Two years ago, I asked my wife if I could buy two “toys” that could be for both my birthday and Christmas presents. I wanted the 1/6 scale Batman and Robin from the 60s TV show that my friend Scott Wiles had just picked up. These things are insane. They come with multiple hands and batarangs bat-cuffs, and radios. And yes, Batman comes with a bomb. Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb, you know?
They were $500 for the pair. Crazy money, I know, but bear with me. I got a good deal on them, and I was going to display them in my office/studio, when I finally got it done. I loved this TV show when I was a kid and it was the impetus for me learning to read.
Well, I started putting stuff on shelves and I dug the two “toys” out, still in their multiple-layered boxes. Just out of curiosity, I looked up their current prices on Ebay. $1100-$1200 for the pair!
Wait. What?
It may be the small town/country kid in me, but I can’t own two toys worth $1200. I just can’t do it. So, this past weekend, I sold them as part of the stuff that I had at the Elkhart Collectibles Expo when I sold everything on my table in one fell swoop. Cleaned out a lot of storage space in my garage, too.
Now, I do like collecting things. I like the thrill of the hunt. I like finding things in unusual places and getting bargains. And while I sold off most of my most collectible things when we adopted Sera, one thing stuck with me for a long time: My vintage Mego Superman. I told the story of it here.
When I wrote “The Case of the Eight-Inch Action Figures” for my Solution Squad comics, I remembered what great fun those 8″ figures were. My brother and I eventually had Superman, Spider-Man, Kirk, Spock, Captain Marvel, Kid Flash, Johnny Gage from Emergency, and Hondo Harrelson from SWAT. We could only get away with playing with them at my dad’s and my grandparent’s houses, but we loved them.
This week, I was thinking, well, if I can’t bring myself to have $1200 toys, maybe I can still collect Mego figures. I have been picking up the 50th anniversary set, and last summer I bought a great set of the first six Star Trek Megos from 1974. Captain Kirk came with a broken leg, but I actually had a bag of Mego cadavers that I picked up somewhere or other, and I used a pin from a detached leg to repair him as good as new.
So, the other day, I started down a rabbit hole. A few years before Mego made a comeback as a company, there was another called Figures Toy Company and they had produced 8″ figures in the style of Mego in mass quantities. I wanted to see just what they had out there. I immediately found what I was looking for.
Are they Hot Toys quality? Of course not, but I don’t care. They’re $50 for the pair, not $1200! While I was exploring the various figures they had, I was taken by the fact that they also sell blank bodies and heads in various colors. And I thought, I could make my own custom figures, as a friend had done for me with Radical.
I started looking at videos of how to customize Mego figures and I watched one guy just crush an Indiana Jones figure with a 3D-sculpted head, and all he used were cheap acrylic paints and a clear acrylic coat. My eyes aren’t good enough to paint tiny gaming miniatures anymore, but I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at that.
But what compels me to collect things like this? Clearly, the theft of my childhood inspired me to draw a line in the sand, but one would think that after years and years of recovering it, I’d feel complete by now. I don’t. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t play with the toys. They sit on shelves and look cool. But I did play with Mego figures and even make sets for them up until the day I went to high school. My dad, thanks to my grandmother’s advice, let me make up for lost time. But he gently suggested it was time to grow up, especially since I had a job, could drive a car and change its oil, chopped wood with an axe, and worked with power tools. When I started playing football in 9th grade, the desire just kind of went away, especially when I was trying to get the attention of girls.
Since my wife hasn’t threatened to leave me unless I grow up, I guess I’ll continue to enjoy the things I enjoy! Here’s just a sample of what I’ve found online so far:
