I'm Terrell, 31 years old & still buying toys. It started with Star Wars, I still have almost eveything from when I was kid. A major force in my collection is my grandma. She kept all my dad's & uncles stuff, & "recycled" 'em onto me when I was little. I'm talking vintage board games, old Hotwheels cars, MAD magazines (actually books) from the mid '60s; the stuff that dreams are made of. So I always been into vintage playthings, old records, books, etc. I have no job, because I'm a full-time student. That means I'm always broke. Anyways, I get older, but them college girls stay the same... did I just say that out loud?
Hmmm, I guess I never really had a 'formal' introduction. My name is Paul, although my friends call me Hoagy, a nickname I have had since I was 13 (i'm now 30). It's not after a sammich, but after a character from the 2000AD comic I used to read when I was younger. I was born and grew up in the UK, Coventry to be exact (home of Cathedral - Doom on!). I moved to the US in July of 2003 and have been here ever since. I live in the south suburbs with my girlfriend and my 3 month old son, and I work in downtown Chicago. I LOVE Japanese monster movies and toys, and only really recently got into the more specialist Kaiju collecting. I like to be creative through drawing or painting, the written word, singing or playing on my geeeetar. I love all types of music, but mainly Horrorpunk, old Goth, New Wave, Industrial, Doom/Black metal etc etc etc. Horror movies, Kaiju, Ultraman, paranormal stuff, cryptozoological stuff, UFOs all all manner of other weird crap. When I get bored, I dress up: I do like an occasional beer though
Self introductions are pretty tight. My name's Ricky and I can't recall a time in my life where I wasn't buying toys, so I think I have a bit in common with most of you guys. I grew up in the suburbs around Pittsburgh, so my exposure to kaiju was all all from TNT Godzilla marathons and cheap EP VHS copies of Godzilla movies up until I started watching Mystery Science Theater in middle school. That's where I learned of the wonders of Gamera and where kaiju "collecting" actually started. Up until that point I had been a VERY hardcore Star Wars kid, and I think I bought every Star Wars figure re-release up until the prequels hit. The only figure I can remember buying after that was that gigantic rubber Dewback that came with the 12" Sandtrooper. It was like $40 at Toys R Us and it rules. The 90's Gamera movies were coming out when I was in high school and I can still remember getting an eBay account way back when and bidding on the "ULTRA RARE NEVER GONNA GET IT" theater exclusives (that I now see twice a week for $30 or less...) and spending my first ever paycheck on a ginormous Gamera 3 vinyl at G-Fest in Los Angeles. That led into a pretty hardcore Baltan collecting phase. Fast forward through learning about punk rock, then heavy metal (because growing up in suburban America in the 90's meant you were pretty much boned when it came to finding out about good music) and I was in university studying Japanese and film studies. After graduating with THAT double-whammy of a major, what's left but to move to Japan? I got a job with Nova that placed me in Kumamoto, fell in with a bunch of kids into obscure garage, glam and KBD-type punk (which finally got me into records). I got bored after about a year and moved up to Tokyo and started getting into the "hard" stuff... vinyls. Down south in Kyushu you're more or less out of luck when it comes to scoring anything new and cool (although there's nice vintage stuff!) but now I live a 15 minute walk from Nakano Broadway and you're not gonna pry me away with a crowbar. Then, about a year ago I got hitched to an awesome girl named Aya. My virus has slowly been spreading to her and now she's into Koeda-chan (little plastic figures by Takara), Junko Mizuno, Care Bears and My Little Pony. Our tastes are just a little bit different. Sorry for all the words, here are pictures: Halloween '07 (Aya's making a weird face in this one...no idea why) HobbyCon '08 (newest picture) And our baby kaiju, Pumpkin
Awesome Ricky! i'm so jealous that you're living over there! At least I know who to talk to about places to hit when I eventually make a trip out there Gamera RULES! lol!
Ok I'll bite Lash ^_^ I'll probably hopefully be seeing a bunch of you guys this weekend so I might as well introduce myself Hey all I'm Aki, I'm 31 years old. I am half Jpnese/Spanish and was born and raised in NYC. I grew up watching video's of different tokusatsu,anime,shows that my dad's friends would tape in Jpn and send them to me to enjoy. So as a kid every summer during summer break here, My parents sent me to Jpn to normal school(their summer break starts at the end of July) and during that time I would go Nuts! watching and playing with everything from Ultraman to Gegege Kitarou to Doraemon and everything else in between. I was always more of a reader so, I have a TON of manga as opposed to toys, although I've been a collector of way too many things starting with coins way back when. But my toy collection in general tends to follow my reading habits so, a lot of stuff you guys couldn't care less about I basically collect what I like, and recently I started digging out my old toys and realized how well made they were, compared to the disposable nature of todays things. Being that someday I'd like my kids to play with these, just like I did, I started looking into whats around these days. Anyway, I only recently realized how big of a group of collectors actually existed outside of Jpn...which leads me to this board The amount of luv and dedication on this board brings a tear to my eye! Now back to kaiju matters, I'm a newb, I hope to be able to leech off the amazing amount of info you guys have, and eventually be able to contribute something more than background noise. I've already picked up a whole bunch of toys that I'm absolutely loving!! I probably should focus my collection tho heh this is me from about ~3yrs ago in Jpn..I think thats the odaiba area in Tokyo, not too sure tho since the Nagoya area is my homebase in Jpn
Hi, my name's simon i'm from new zealand but am currently living in london with my wife to be (two weeks?! Holy shit!). I am vegan and love basketball and eating. I'm 28 and have been collecting stuff or at least trying to since I can remember. It started with lego, I wanted every fucking pirate lego set that got put out, unfortunately my parents didn't agree, so I didn't get my wish. I went through lots of toy phases as a child after that, gi joe, transformers, thundercats, the list goes on. Then it got into cards! Started with wwf, garbage pail/gang, TMNT (cartoon version) and ended up with basketball cards. I then stopped collecting for a while, but eventually discovered hardcore at the ripe old age of 18. So records came after that. I discovered bearbricks in 2004, and they led me onto that which cannot be named. fast forward a few years, I bounce around western stuff and eventually find skullbrain, a whole lot of awesome toys and a lot of knowledgeable people and I am HOOKED! here's a photo of me looking angry at life:
Hello. My Name is Arkiv. I'm Instantly Rude. My Skin is Blackstard. I'm a Half Animal And a Half Dream.
He's on the roto forums. He has basically provided about 75% of the new threads in the general forum. I guess he got tired of self-promotion over here.
i'm rain (same rain @ kr :GROAN: lol) i mostly hang at vinyl requiem these days. got the taco truck out, ice cream man for a cool little "boardie" dinner during the cardboard spaceship + subtext show during sdcc. planning on doing something similar this sdcc. i'm 32, wifey + mommy of 3 boys, working in lower level management at the honda center in anaheim, ca (GO DUCKS!) my job is pretty awesome. can't remember when i started collecting...i've always been a collector though. i know i came across toy tokyo on a trip to nyc in 2002/2003! hubby and i like usugrow, mike giant, craola, bwana, etc. trying to complete our dead rappers art collection in the bathroom. anyone got eazy e? i like taking pictures of fun stuff, making cupcakes, cooking, arts, crafts, vegas, music (wu tang clan, psycho realm, jean grae, old gangsta rap, sublime, led zepellin, rhcp, etc). i'm pretty chill. speaking of my cool job. this guest was at the springsteen concert about a week ago. couldn't resist his shirt, had to take a picture. asked him if the broad was his wife and he told me i'd get mad if he told me the truth. i told him to tell me anyways...its some hooker in hawaii. told him to go on with his bad self lol -THIS ISN'T ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-
Hi Rain, for some reason I thought you were a lot younger and more... of.. a girl. is this an old pic? hehe
I can't believe I read most of this. Great thread! My name is Connell. Born March 22, 1941 in Mound City, Illinois a small (population 2,200) town in Southern Illinois into a very poor but loving family. I don’t remember having any toys in those early years. I played with dirt (literally) spending hours making mud pies, baking them on top of coffee can lids and decorating them with stones and twigs. I started collecting dirt in jars from all over town. It became quite an obsession, jars of different hues and textures of dirt and clay lining my room. Later I started mixing these colors with water and used the pigments to paint and draw with. In my pre-teens my mom and I moved to St Louis, Mo. My interest in dirt collection progressed to minerals, semi precocious stones, and butterflies. On one of my birthdays (around age 12) I got a chemistry set. The only toy I remember from that period was a Slinky which I proceeded to destroy trying to figure out how it worked. There is an old photograph of me around the same age. In it I’m holding a hand carved wooden steamship. I have no recollection how it came into my possession or where it ended up. At age 18 I left home and joined the Navy for 4 years ending up in San Diego. Other than a small stint in the 70’s (6 months in Hawaii) I’ve lived in California for 45 years. Left San Diego in the 60’s for San Francisco. Lived in a commune next door to the Grateful Dead. Became a groupie/drug supplier for numerous rock bands of that period. After a few years of a hedonistic drug induced life style became more political. Got arrested for conspiracy against the Government during a civil disobedience demonstration (chaining a Bart train to the station will do that.) (If there’s anybody from the FBI on here the charges were dropped to a misdemeanor and I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.) Got into Punk somewhere in the 80’s first in Los Angeles then in San Francisco where I worked for a short lived Punk magazine (Damage) that was located above Target Video in the Mission. Went to lots of shows. Did lots more drugs. I guess you could say this was my drug-collecting period. Got clean and sober. Went back to school at the San Francisco Art Institute. Got my BFA. Went to UC Davis got my MFA. Moved back to LA in 99. Whew! That’s the short version. Today I’m a visual artist/curator with a wide range of interest in popular culture. I got into toys a few years back through comic books. Started collecting Ultraman, Kikaida, and Godzilla stuff. Through Flikr I came upon images of kaiju from people like toybotstudios anf Paul Kaiju. Toys for me are art objects. They just happen to be art object you can play with. I’m constantly amazed at the degree of talent and creativity that goes on in the world of kaiju. At this stage for me each day is a new discovery, an ongoing venture of things to learn and seek out. Thank you all for letting me join your community. It’s a lot more fun and fulfilling than collecting dirt. This thread has helped to remind me that there is more to each of us than the latest toy we’ve purchased. That said, can anyone hook an old man up with a frankenruge!
I am joe, a low-profile collector in japan. I started art figure collecting in 1999 when I bought Michael Lau's Tatoo. Every year, i still hunt down a Tatoo figure to celebrate each passing year of collecting. Over the years, I have amass quite a huge collection of everything. I often surprise myself when going through my pile from time to time that I have figures that I don't even remember buying. Sometime, it is a nice surprise as some of these figures became quite popular meanwhile. These days, I try to collect selected sculpts from various artists. Some of my favourite new kaijus are Cronic's Zyurai, Usugrow's rebelink, RxH's evils, BusterCall's beetlars etc. I am happy to meet collectors and make some friends here from overseas. Sorry, i hate taking pictures
My name is Peter. I collect art books, ripped DVDs, and music from torrent sites. I like curry dishes, cities, and modern art. I work at a stupid corporate job surrounded by bozos, hacks and douchebags. I've been on this board for way too many years.
