Why I Collect Action Figure Toys — Part 237

Nostalgia

When a 68 year old man such as myself can be transported back through time to his childhood, something powerful is happening. And for me, it’s the nostalgia I feel for these toys, which is odd, because I never really had any toys of my own as a kid. My parents didn’t believe in giving me gifts, so I played with the toys of my friends and relatives. Even though I didn’t have anything like this, I still feel nostalgia for it. That is how powerful a force nostalgia can be.

To illustrate this, I have included a video clip. I strongly urge you to spend three minutes watching this clip from “Mad Men.”

“There’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash — they have a sentimental bond with the product…” Don Draper — Mad Men

“Nostalgia is delicate but potent. In Greek nostalgia means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus

This clip features Drapper discussing a slide projector but you can take the concept and apply it to any collecting hobby that involves things that would have or could have been a part of your past — like action figure toys.

This is also illustrated in the great movie “Field of Dreams,” where James Earl Jones’ character gives a speech about nostalgia and baseball.

“They’ll arrive at your door, as innocent as children, longing for the past…they’’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.”

Mr. Jones’ character continues, “It will be as if they have dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.

…[It]s a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SB16il97yw

While he’s talking about baseball, you can just insert the words “action figure toys” and it tracks. It tracks for me anyway.

When I analyze why I purchased a particular action figure for my collection, it’s often hard to say why. It just seems to happen — just like Mr. Jones describes in the movie. I guess it’s a search for peace.

This is also particularly impactful to me as a photographer. As a photographer, I see my main jobs as being a story teller and a protector of memories. In fact I often call myself a “high priest of memory protection.”

I use the action figures I collect to create stories that (when I do it well) reflect the way five-year-old me would have done it. And then I protect that moment — preserve it if you will, with a photograph.

This may all sound too ethereal for some…but for those of you who watched the video clips I posted, if you cried — you — you get it.

There’s still a child in all of us. The older we get, the more time we spend chasing that child. No matter how impossible the task might be.

Being a “toy-hunter” and photographer like me, well that’s my way of finding my way back to that version of myself. Since time is not on my side, I look at this as urgent work. I need to get back to the beginner’s mind before I transcend and leave this world for the next.

CONCLUSION

Nostalgia is a powerful drug…more powerful than any man has created, that is for sure. The dictionary describes nostalgia like this: “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition something that evokes nostalgia.”

In this increasingly violent, rude, ugly, messed up world we live in, there are far worse things you could spend your time pursuing.

Remember — toys are joy.