On My Plastic People Collection

At 1:12 Scale, Life Can Feel Under Control

Lately, I just want to play with my toys. As a man of 40, I know I’m past due to be ashamed of this. And while part of me is embarrassed to be stretching the limits of just what it is “Ages 5 and up” is meant to entail, another aspect of myself knows that joy, scarce as it is, is not to be apologized for. It’s to be nurtured and held sacrosanct, because it is a counter-ballast to the burdens foisted upon us by the world at large.

I don’t know what’s to be done about the president and his minion enablers, nor can I shout the proper incantation to bring peace to the Palestinian peoples. I don’t know how to parse anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism in a way that makes everyone who should feel safe, respected, and heard, while also perhaps duly challenged. I don’t know what to do except fear the end of things as we have known them. And perhaps that is right and good—perhaps our sense of security has been too costly, beyond our sight, and is in need of rework and repair. I don’t know if the advent of generalized artificial intelligence is a boon or a bane to humanity. I know I am being told that if I take no side I have already lost. I also recall in myself the kind of person who had no problem shouting to the world the shape I thought it ought to take, but there is an increasing distance from that aspect of my self. I believe less than ever in the power of a raised voice, as we’ve reached a cultural volume that makes separating signal from noise near to impossible. I might want peace, but peace is a lot harder to come by than plastic.

I bought most of my action figures during a time when I was temporarily insane. I had my reasons. But my collection, my obsession, my affinity was born long before that.

Like so many firstborns of their generation, I was a spoiled child, the center of my family’s universe for a time. Gift-giving was my paternal grandmother’s chosen love language, and she especially made sure I did not go without. My maternal grandmother was no less guilty, showering me with torrents of praise for my qualities like kindness, humor, and of course humility. I didn’t have everything, we weren’t quite of means to that degree, but I had some of everything. I did not want. I was and felt very, very lucky.

Nothing held my attention like my action figures. Like a puppeteer, I manipulated my plastic figurines into animation, telling stories like the ones I watched on TV or read in comics. I think I liked lording over them and their little world, god-like, in control. When the time would come for play to end, I would pile them all into my large Sesame Street-themed, schoolbus-shaped toybox, hoping they’d all be intact when next I summoned them, knowing that eventually some wouldn’t. These were solitary pursuits, by and large, private playtales I told myself as I pined to become a certified, grownup storyteller. My sister might peek into the room, but as with other creative pursuits I’d shoo her off so that my insecurity could go unpunctured.

When I was in second or third grade, my parents gave me the birthday gift of a lifetime. Just ahead of my party, I was sent to our side yard to see what I could see. It was there I found a complete Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer hideout playset, with all four turtles, their mentor Splinter, nemesis Shredder, and his Foot Clan minions, all brand-new, displayed. Best of all, my dad had arranged the figures into the perfect living scene, ready for my playful hands and machinations. I was shocked and thrilled—by then my parents had already entered the separation phase of their eventual divorce, but instances like this proved they could still make a formidable team. Here, in me, they forged a memory.

Comic books were, of course, easier to collect than action figures, costing a fraction per unit. But while comics still bore the mark of a somewhat unconventional hobby during my youth, the characters that sprung from them were ascendant. X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man, Fantastic-Four, Superman, Iron Man—in the 90s, these Saturday morning and weekday afternoon cartoons were everywhere, mainstream while still feeling niche. And, because of the business of the thing, each show brought with it the promise of a dedicated toy line, where characters both popular and less so could be brought home and added to your personal cast and canon.

It's probably folly to speak of 90s cartoon toys without mentioning their 80s predecessors. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to be learned about how Reagan-era deregulation of programming standards led to G.I. Joe and Thundercats and everything else serving as half-hour informercials that, at least in my case, successfully brainwashed kids into craving these plastic figurines. Transformers, cool as they were, were always prohibitively expensive for my collection, so I’d have to appreciate them from afar. G.I. Joe’s, however, had a lower barrier of entry. In fact, I had one Joe in my collection that was a rare artifact indeed—one based on me.

The manufacturers had a great idea—each G.I. Joe came with not only the toy and its guns/accessories, but a card that regaled their full history and backstory, and so they introduced a masked character that acted as something of a blank slate, where you the purchaser could concoct your own personage and story. My dad had always told me that, before I was born, he’d campaigned for the name “Hercules,” so that I might be known by the epic nomenclature, “Herc McGuirk.” It was probably never as within reach as he told it, I have a hard time seeing my mom sign off on that one, but I liked the fantasy of myself with the name of a classic hero. And so it was that Dad sent off to the G.I. Joe manufacturers the secret history of Herc McGuirk, paramilitary operative. My dad is a pretty talented writer and so the toy came back with an epic saga on its back card, leaving me with an object that felt too exclusive for anyone else to own (even if they could all buy one of the same little guy and come up with their own names and backstories).

Spoils of War

My mom has always been very thoughtful regarding my love of these kinds of toys—when I was finishing college she got me a truly spectacular Gonzo figure from the Muppets’ beloved Palisades line, which I still cherish—but when I think of my collection I largely think of my dad. It’s a lot of happy memories, but some bear a tinge of bittersweet.

Him being a bartender, one thing we were often negotiating when my sister and I were kids was my dad’s sleep needs. With late hours and demands, and the influence of alcohol, it wasn’t irregular for him to need to sleep in late during our weekend visits to his place in the city. He’d sometimes miss our calls, or his train when it was time to pick us up. But one nap he took was, for me, quite fortuitous indeed.

My sister Ali and I were waiting for my dad one Saturday morning. In the days before cells, we had no way of knowing why he didn’t get off the train when it reached our suburban stop—only that he wasn’t there. Wanting to be with an unavailable parent is a difficult feeling, but my sister and I were practiced at understanding that both our parents were often in their own ways overwhelmed and that it didn’t interfere with how loved we felt by them. Still, acting like an understanding grownup is hard on a child, who may be able to rationalize with the best of them but is also likely to internalize some guilt. Did I really think it was my fault my father could be unreliable? Probably not, but I also didn’t have a lot of opportunities to process or express my anger or disappointment, for fear of disrupting our precious and limited time together.

One thing I always knew about my dad was that when he fucked up, he felt guilty as sin. He’d try and own his mistakes by acknowledging them, though this made him a mite touchy when you’d seek to redress them yourself. He was always trying, though, communicating and apologizing and promising to do better even while he maligned himself as damningly inept in certain areas. A fan of the grand gesture, we always felt he was trying to make his shortcomings up to us. And some of the gestures were unforgettable.

It was a dark scene as my sister, mom, and I departed the train station that Saturday afternoon, without any word from Dad. Ali and I were desperate to see him, as always, and it was the kind of misstep that made my mom furious, which while understandable was also not a blast to be around. It’s just a strange feeling, to be waiting around for someone you rely on without any clear sense of what’s going on. It wasn’t terribly long before we got a phone call. It was Dad, he’d fallen asleep on the train out and slept through our stop. He made it to the end of the train line and was headed back in our direction, and he’d see us soon. Wicked sorry, he promised he’d make it up to us.

An hour or two later we were back at the train station. As my dad disembarked the inbound train, he somewhat clumsily juggled a large cardboard box, full to the brim. What was inside wasn’t quite forgiveness, but it wasn’t the worst approximation of it, either.

I told you I was spoiled, right? Rotten.

By some divine provenance, there was a comic book hobby shop in the town where he’d gotten off to change directions. And, as was sometimes the case, Dad had pockets full of cash on him from a particularly bountiful night before. So, add that cash to his sense of guilt and our shared, bonding toy language, and Dad was a fearsome customer for that store.

He must have bought every fucking Star Wars figure they had.

My poor sister, who lacked the EZ-button that I came with.

So, yeah, my dad gets off the train and hands me this giant box of 1990s Star Wars figures and probably mumbles “Sorry, kid,” before or while my mom lays into him. Here was a man that was not always adept at life skills like the timely paying of child support or bills making a brazen play at buying forgiveness from his eldest child—the kind of behavior concocted in a lab to make overworked single moms like mine lose their minds. No doubt there were “better” ways to spend that wad of cash, responsible investments for a better future, but sometimes the moment is king. Sometimes impulses are the truest guide. Sometimes you just spend the fucking money. Because it feels good to.

It wasn’t long later before my uncle, his brother, got me the Millenium Falcon to complete my Star Wars collection, a hearkening to their own youth. Years later I’d gift the collection to my younger cousins, the children of my dad’s sister, in hopes that they’d love and remember me and my generosity the way I did Dad’s.

All told, I had a pretty epic toy collection in my youth. I had all my Marvel favorites, who still felt underground before they all became movie stars. I’d held onto all the first loves I’d had, all the toys from that Sesame Street bus-shaped toybox. I wasn’t big on letting go, unless I was made to. I don’t have any of those toys now, though. They were all lost. My dad giveth, my dad taketh away.

He moved a lot, my dad. Usually somewhere around Cambridge or Somerville, we were always being introduced to new neighborhoods and roommates. It was a great way to get comfortable in the city, becoming acquainted with and connecting different corners. But it wasn’t exactly evidence of stability. Still, there were things I knew I could rely on when we were at my dad’s on weekends. We’d be able to go buy comics in Harvard Square. We’d have video games to play and SNL to watch. And I’d have my action figure collection to entertain me when things died down.

I don’t know the particulars of how my dad got evicted from his place off Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. I’m sure he’d gone out a bit too often and tipped his friends too much and got too far behind in his payments to my mom and tried to make up for it by working triple-shifts and it all just caught up with him. He’s always had the best of intentions and he knows where the rubber meets the road and it must have just gotten out of his reach. And the thing is, it never really mattered where he lived as far as my sister and I were concerned, because we’d always have our routine of Harvard Square, SNL, and catching the train home. The important stuff didn’t change. It had been a good place, though, and maybe one of the few where Dad lived alone. Which was probably the problem.

So Dad, probably in his late 20s, got evicted. His stuff, we were told, was put into storage. He’d have to pay to reclaim it all, was I think my understanding. And my collection of action figures, along with a trove of vintage comics a friend of his had just gifted me, was all collateral damage. I’d left it all there at his place, my joyous little reward to myself for making it through another week in the suburbs. I can still see the closet where it was all stored. The precious individual figurines are harder to summon, though a few stand out. I was probably getting too old for toys anyway, if I wasn’t a preteen I was near to it, according to conventional logic anyway. But no. There was no real silver lining to be had here. Maybe I’d have had to part with those vestiges of youth sooner or later anyhow, but this was a difficult way to have the hand forced. The man largely responsible for my affinity for these characters from my beloved forms of escape was also the one at fault with the disappearance of my collection. Every once and a while, I’d ask him about the storage unit, about progress or hope on that front. It was a touchy subject and remained so until I smartened up enough to know that whatever window there had been to reclaim my toys had been closed. Like so many he taught me, it was a lesson in understanding.

Part of what I did when I made it rich aka got a decently well-paying office gig was to reassemble what I could from that collection through secondary markets. As is so often the case, the acquisition was thrilling, but the possessing proved less memorable. They don’t play as well with my newer items, out of scale and off-model. And I can’t for the life of me remember which I had and which I didn’t, until I encounter one that’s familiar. I guess it’s not that I want this character or that character so much as I want to have not lost that original collection, that tether, those charged items from my youth.

Unboxing an Obession

As I got older, action figures became more and more of a common family gift for me. That Gonzo from my mom came in college, at or near graduation. My sister memorably got me nicked-up totems of Waylon Smithers and The Lion King’s grown-up Simba, winks at our common understanding of adulthood. But as ever it was my dad that committed most to the bit, expertly navigating my fandom and trekking to the nearest Newbury Comics or whatever and selecting the character he knew would get me most geeked. Beta Ray Bill was a tertiary Thor character that debuted less than a year before I was born who made for a fine addition (and, unspoken, replaced an item lost in the eviction). Long before Josh Brolin made him a movie star, Thanos was the antagonist of the Marvel epic Infinity Gauntlet, and his hulking sculpt made for an impressive piece. Dad and I each had our respective lores of obsession, his being the works of JRR Tolkien and mine being the exploits of Marvel’s Thor. In the 2000s, both legendariums would be brought to life on the big screen, which meant they’d also be made into plastic at 1:12 scale, which meant that the collection grew. And when Dad gave me the set of both Thor and his half-evil brother Loki, he included a note about the world needing both of morality’s dramatic halves to compose a compelling and substantive whole.

At some point I think the old man might’ve got a little worried. That his son was… okay. I remember a talk we’d had about how, getting older, it might be more fun to pose and then display the action figures, rather than play with them. It made sense but still felt like an implicit rebuke. I took the note, but it didn’t really curb my wiring. Nowadays, I don’t worry so much. Dad’s an avid video gamer, and he’s done well to explain his rationale for continuing to enjoy the hobby as he gets older. His is an underlying message of self-acceptance, which resonates. Action figures might be less of a popular hobby, but they’re not that much more juvenile than your average video game. Right? Right?

I took it easy for a few years. The action figure riff would crop up around my birthdays or Christmas, an athlete perhaps or popular figure, a Ninja Turtle that would recall the grand birthday setup of my childhood, but in my 20s and 30s I tapered off the habit. I guess I took my dad’s words to heart, because I conceived myself a collector now, leaving the toys in their packaging and displaying them on the wall by my desk. It wasn’t until the woman that’s now my wife ever so innocently suggested I might enjoy taking them out of their boxes that things got gnarly.

I’ve told you before that I’ve got one of those irregular brains. Now, that’s something we all know to be true on some level, but my differences are clinical. Bipolar disorder is something like that phenomenon where you mention red cars and suddenly start seeing them everywhere—now that I’ve been diagnosed, medicated, and stabilized it seems familiar and unspectacular. When I was struggling, though, it seemed like I was alone in my doom. Nothing would comfort me. Nothing but the collection of toys.

Again, my diagnosis most clearly presented itself during the summer of 2020 (though, upon reflection, it was progressing for a few years prior to that), during a time when the world was small. There was little to no leaving the house. Routines were thrown into disrepair. Socializing was made radioactive. The world outside was scary, angry, changing rapidly, and above all isolating. It was enough to send generations into regression, which it did. I knew a bunch of people that turned inward, becoming obsessed with their hobbies or those from their youth. I was among them.

I think it started when I opened up those first long-sealed toy boxes. Suddenly, I had a dynamic between opposing characters on my hands. But for me that limited interplay wouldn’t suffice. Because besides comics, I was also raised on Richard Scarry’s sprawling What Do People Do All Day books, and The Simpsons. Which meant that I didn’t just want the characters to make a scene or even a cast—I wanted a society. A bustling one.

There is a very, very dangerous store about a mile from my place. It doesn’t sell guns or knives—but rather comics and vintage toys, most in their alluring original packaging. That 2020 summer, short on social calls, I started to venture to the large showcase room in the store’s rear, where the walls ran high with merchandise. It was a dynamic time for me. I’d just lost my job, only to gain it back with greater benefits, security, and wage. I was let go due to a hiring freeze by on high, and I’d been a long-term temp in my years with the organization. The best efforts of my bosses were not enough to spare me the tumult of being let go in the short term, though their commitment to keeping me on the team eventually, before long, led me back. In practical terms, it was an emotional roller coaster and headache. That it would be in the best of times. But, as I’ve said, I was reckoning with untended-to mental health distress at the time, so all of my reactions were heightened. I wept openly on the office-wide Zoom call that figured to be my last, not realizing how readily tears came to my eyes when I was manic. In truth, the window between my bad news and my good return to form was short, but it was a dramatic enough situation that I came out of it in a bit of shock. With a bit of whiplash.

Maybe, if it were another time, I’d have taken a vacation. Or bought a car. I had all this newfound security, and nowhere to splurge it. So, perhaps because of my faulty brain, unless instead because of my childhood experiences and losses, or the creative ambitions I’d had that were starting to fall away, I started to spend my money at that store. I wasn’t rich-rich, but my rent was cheap and my life was inexpensive and I’ve never had much sight or time for the future and so I felt entitled to spilling some dollars on my passion. I wouldn’t say I started small, exactly, but it wasn’t terribly long before my collection had tripled in size. Sure, I’d cherished my action figures as an adult, but those were all gifts from family, keepsake reminders of my character and its relative innocence. I’d never gone so far as buying them for myself—that was an invisible boundary I’d respected. Then again, I’d never had money to burn, either.

Excessive spending is a symptom of bipolar mania, experts will tell you, but what they don’t tell you is how good it feels. Like an idiot, I like spending my money, even when I’m not flying at 30,000 feet. I like the rush of finding what feels like the perfect missing puzzle piece and bringing it home. I’ve done some forensic reporting into my own iPhoto history, and I don’t know precisely what it is I first bought to break that seal, but it was probably a Muppet. In the early 2000s, the toy manufacturer Palisades had the license to Henson’s gang of animalia, and as a budding connoisseur I’d come to recognize that they did exceptionally great work. Their figurines are detailed and playful and came with inspired miniature accessories. A rarity, my store had many of them in their original boxes, though not for long when I entered the scene. I’d always had a special place in my heart for those Muppets, who taught me how to process emotions and reckon with the part of me that craves an audience. Running about $30 a pop, the Palisades Muppets were an early vice, evidence of my newfound spending habit.

The brick-and-mortar store was one kind of temptation, but the modern prevalence of online shopping meant that basically anything I could think of, any lost or never-had toy I could imagine or recall, could be mine for a relatively small sum (okay, some less small than others). You probably have your own eBay saved terms, so you know how easily one can slip down the rabbit’s hole into search-shopping. For me, it was rarities from my college years I splurged on, things I’d remembered wanting but let shame or shallow pockets turn me away from. There were also, now, nearly unlimited Marvel figures, likenesses plucked from the once-humble comic company’s massive cinematic saga—including a healthy number from the world of my favorite, Thor. Maybe I didn’t have to have them all—that’s what a sane person would think, anyway. But I could. And so, over time, I did.

Today, I don’t know—I might honestly have a thousand action figures. It’s in the hundreds, at least, if my rudimentary computations are to be trusted. It was mostly a trickle that first year, an eBay shipment here and a therapeutic trip to that shop there, but my mania went without tempering and so the shopping spree rode on. My bedroom started to take a new shape—on every surface, a face attached to a body in proximity to another, a small person looking back at me with another person at their side. In a strange way, this made my bedroom feel more my own, each figurine reflected some passion of mine or some part of my history. I thought often of my uncle and his sprawling record collection, which always fascinated me as it overwhelmed his living spaces. I liked that feeling, lost in the maximalism. Not exactly clear of mind, I felt I was assembling something unique that I could leverage—into what I wasn’t yet sure. I just knew that I couldn’t possibly be wasting my money. I was having too much fun.

My madness was not without method. As much as I was snatching up all my favorite characters, I was also trying to compose a cast—one that would require some sort of balance. That meant that I needed, in addition to the big recognizable heroes of the form, a wide variety of demographics represented in my collection. I didn’t want a monolithic assembly—I wanted a mini-world that reflected our own.

Given the demographics of who largely collects them, it is perhaps not a surprise that action figures bearing female likenesses are in lesser demand than male ones. There’s something prejudicial to the market, and that can extend to racial groups as well. As a result, figures of women and characters of color are often sold at a discount compared to their white leading male counterparts—which suited my needs just fine. My little world would look as much like our greater one as I could muster. And, more than that, characters were starting to remind me of figures in my life—this one was a stand-in for my mother, this my sister, and so on. I was desperately trying to infuse meaning into my habit.

It was around now that my partner and I had a fight. Despite my expenditures, I was saving more money than I ever had before, and I had a big spend in mind. But despite our best efforts and intentions and love for one another, we couldn’t come to terms on an agreement about it. I was hurt, devastated even, and angry. And my tax return had just hit. So, I went to the vintage toy store and threw money around like a rapper at a strip club.

I know I’m playing fast and loose with the term here, but it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done. Remember those old TV spots where they’d run a timer and give a kid a couple minutes at Toys’R’Us or Kaybee and a shopping cart and let them fill it ‘til the clock struck zero? That was me, with no clock. I just had the mentality “I am going to buy every fucking thing I want here,” and did. I think, anyhow—that particular fugue state is hard to recall precisely, because as seismic a spend as it was, I would eventually carry a corresponding amount of guilt, for my impulsiveness, for my erratic honoring of misplaced priorities. I left the store having bought more than I could carry, which was a perfect and needed cover. But, man—it was fun. A certain kind of dream come true, both irresponsible and innocent. A gift to myself. And all it cost me was a single tax return.

More and more, my thoughts turned to the toys and what I could do with them. Could I learn to stop-motion animate, or tell a saga so grand it catapulted me into my beloved comics industry? I didn’t know. I wanted to believe that I was executing a grand plan. And maybe I was?

Loose Packaging

After my big shopping spree, there wasn’t much left to want. By spending to my heart’s desire, I’d filled my own coffers to the brim. I had nearly every character I could think of, and plenty in costume-variant doubles. I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do with them all, but I was sure I was on the right track for something. Even if I was in no small part ashamed of what I’d done in my state, how I’d behaved, and exactly what it was that I, unencumbered, spent my money on. What did this all say about me? How did things get so out of control, so fast?

But then, just when I thought I had it all, Hasbro debuted a new product: 3-D printed likenesses of your own face, perched on the body of your favorite pop culture character. It was a simple interface, an app you downloaded that was tricked-out with fun accessories and sounds and could take decent 360-degree pictures of your face. Needless to say, I fell in love with this product. Not satisfied with a single toy, which ran about $80 a pop, I bought a series of them, trying out new hair styles and approaches with each one. None quite came out to my absolute satisfaction, but they were each a fun addition to my collection. I’d been trying to find my way into the little six-inch world, and here I had it.

As my spending indicated, my mania was near its apex, or nadir if you prefer. Which was hard, on me and the people that loved me, but got better with time and help. That was the thing about buying all the action figures—I was trying, in an overly material way, to heal myself. To do what would help end the misery and suffering I was experiencing. I had a vision of using these toys to make the art form I’d spent my life trying to figure out. It wasn’t a reasonable thought but it was a powerful one, and one I latched onto. So I spent and I spent and I bought and I collected. I justified. And, I guess, I got what I wanted.

During this time, I visited my dad one morning in a particularly agitated state. I’d had a bad night and was feeling misunderstood. Everyone was worried about me, which did not help my agitation. I just wanted to think about fun shit. So I showed my dad the Hasbro make-yourself-a-toy-tool, and insisted he try it out for himself. He was reluctant. Never one to love being given a directive, he wasn’t in the mood for our little 1:12 scale plastic language. Which first hurt, then pissed me off. Just do this thing for me, I pleaded loudly. Just trust me, even though I’m being troublesome, is what I was really saying. He relented. I promised in 4–7 weeks he’d see how worth it this had all been. When I finally gifted his miniature to him for Christmas, finding a perfectly suited body—a Star Wars Cantina thug—I think he saw what I’d been going for. To give each other the gift of ourselves shrunken into plastic felt like the ultimate culmination of our longstanding tradition of giving. It was Herc McGuirk: the Redux.

Not long after that, I was pretty much brought into custody and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where I spent a few weeks getting adjusted to new medications while picking up some managing skills alongside a lot of thoughtful, colorful people. When people would ask me what they could bring, to ease my time in what I only-half-endearingly called the “think clink,” I’d say bring me some action figures. I want to take pictures of them, I’d say, which I then did but never to my own satisfaction. After I got out, I came to really learn that this weird toy photography hobby thing is, at least as far as the internet suggests, wildly popular. Isn’t it always funny to learn you’re less unique than you’d imagined?

When I got home from the hospital, life was shaky. But I was glad to have access to my shit back. It’s embarrassing, but my collection was one of the things I missed most when I was semi-voluntarily away from home. I think in my fractured state, it represented a control that I’d surrendered and was without. Now free to do and play as I pleased, I imagined I would transform all of this plastic into a story, one I could proudly author and showcase. I underestimated how ashamed I’d feel of all my adolescent indulgence, and what an obstacle that shame would be.

One day, my mom visited and we went for a long walk. She’d bore a hard share of my agitation before my hospitalization, because when doesn’t Mom carry the heaviest load, and we were both eager to spend an afternoon cooly and quietly healing. It was the beautiful part of early fall, and a number of people in my neighborhood were having yard sales. What better, more wholesome activity for a mother and her adult son than to peruse a yard sale?

There wasn’t much that could catch my eye that day. As I’d stabilized, I’d come to have deep feelings of shame and regret about all that I had bought. There was no room for anything, and I had so little space I couldn’t even enjoy what I had. I’d wanted to make stories but all I had was chaos. I started getting rid of things. Some I knew I’d never want again. Some I only thought so. In any event, I’d gone from being acquisition-minded to somewhere closer to purge mode.

But then I saw it.

I’d gotten to a point where no character would be additive to my world—they were all just chaotically stored on top of one another. What I really needed, at this stage of my nascent production, was a setting, a stage. A small-scale environment where these toys could come to life. A backdrop for close-up photography. I’d traded in a number of toys at the store with the hopes of finding an adequate playset, but they were short on options. I’d started to get dour on the whole project.

The little girl fronting this yard sale couldn’t have been more than 11, but she was old enough to have begun outgrowing her toys. (Must be nice!) She and her parents were lovely, playing the game families play when the adults let the child feel like they’re in charge. I knew, on sight, that I’d be making a purchase. She was selling her three-story, Bratz-themed dollhouse, which came complete with all kinds of fun furniture. It was perfect—it could probably hold 40 action figures and had fun details like a bathroom, kitchen, and pool area. Sure, it was plainly designed for little girls and femmes, but it was colorful and arch, almost like Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and it would more than suffice for my needs. That it cost nearly exactly what I’d gotten for trading in part of my collection made me feel like its discovery and acquisition had been divine provenance.

Thank God my mom was there that day, because I don’t think I could have lugged the thing home without her help—and perhaps wouldn’t have, but for her emotional support and judgement-free validaton. She might not have totally understood why this dollhouse was so important to me, but she recognized it was and saw it could be part of my delicate healing. It made for a happy memory together. And it did wonders to mitigate my conflicted feelings.

The thing about my mania that was most seductive was that, in that state, I felt totally free from the shame that has haunted my years. It was like going from swinging a weighted bat to one made for wiffle ball—it felt so good to be without my baggage that I was willing to pay nearly any cost to grip the feeling. I’m sure without the mania I’d have never spent my money so freely, which is complicating, but the truth is I like what spoils it left me with. I just have to find ways to make it all worth it. And in order to do that, I have to be inclusive.

Show and Tell

As I rounded back into form, after my hospitalization, I negotiated my way around some of these feelings. One tactic I took was to acquire more small items—and just not horde them for myself.

I started buying my wife Chloe little miniature knickknacks. She’d been so understanding during my difficult times, and never compounded my feelings of weirdodom. I wanted her to be part of the fun, and so when I found that they were making miniaturized household goods and items, like groceries and cleaning supplies, I started bringing them home for her. It felt like a way to draw her into my passion and hobby, while also reducing and disarming the shame I’d carried about the habit, the irrational expenses, and the sense of mistakes I’d made. It worked to perfection—she was thrilled by every little thing, yet further proof of our happy match. For her birthday, I got her a set of Pyrex bowls, as she is a big collector of them herself. But I knew she wouldn’t already have these ones—as they were made in dollhouse scale. It was a big hit.

My friends all have kids now, so I took the opportunity to winnow down the flotsam from my collection by playing Santa and gifting my various Ninja Turtle and Disney action figures to their little ones. It felt good, like putting things back in their correct place, and even though my friends were a little vexed as to why I was giving all this stuff away I think they appreciated the gesture.

Sharing remains the challenge and the goal. I’m telling you about all this because while I do still carry troubled feelings around every facet of the story I’ve told, I know sharing it, shedding light on it, is the best bet to disarm them. If you’ve read a few of these things, you’ve seen in part how I’ve decided to leverage my action figures into my creativity. I’ve got more in the bank that I’ve yet to share, but I’m still arranging, still setting the scene, still getting comfortable.

There’s a meme, you might have seen it, mocking the idea that neurodivergence is a newly emergent issue, traceable only over the past few decades. The joke is there’s an older fella saying something like “Back in my day, we didn’t have autism!” And then he shoos everyone out of the room, because “It’s time to play with my trains.” I, of course, enjoy this bit of internet humor, as it feels like it lets me off the hook for my juvenile plastic revelry. It puts my hobby in conversations with others that preceded it, it makes me feel less like an outlier. It’s funny; we might all want to feel special, but no one wants to feel alone. And with all my little guys at my disposal, I never have to be by my lonesome.

I think what I worry about when I worry about being a middle-aged man into action figures is what it means. I worry that it means I’m failing to clear some critical maturity waystation, that I’m wrong somehow in my desires and aims. That I’m holding onto a part of my childhood in a backwards way, when I ought to be collecting fine art, or something, or trading stocks.

The thing is, I’m not exactly arrested in my maturity. I may not know how to remedy and restore it, but I care about the real world and its goings-on. I think, I think, about the hard stuff. But I do feel a desire to honor the child within, the one who was audacious in his ambitions and took pains to be carefree in the face of adult worry and concern. And while it’s a somewhat odd habit I’m not altogether insecure about being a bit of an oddity, especially when so many of my favorite people are, too. It’s a rare thrill when two of us collectors find each other, recognizing the passion and trading notes on our favorite pieces. It’s trite, but there’s a spark you can find in the eyes of a collector, no matter the object of their pursuit, and it’s one that, I think, can light your way even in the darkest of days.

Which brings us back here—back to our current present, the darkest of days. As I try and muster the courage to share the action-figure-comics I’ve spent recent months composing, and as I struggle with feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness augured by a world that won’t relent in its disappointments, I remind myself: They made art during every war. While important people made the critical decisions that dictated what peace looked like for the rest of us, creative people made room for their playtime, which resulted in lasting works that helped make it all make sense, made it all worthwhile. Perhaps it is haughty to think of oneself as enlisting into such a tradition, but it beats pinning a cape to your back and trying to leap a tall building in a single bound.

Ultimately, play is important. Not only a teaching tool, it’s therapeutic to cease trying and instead let loose and play.

Anyway, that’s why I play with toys.

(And how!)