[TheBlueMarvel]

Interesting conversation you guys have going here...While I am not a fan of "movie" themed superhero figs, I do appreciate the introduction this sort of fanfare can create for an industry I've been closely tethered to since my early childhood.

I honestly can't remember the order of my interests as a child. Cartoons, comics, and toys of all genres were equally mesmerizing to me. I remember being captivated by 60's era superhero cartoons (which were in syndication by the time I saw them in the late 70's early 80's) like Spiderman, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Cap, Aquaman & Aqualad, Supes, and Bats. There were so many choices; Hanna Barbera and Filmation made a bevy of different superhero themed shows and even offered their own characters like Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Galaxy Trio. My first comics were Spiderman (I remember being afraid of Morbius and Lightmaster- those were my introductory Spidey villains), X-men (at the time, they were fighting Dracula who was in love with Storm and wanted to wed her - who wouldn't lol), the Hulk (who was fighting the Wendigo - who also scared the shit out of me), and Rom the Spaceknight. I was initially indiscriminate as it pertained to toys. I had Godzilla toys, Shogun Warriors, Star Wars figs, He-Man figs (and a bunch of weird He-man-like knock-off's they sold at the time - the 80's were weird that way), Black Hole figs, Tron figs, Six Million Dollar Man figs (Bionic-man), Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers figs and the list goes on....Figures were always the mainstay of toys for me and the influences for what I collected (or what my parents bought me) were a mixture of superheroe comics, sci-fi movies and TV shows. I think as I became more invested in comics, my scope narrowed. Additionally, at the time, the offerings for super-hero themed toys weren't that great (Kenner's Super-Powers figs and Mattel's Secret Wars figs), making it easier to relegate my pursuits to reading Marvel/DC comics and watching the complimentary toons about them.

Whatever the source or jump-off point for an interest in collecting superhero figures may be is not as important to me as is the cultivation of said interest to begin with. Come one...come all! As long as there is a market for these figs, they will keep making them. Toy figures have been being made for almost as long as civilization has existed. Anthropologists dig up ancient toy artifacts as much as they do any other artifact of antiquity. Although we are moving at an increasingly fast clip into the digital age (some would say exponentially so), there will always be a market for toy action figures. When I compare a child of today with myself as a kid, of course I must acknowledge that there are more "things to do" than when I was young. But I can't help but notice that toys and figures are more prevalent and popular than they have been at any other point in my life's experience. I see colleagues at work with toy action figures on their desks. I see people with miniature action figures hanging from key chains and bags. You can find a figure for almost any element of pop culture. Even if children move away from figs en masse, there is arguably an adult culture that would fill any void. In NYC there is a popular and locally famous toy-store called Toy Tokyo. I go there frequently. I take friends there that visit the area. I have rarely seen a child in this well-known toystore. I think I have seen kids in there (a grand total of) two times. One of those times, the kids in question, were the children of a friend I had brought there. Suffice it to say, this store is frequented by mostly adult clientele and it does very well....If they didn't (do well), they wouldn't be able to afford to lease space in the East Village of Manhattan. The niche culture of toy figure collecting has blossomed into a phenomenon that will endure. Hell, its been enduring for quite a long time.