I’ve been fighting the urge again today.
Time and again I’ll get that uncontrollable desire to put
down some money for some fine plastic crack, whatever line I’m into at the
time, and much like Decepticons dogging an Autobot shuttle (which sounds kinda
weird when typed out like that), the need doesn’t abate until I’m ripping
plastic from cardback and welcoming a new soldier to the collection. That’s how
so many of the figures I own have come into my possession, and quite tidily
explains how I always veer so wildly off of any kind of focus.
It’s all good fun, don’t get me wrong – new toys can be
exciting photography subjects, or companions on adventures around the
house, but after a while the thrill wears off and in most cases the figures end
up in a box waiting for the day they no longer fit the trim of my collection, gathering
dust whilst destined for eBay. What’s more, impulse purchases never feel as
good as ticking something off of ‘the list’ – finding Battle in Space Rodimus
second-hand for £6 has been one of my best finds since starting collecting
because a) he’s one of my favourite characters, and b) it scratched that G1
Movie itch. Beast Hunters Deluxe Smokescreen, currently on sale for £6.50 at
the supermarket down the road doesn’t have the same pros going for it, however
much I liked the character in the show. But still, despite these
rationalisations, the temptation is there to nip out and buy it anyway. It
could be in my hands in ten minutes.
Further propagating the insatiable urge has been the recent launch
of the AOE toys, which I scouted out just this morning at another supermarket
slightly further down the road. My willpower took an easy victory there though as
those toys (the one-step changers and battlers) look terrible, completely and
utterly devoid of the skill and invention that continues to make Transformers
an evergreen line. Hasbro’s continued cheapening out will come home to roost
(if it’s not already), but that’s a subject for another post…
So then, a thought suggests, maybe I should just go and buy
the substantially better (and cheaper) Beast Hunters figures whilst I still
can?
No. That way lies madness, and an inevitable financial loss when
the toy ends up at a car boot sale one year hence. Furthermore it could also mean
the difference between making all my bills this month or not, which means
buying the figure would be both a serious lapse of responsibility and indicate
a failure to contextualise my dilemma. They’re just toys man, just toys.
Still got that urge though. What to do?
Here’s a novel suggestion, amidst the wave of purchase
enabling which goes on online - how about appreciating the plastic I’ve already
got?
My CHUG collection (Classics/Henkei/Universe/Generations,
the standard Transformers lines of recent years) is small but pretty, and
contains several of my favourite characters – the aforementioned Rodimus (Hot
Rod in all but copyright-concerned name), Jazz, Galvatron, Cyclonus and
Bumblebee. All G1, all Movie, all fun… Well, with the unfortunate exception of the small,
fiddly and frustrating Galvatron, but I’m not here to focus on
the negatives. The glorious weather we’ve had so far this week was a big
motivating factor in taking them all out to photograph, and in doing so I
remembered why I collect these figures in the first place.
So much of collecting is about the next big thing, the
upcoming releases, the new third-party or Masterpiece pre-orders, with the
result being that the current releases tend to get forgotten, celebrated wildly
upon receipt but then left to stand on a shelf; at least, that’s something I’ve
been guilty of anyway. What I think I’d be better off remembering is that I’ve
got a great little collection of toy robots already, and in future I should
perhaps try to associate my urge with appreciating what I have, rather than
with spending what I don’t.
All that said though… One Kapow! sale, and I’m anybody’s…
Staying on target then, does anyone reading have any particular
method for avoiding the temptation of sales and keeping focused with their collecting? Or is it
just an intrinsic part of the collector mentality to move from one purchase to
the next? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Thanks for reading!
