I rounded up all the Disney dolls I have that are not mint in boxes for collecting purposes and potential resale in the collectibles market. Here they are;
There are several ways that I can go about trying to limit and prune this massive obsession. First and foremost, I can break this gigantic feeding frenzy up into smaller bites and pick and choose how long I chew. This part of my collection, is based on the Tinkerbell movies and is limited to only one edition of these dolls. It took over a year to buy all four;
There are just four dolls in this set. I chose only the size consistent with the 12-inch figures I always choose. No little ones. No second editions. No doll costing more than $20.
Some of the dolls are rescue dolls, either bought naked at Goodwill or another thrift store, taken home to be cleaned, repaired, restored, and dressed (like the Ariel doll I posted first in this post). These are probably my most valuable acquisitions, because they are previously loved and played with. (The Jasmine doll in the middle belonged to my daughter, who had a tendency to mangle and experiment on dolls as well as strip them permanently naked. This doll’s survival is a minor miracle.)
The rescued dolls include two Snow Whites, a Jasmine that belonged to my daughter, and Mulan… mostly dressed in Barbie clothes.
The remainder of these collected dolls are recent edition Disney Princesses that I waited for some time to acquire so that they would come down in price. A couple of these, like Tiana and Repunzel, and all the Frozen Dolls are not also represented in my collection by mint in box dolls. I do have Belle and Aurora and even Tarzan’s Jane, but boxed only, so they are not pictured here.
So you can see what a trippy-type trial it has become to keep a collection like this from taking over the house. I have to impose limits on myself so I don’t become a weird old man living in cardboard box under a bridge with hundreds of dolls and action figures.
Cleaning in the library led me to rediscover an old project. Roy Rogers and Trigger had been sitting next to the TV in the library. I found them both on the floor between the TV and a book stack. Time to pick them up and put them back in shape.
The doll is a random military action figure rescued naked from a thrift store. I thought the face looked enough like Roy Rogers to turn him into that particular hero. The horse is from Mattel, and probably is part of a Barbie play-set. It was given to me by a relative. I dressed Roy in a Lone Ranger Captain Action uniform with a Tonto gun belt, both created by Playing Mantis Toy Company in the late 1990’s. The hat is actually from a Cowgirl Barbie because I wanted a Roy Rogers-style almost-white hat. The Lone Ranger hat is too flat-brimmed to look right and way too large to fit on Roy’s smaller head, and the only other cowboy hat I have for it is a Johnny West hat from Marx Toys in the 1960’s, and that is dark brown.
Everything Johnny West that I still have was salvaged from the house where I grew up back in the 1980’s. They belonged to my little brother, but ended up in my collection because he outgrew dolls and action figures long before I did. I wish I still had the doll himself, but I think Dabney blew him up with a firecracker when he was a teenager.
So, I have to be happy with only having Roy and Cowgirl Barbie to play with.
Last time, after months of me waiting to play with my X-Box Baseball ’04, Captain Carl Action and the Action Super-hero-guy Team had actually found where in the Library Dr. Evil and his minions had been hiding.
It took an unbelievably long time for my Library to be liberated, but finally liberation was just around the corner…
So Dr. Evil threw a monkey wrench into the liberation plans with a carefully timed real-identity mix-up ploy.
Captain Carl had to stop and think for a moment… something that he only did when forced to do it,,, because, well, thinking is something that hurts quit a bit when you have a hollow plastic head with only a plastic armature for a brain.
Max Steele, the most practical member of the Hero-Guy Action Team, put Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless down on the Dr. Evil mint-in-box box and began to saw with his Captain Action Lightning Blade.
Max sawed and whacked and hacked and smacked, and nothing seemed to even put a dent in the non-removable brain of Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless.
Soon the Action Hero-Guy Team had to give up. The dumb plastic brain was all one piece with the rest of the plastic head and was not coming out. Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless was simply NOT the answer.
Captain Carl was fed up. He couldn’t take any more of this thinking… There was only one thing left to do.
So Dr. Evil removed his removable brain and handed it to Carl, allowing me to repeat enough silly phrases and stupid words to get to the 500 mark for today.
When last we left the Captain Action Hero Team, they were busy trying to rescue Mickey’s beloved X-Box with the EA Sports Baseball ’04 game that Mickey loves. The Evil Doctor Evil had taken over the library and turned it into an evil lair for his evil minions of Evil. But Captain Carl Action had led his team into the fray and clobbered the Agent in Red with a kiss and the Grammar Nazis with bad grammar. Dr. Evil was feeling foiled.
The pretty Barbie doll (whose name was really City-Style Christie) was captured and at the mercy of Evil Doctor Evil.
Dr. Mindbender had an evil talent for bending minds. He possessed considerable talents of ESP (which here stands for Extremely Stupid Puddlebrains). The poor captive doll was bent to Dr. Evil’s evil will.
Suddenly Mickey’s blog stood on the verge of losing its PG rating (which was already on shaky ground anyway). Then, faithful Max Steele pulled an answer out of his… thin air… urm, yes, that was what I intended to say.
The day appeared to be saved by a good old bop on the bean. It was Captain Carl’s favorite problem-solving solution, as it is for practically all action heroes… definitely the ones with the hollow plastic heads in Mickey’s Action Figure Collection. But one important task still remained un-done.
Tune in next time for the only “Fight of the Century” in which Manny Pacquiao can’t possibly disappoint you!
The day before yesterday I wrote a post for 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion that basically tore my heart out. It made me relive one of my worst defeats as a teacher who cares about teaching and students. I have to admit that I spent an awful lot of time crying the past three days. But I am not a sorrowful Sad-Sack with a sourpuss’ simpering sarcastic smile. Not I. I come back from downers by doing silly stuff… kinda like over-dosing on alliteration in that S-filled sentence. So what silly stuff am I up to after a triple-down darkness-dealing downer like the one from that post? (When Compassion Fails) I took up the Quest for Pinkie Pie.
I borrowed the My Little Pony image above from Jessica Ann Hughes whose very eloquent post laments the series update as a sexualization of the thirty-year-old toy franchise in the newer series, My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.
But I have to argue that it doesn’t sexualize anything beyond the surface. After all, these ponies are really little girls that have charming little-girl personalities and act in stories that have little-to-nothing to do with sex. Yes, I have seen the wedding episode where Twilight Sparkle’s big brother gets married, but that episode is about trusting your own instincts when something seems wrong. If somebody like me is getting sexual vibes from that cartoon, then something is seriously wrong and that somebody should seek therapy to avoid becoming some kind of pedophile. I mean, it is important to self-censor. When I was getting a soda at QT this afternoon, I was happy to see two pretty girls in short pants for the first time in a long time. Texas weather has been rainy and dreary for the past few weeks and the sun has finally come out. But… wait a minute! Why am I looking at middle school girls’ legs? I am a miserable, broken-down, spotty old man. And I have been busily watching this My Little Pony show on YouTube where all these little girl ponies are walking around naked all the time! But, am I not over-reacting? Yes, the ponies have big eyes and shortened muzzles… but I haven’t been obsessing about ponies because of hormone imbalances or something. I thought the whole Brony thing was ridiculous up until a very short time ago. I mean, grown men watching a cartoon about little-girl ponies and singing the songs and buying the toys and wearing ponies on T-shirts. Is there therapy for that? I am hoping so… because I think I’m going to need it.
My doll-collecting mental illness began, as I tried to explain and tell lies about yesterday, when I was a child who had been given dolls for birthdays and Christmas (I meant to say Action Figures… No! Really!) and only really had sisters to play with at home (my little brother was eight years younger than me, and my friends from school lived in the country, miles away from town on farms.)
As a young man, I regained my dolls… I mean Action Figures, and tried to restore them (not play with them… I never said play with them). When I got married, my wife and I actively began collecting them. She was initially charmed by my love for my old pieces of plastic. We began looking for what was out there. Captain Action and G.I. Joes for me, Barbies for her. When she lost interest (or found a cure for that particular mental aberration), I kept on. The rules for collecting included; Twelve inch tall figures. Never pay more than $20 for a toy. Never spend more than $50 a month. Find rare dolls for little money. Rescue dolls who somebody once loved and played with, or that are on the verge of the ignominious end to be found in the department-store dumpster.
Rainbow Dash started me down the slippery slope to Brony-ism. I just happened to find, on an after-Christmas clearance table at Walmart with all the other damaged toys that didn’t realistically survive the seasonal play-with-it-in-the-store-while- mommy-shops damage, a cheap and forlorn Rainbow Dash with extra hair. She looked at me with those big, sad eyes and pleaded with me to buy her and save her from the dumpster (or the sadistic little girl that would buy and dismember her because she was just a cheap thing from Walmart). I’m too stupid to resist.
Then I began examining my purchase because I didn’t really know what it was… the Brony-thing warning lights were going off somewhere in the back of my goofy-old-man head, but it took some research before I learned what Equestria Girls were and that there were six of them. Six of them! A set of six to collect! But also the original ponies! A set of twelve!
And the disease had me.
So, here you see the tangible evidence that I am acutely infected. Brony-itis? Possibly. Fatal? Hopefully not. If you’re counting, they still are not all here. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash as Equestria Girls. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie as ponies. But no Fluttershy at all. And… what’s this? No Pinkie Pie? The most popular pony with little girls, I could not find her in Equestria Girl form? Well, I could… but not for under $20. I went shopping at Toys R Us yesterday with the Princess in tow. We bought toys, but no Pinkie Pie for less than twenty one. And this collection represents $14 in January, $30 in February, and $25 already this month. I’m guessing the rules might save me from this disease yet. Does that mean no Pinkie Pie ever? Well, I watch the stupid cartoons incessantly now on YouTube… I’ve learned that Friendship is Magic and as long as you can remain true to your friends, you can overcome almost all of life’s problems… together… with love. And Pinkie Pie is totally random… and funny… and everyone’s friend. There are good lessons being taught to little girls and old men who watch these things. Pinkie Pie’s is probably the most important one of all… So Pinkie is my favorite. I haven’t found her yet in a way that stays within the rules, but I am not some creepy old man who breaks the rules. I have the rest of my life to complete this quest.
Catch a Falling Star 