How it all began

A thread for sharing how we all got into collecting vinyl.
Sorry if there's already a thread for this.

In my case, it began with Micromen/Micronauts. I looked into the history of Micromen and stumbled upon the Henshin Cyborg line. Later I found and bought the vinyl version of Invader O.
And so, my love for vinyl began.

 

I got a pair of fortune cats for my girlfriend, one with a heart and the other with the "真" for true. I joined this forum & paid for a few more cats, I can't recall the seller but he sent me @ 50 pieces total... everything from fortune billys to chaos beans. Dunno where that guy is now but he gave birth to my collection / addiction.

 

In 2008, I bought a large Medicom Tachikoma when i was in Kyoto.
Wandering around all the toy shops in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima blew my mind.
After i was home for a while i started collecting RxH . . . and that was that.

Totally hooked.

 

Started with KR [expletive deleted] after joining the KR board, then saw the "show your monsters" yja thread there and I remember useless toys (Ed) posting about an upcoming FHP Mongolion release. They were pretty much the coolest things I had ever seen! Also seeing zincsaucier's (Jeff's) collection, particularly the painted GID Biskup Rangeas.

Then I joined this board and it all went downhill from there

 

My aunt and uncle live in Hong Kong, growing up i always got amazing Christmas gifts from them. Zoids,Takara stuff Micro Men, and some vinyl oddities.

Also my dad was awesome and introduced me to the movies and work of Harryhausen! He had Cyclops and a few other statues around as far back as i can remember.

 

Easy: godzilla movies, godzilla toys, and random dinosaur toys!

 

I started by collecting KR Street Fighter at Urban Outfitter in 2011. That December I went to NY to watch the Packers play the Giants. I stopped at the KR store and they had the Halloween Chip and Ghost on display. I bought both of them and I guess that is what has led me to here. I have made some pretty awesome friends over the last few years from all of this.

 

Here's how it all went down: I woke up one morning and I realized I WAS MADE OF VINYL!!! I was like shit man, I guess I have to stay out of the sun and sleep in an oversized detolf. Then I considered some of the benefits:

-nonexistent food bills
-an enviable complexion
-instead of a vasectomy, I pour cement into my mold
-outliving my peers by several hundred to over a thousand years, if stored properly

Sorry, I have to stop derailing threads.

 

I was mostly a western/KR kinda guy until the very beginning of 2013. I found images of the Secret Base Skulls, and fell in love with the pink glittery one with the green Bowie lightning bolt on it. Someone (I'll always be grateful!) pointed me to Mandarake, where one was on sale, and I immediately bought it.

Once I got it, I fell in love with the colors, paint application, and soft quality of the material, and looking back at my western toys, I realized just how different they are. Slowly moved on from there, and now have a very modest collection of about 40 toys I won't get blasted for if I show them here.

Now, about 20 months later, I'm starting to venture out into different colors, a self-imposed limit to curb spending and maintain some kind of thematic unity to my collection. So, we'll see where my collection stands in another 20 months!!

 

Started off with dummiess, saw that yja thread on KR, someone from KR pointed me to SB, lurked, copped my first skullbrain at S7's booth during SDCC 2007, been stuck ever since.

 

On the serious tip, it was this KR x Stones Throw Madvillain toy that started me down the path. Still love this toy. KR made a few decent toys back in the day.



Picked up my first Japanese toys about five years ago, I remember it was a Gargamel standard Zagoran and a Cronic Dorome. Oh how I wish Cronic was still making toys.

 

I think around 2005 I was clicking through artist profiles on myspace looking for new stuff, and came across bill betsovic's customs. I thought that he made the whole thing himself so I asked him about them, and he told me about kr and customs.
15 year old me thought, "I can do that!" so I bought one of those gas mask elephants and a couple devil robot things, along with some epoxy, and immediatly destroyed the toys.
Gave up on it after that until about a year later I discover rotofugi was only 20 minutes from my house. Once I had my license I started driving there for all the art openings, collecting random kr stuff and talking to the guys working there about how I liked the kaiju stuff, but didnt like the paint jobs.
That started to change once the s7 ghost fighter with the plush inserts, which I had looked over plenty of times, all of a sudden looked awesome. Bought that, went to Toy Karma 2 and got PKs custom muskamoot, joined this forum, a bunch of stuff in between, and here we are almost 10 years later.

 

A few months after stumbling onto the whole toy subculture online, plans aligned enough to get me to San Francisco for a few days. I stopped by Double Punch and Super7. This is a pic from that trip - My first purchase. 'twas a simpler time

 

Got a giant mazinger as a child and I got another one and another one. I also grew up with fascination for astroboy.


And that, as they say, is that.

 

I remember that thread. The guy who started it said he couldn't see the appeal of Blobpus toys ... to him they looked like "melting wax" or "snot monsters." He later went on to become one of the most enthusiastic collectors of the Blopbus Dokugan ... a photo of his huge collection even appeared at the Blobpus blog. He's since vanished from the scene so far as I can tell but the trajectory just goes to show ... what you dismiss today may become your passion tomorrow.

 

Was it eric something? I think I remember the photo of all the Dokugans on the stairs or something like that

 

Tofu?

 

SDCC 2008.

 

Eric aka T0fu was the other big Dokugan collector. IIRC the guy who started the "Show Your Monsters" thread was Paul ... playdoh at KR and playdohpunk at SB. That thread inspired several people to cross over to J-vinyl. I forget the name of the collector in Canada who had the amazing Skull Bee collection but his photos at KR alerted me to the "boutique toy" phenomenon.

As for moi ... had some kaiju toys as a boy, probably Bandai, maybe some Bullmarks bought at Japantown in San Francisco, but it was really my younger brother who was hardcore into kaiju movies and tokusatsu shows. I remember being fascinated by Japanese toys in the '80s but was completely lost as to what was what. I got into contemporary vinyl via a brief flirtation with early Muttpop (hold your fire, Skullbrain) and rapidly transitioned to "neo kaiju" as some were calling it then. First toy bought at Super7 was a SB/Balzac Bagman. First Skullbrain purchase was a Marmit candy case (thank you toybotstudios.) Discovered Real x Head and the hook was in.

 

Started collecting early 2009 after I saw some toys in a magazine. Started with random toys from various western stuff and toys from European artist (Mist, Tilt, FF...) and Be@rbricks but got into sofubi through S7 toys around 2010. My first soft vinyl toy was a Rose Vampire.

In summer 2011, I got all the way from France to SF where I worked at Super 7 for two months and attended SDCC with them, maybe you saw me there!...no need to say that I had the time of my life and still think about it all the time. This experience hooked me up even more and I learned a lot about toys and collecting and discovered a lot of new artists and companies.

Now, I only collect sofubi toys, the only exception being Be@rbricks, I still love those!

 

Great stories guys! Getting to know new people through the hobby. Interesting how many of us started with Western vinyls.
A thing I forgot to add is that I never got into collecting vinyls until after I moved to good ol' Merica last year. Previous to that I lived in Guatemala where vinyl was nonexistent and importing from the US is expensive.

 

A friend took me to the revenge of the lovely's show at giant robot, at the time when david horvath had an active forum on KR. Loudwizard was posting photos of bwana killers and telling me all about this guy named PK in the show me your monsters thread, and encouraged me to check out SB.

 

... from my Top 5 Toys thingy - http://top5toys.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/top-5-toys-josh-g.html - my Number 4:

This vinyl toy led to an obsession. Introduced me to the master Joe of ‘Splurrt’ toys, which is a favorite company of mine. Plus it’s painted by a man I call a master of the craft, Jon of ‘Rampage Toys’... I can still remember the moment it arrived in my letter box in deep dark Convict Town: The smell. The feel of it in hand. My brain boggling at a new world I had just discovered..

 

Medicom RAH Pointman by Futura opened up the doors in about 2007.