I was out shopping today at lunch, finally picked up a Cobra Diver figure after months of searching. Got all happy for a minute thinking, "Ah, this is the life!" Started wondering if I'm having more fun collecting toys now than when I was a kid. After some thought, I must admit, I haven't come up with a difinitive answer.

What's Great About Collecting as an Adult?

The biggest thing that makes collecting as an adult more fun for me is the freedom I have to make purchases. I have to try and stick to a budget like everyone else, but as a kid my funds were limited to my allowance, which meant I could afford maybe one GI Joe a month. More expensive toys were usually limited to birthday and Christmas presents. But now, if I see something for $50 that I really want, I may agonize about it for awhile, but ultimately I can choose to spend the money. Another reason collecting as an adult is better is because there is a lot more product out there. Just look at the number of GI Joes Hasbro released in 2008 and compare it to any single year of GI Joe from its heyday. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as product waves. Finally, the interenet has made finding and obtaining toys much easier. My childhood collection of GI Joes doubled within a couple years of discovering eBay.

What's Great About Collecting as a Kid

The best thing about collecting and playing with toys as a kid was how much appreciation I had for each of my toys. Whenever I got a new toy, it would be admired and played with for days. Now when I buy a new toy it usually goes on my shelf for later. Also, as a kid it was much easier to be impressed by a new figure or vehicle. The toys these days are often better detailed, have better articulation, and have more variety than the toys I grew up with, yet the toys I grew up inspired more admiration in my young mind than the improved toys of today. Finally, classic toys were much easier to come by cheap at garage and yard sales than they are now. Nowadays it is really rare to come across someone getting rid of their old GI Joes for cheap.

For me, its as an adult. As a kid, my parents didn't have that much money to buy me stuff, and any money I made needed to be saved. Getting a new figure was few and far between, and vehicles were non-existant. As an adult, its been a chance to get all the stuff I wanted as a kid.

When I was a kid, I didn't collect toys, I just played with them. As I got older, I started displaying them. It wasn't until I moved out that I started actually "Collecting" them.

So it was without a doubt more fun when I was kid.

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Apples and Oranges. Things are so different now between my adult life vs comparatively carefree childhood and the total reshaping of the toy industry landscape.

Sure, I can throw some money on a giant playset/vehicle that I probably wouldn't have gotten even as a present back in the day, but I also have a lot less time to enjoy it. I certainly didn't feel like a collector when I was playing with my toys. To be honest, I still don't like being labeled a collector since I still play with the toys. Maybe this is just nostalgia talking, despite having a lot of fun as an adult "collector", I don't think anything can top the days of narrowing down which vehicle or figure to get, taking it home, ripping it open, getting it in the dirt and grass, and playing with it like a prized possession for months/years.

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It was more fun as a child without doubts... more time, more enjoyment.. less "completist-detailed" arguments...
But as all said as an adult I have a different perspective, more access to money to buy, but less time to enjoy it...

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very interesting question.....

as a kid, I did take care of my toys... I even "Collected" when I realized I could earn my own money and take the bus by myself to Child World. Plus, I always had brothers (an older and a younger) to play with, so that also affected my collections, I began a build up of my Joes, Transformers, and Futron Legos againts my younger brothers Ninja turtles, He-men, and Town Legos; and my older brother's Star wars figures....

So I guess Playing with others affected my playing as a kid

AS an adult, it became more about collecting,. until I started teaching... then again, I now had tons of children who tried to usurp my joe army during playtime.

..Even when I had my son... I couldn't wait until he got old enough to have his own army....and I can relive my joys as a kid playing with my son...

however... as an adult I do have a much greater access to the toys I want, even the ones I didnt get as a kid.

SO I guess its a toss up....

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As an adult I can buy 90% of what I want. I just don't have time like when I was a kid to play with them all.

hmmm i really enjoy it now, but when i was a kid i could lie on the ground and fight my friends dudes.

i tried to lay on the ground and have my joes shoot my cobras and it hurt my gut and killed my legs.

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Interesting question.

As a Kid I just went after what I wanted. I had such a broad interest range that it kind of ment a whole lot of stuff came my way. I got into a more completeist and army building mode when I hit 20 though. Then when the line died I still bought what I wanted but my sources were very limited. There were very few "shelf" items I wanted so that wasn't an option.

Later when the joes came back in 2002 (well before that but this time with all new stuff) I went back into army builder and completist mode for a while, up until a bit of the 25th line.

Then I took a step back, looked around the toy isle and remembered what brought me to this dance. Variety. Indy, Star Wars, all of it, not just another 25 versions of snake eyes. The fact that (At the time) no GI Joe product was hitting the shelves contributed to my frustrations, I wanted new toys, and there was Indy starring me in the face looking pretty awesome and in abundance, along with star wars as well. I went a little hog wild with that for the next year until I calmed down (felt good to release that demon though) and I realized why I was doing what I was doing. Fun.

So now I am more well ajusted with my aquisitions, I get what I want and only what I want, nothing to army build or "complete." and of course I play, what would be the point otherwise.

In other words I am back to where I was when I enjoyed this stuff, back to where I was as a kid. So which is more fun, I have to say, yes they are.

Childhood toy playing was short lived. When you're second from the end in a family of seven, you have to deal with the destruction of your toys every time someone older has an attitude. When it wasn't the immediate family, every single time a cousin, friend of the family, or anyone visited with kids in tow, they always had to be frisked at the door because of the unfortunate reality that some parents never taught their children not to touch or take things that do not belong to them.

When the stealing died down some, it was the scarcity of toys followed by the usual parental "we don't have money for toys", whilst they gambled both legal and illegally, smoke, drank, and traveled the Caribbean. Then, like some tail-end Boomers, I had the type of parents to come into my room, collect ever single birthday given Joe from uncles and aunts, Captain Action, plastic Zoo animal set(a personal favorite), and green army men and chuck them into the trash on the 12th birthday. Usually with a militaristic quote from my Da, and a misplaced scripture from my Mom. All uncles and aunts were told to never buy toys, it was to be the usual things that the parents should have supplied such as socks, underwear, books, etc. At least I never had to worry about peer pressure, because neighborhood demographics changed so much that all my friends of length moved to Queens and elsewhere.

Really didn't get to enjoy toys fully until about about 30 or so. The former Mrs, felt my toy purchases which were more diorama related as I was heavy into Esci, HaT, and Atlantic historicals, were a waste compared to her diamonds and furs. The kids got to indulge in all manner of toys, and thankfully, they enjoyed our jaunts to TRU, Woolworth, comic book stores, and of course, the conventions which gave them the exposure to meet so many interesting and as they said "cool" people. So yeah, I would emphatically say toy buying has never been this good, or was good until medical, dental, and life health issues cessated it.

But more than buying, I have to say that toy trading, which I haven't experienced since the 1960's, has been the best ever. That aspect of JoeCustoms, and the subsequent friendships shared are by far the best part of the toy enjoyment. That we can swap, share, give a "head's up" on wanted items, well, that rules.

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Not to shift this topic sideways too much, but since I didn't really "collect" toys as a kid, and since getting any action figures out of my parents was an endeavor of Herculean proportions in and of itself, but I'd have to honestly say that toy collecting was more fun -- before the Internet and other aspects of the information age took hold.

I can remember in 1983, reading G.I.Joe #11, and seeing characters like Doc, Gung-Ho, Wild Bill, Snow Job, and others, and honestly believing that these were strictly Marvel creations, sort of like the Baroness, to make the character roster more interesting, but that there was no reason to think there would be figures of them, and then being absolutely stunned when I found figures of them a couple of months later!

These days, that sort of thing is announced six months in advance, pictures are posted on at least half a dozen Web Sites, ToyFare has run a special article about them, and they've already been critiqued to death by the fans and collectors practically before they've left the factory, and we all sit around complaining about the fact that they're not showing up in a store near us.

Don't even get me started on how surprised I was when I learned that there were G.I.Joe figures in Europe that differed from their American counterparts. That was an accidental discovery resultant from making a friend in England who'd read some of my letters in the G.I.Joe comic book, and casually mentioned that Tiger Force had just come out, and listed Outback and Psyche-Out among the cast! Once again, astonishment, and this was also well before cyberspace got rolling.

These days, information about toys from all over the world, and access to them, is relatively easy to come by.

The Internet, magazines, and other information sources may have broadened the scope of toy collecting, it may have made it more efficient, and we may have a better idea of what to at least try to keep an eye out for -- but I think a fair percentage of the fun -- the fun of a new and unexpected discovery -- has been lost. And every so often I wonder if it's been a fair trade-off.

You see, for me Trekker, the Internet had the opposite effect. It was through the web and the errant convention that I was able to find such things as a Dapol Dalek or Dr. Who, the various Marx and Herald Robin Hood figures from our time, and of course, without the Internet now, I could never have located my personal favorite, the Armies of Middle Earth Lord of the Rings figures. For me, I have been waiting for good fantasy figures since the early seventies.

For me, the fun is in finally getting something that I would have never thought possible. In the seventies, it was all metal miniatures and I kept musing, "Why not in plastic? Why not a bit larger?" When I see the offerings of Japanese gashapon and shokugan, well, Wow.



Worse for those who are in a true toy desert, where there are no toy related aisles or stores, and the nearest one is over 20+ miles away.

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I think I'm having more fun as a adult. My collecting habits are about the same as when I was kid compared to now. I only played with my toys a few minutes a day and then put them on my shelf. As I kid I "wanted it all", but couldn't get it. But now as an adult, I can "have it all", which is more fun, getting what you want, when you want. And because it's my money paying for my toys, I appreciate them just a little bit more.

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i gotta side with the 'kid' folks -- i didn't really think of it as collecting, but more of just having a collection --

it was all about the playing.

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I'd say both.
As a kid it was the fun of playing with them, creating adventures and stories.

Today its about collecting, getting the figures I like and having them on display and sometime wondering what little me would've done with all of them.

The Internet is a double edge blade.
Its a great tool to find foreign toys (sometime for us Canadians even a US exclusive is as rare as a Japanese toy) and to learn what's going on in the hobby.

On the other hand, while I find it fun to know what's coming, you see people pre-ordering like maniacs because they have to get the new toy that will be out in 6 months but by the time they get it they don't even care anymore because they are already dreaming about what's comin. There's also the constant trashing that starts from the first prototype picture. I found it sad, because somehow I still think toys hold something special.

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