Nerd Therapy Session: So-Dumb Warrior

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First off, thank you for the incredibly kind response to last week's entry. It's extremely comforting to know I was not alone because that would have been pretty terrible.

My next tale of nerd-woe jumps me to 1986, I had started drifting away from collecting comic books and jumped into collectibles, specifically sci fi based toys. Actually, it was all about toys but I was still in kind of denial about the whole thing.

Even though I clearly loved toys and action figures, I couldn't allow it unless it was science fiction related stuff. Buying a Big Jim camper would have been childish but my Star Trek bridge play set was an adult thing.

It was quite the complicated lie I was living.

This was also years before email or toyshop magazine. So my three choices for finding vintage "collectibles" were as follows:

Flea markets, old store stock at variety stores (really lucrative) and comic shops.

Most of the comic shops in my area were used bookstores with names like "The Book Between" and "Morgan Self ltd.". They were paper shops and pretty dry affairs. Save for "Unicorn Comics" an honest to goodness comic store that occasionally dabbled in vintage toys.

The owner Tim, (I'm happy to report I still see him every couple of weeks) for some reason hadold toys in the window. I say "for some reason" because Tim never seemed to like toys, in 30 years of knowing him. I don't know why he had them there in the first place but I digress.
Unicorn was in the heart of downtown Oshawa and required transportation for me to visit. It was March break and my mother insisted that we go clothes shopping at the mall that day. We struck a compromise, I would take the bus to Unicorn (cause I couldn't have my mom cramp my style) and meet her around 2pm at the mall for some stone wash jean shopping at Thrifty's.

Unicorn was in a dank building that looked like it was falling apart, in fact it did fall apart before the decade was out. I got there just as it opened and my eyes met a moral dilemma, there it was a perfect, complete, mint-fricking-condition Gai King from Mattel's Shogun Warriors.

The Shogun warriors are an achilles heel of mine, it's the one toy line that my parents refused to indulge me in. Since then, I've always kind of had a machinder fetish that, to this day, often clouds my judgement.

The big problem for me was, this wasn't a sci fi collectible, it was clearly a kiddie toy but yet, I must have it..... I justified it to Tim by saying i was a fan of "Force Five" (which was a total lie) and that made it all better. I'm pretty sure Tim could not care.

I shakily handed him the money for it and probably the latest issue of "Doctor Who Monthly".

And then Tim did something to me that seriously broke my 15 year old brain.

He handed Gai King to me in a giant CLEAR PLASTIC BAG and apologized to me as it was the only thing he had.

It hit me immediately. Oh Crap, Crap, Crap, I have to walk with this giant freaking toy for almost a mile to go into the one place where I'm sure half of my graduating class is right now. Oh, what have I done?

I also had two hours to kill until my mother would show up.

To make matters worse, the two skeavy, drug dealer infested arcades nestled close to Unicorn were not open yet.

I took a series of back roads that had no sidewalks to the mall, meaning me and Mazinga were ambling in a foot of snow and nearly getting hit by every ardent car that went by. I was also wearing my crappy off brand sneakers, toe loss seemed like an acceptable scenario over discovery.

Hiding in Sears seemed to be my best plan as the gals in the Singer sewing center ask too many questions. I contemplated buying a pillow or something just so I could have a large bag to conceal my shame but none could be had for under a dollar.

The TV section seemed a safe bet, I'd run into less kids my age there. I think I sat on the floor and quietly watched TV, the sales people gave me strange looks but probably thought I had issues.

When my mother showed up, I quickly threw my Machinder shame in her trunk. I would run into half a dozen kids I knew that day, being seen clothes shopping with my mommy didn`t feel too bad.

PS my mom bought me some English Leather after shave that day, i didn't start shaving until two years later.

Thanks for reading and if you have some nerd therapy you'd like to submit, PLEASE send it on down, Let the healing commence!For more Fashion Mockery and 70's toy love visit us at Plaid Stallions.com


More...

[The Toyroom]

I was cringing as I read it Oh the shame!

[cjefferys]

That was a great story Brian! I perfectly remember that time in my teens and early 20's when I had that terrible mix of emotions, I loved toys but was also ashamed of that love. "What was wrong with me??" I wondered. Luckily I had a close friend who loved toys as much, so that helped me feel less alone and strange.

Here's a story from me: it's funny, I was only a year or so younger than you when I got my Gaiking. My cousin (also a toy fan, so we enabled each other) and his family came over for Christmas and he presented me with a brand new Gaiking. He said he found it on clearance at KB and asked his mother if they could get me that for Christmas. Of course, I'm sure my aunt resisted, saying "Chris is much too old for toys like this now!" but he was stubborn. When I opened the present in front of the family, I was both thrilled to get another Shogun Warrior (at that point I only had a Mazinga and Godzilla that I got a few years earlier, you know, a time when it was still OK for me to get toys because I was young) and also embarrassed because everyone saw me get a toy for Christmas at my age.

The good thing is that at that age, I had entered my "collector" stage, so Gaiking is still in my collection, box and all. And my cousin, he's a serious big wig at the Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas now, a real success story, but is still as much a geek as I am. Everytime we talk, it's still all about toys and comics. I'm glad I had a couple enablers help me through the tough times when it was less ok to be a geek.

[palitoy]

I was cringing as I read it Oh the shame!

I cringed writing it.

When I opened the present in front of the family, I was both thrilled to get another Shogun Warrior (at that point I only had a Mazinga and Godzilla that I got a few years earlier, you know, a time when it was still OK for me to get toys because I was young) and also embarrassed because everyone saw me get a toy for Christmas at my age.

I got one of those stories too...

[4NDR01D]

Funny story Brian. I remember in the late 80's after the first big rise in popularity of wrestling, and long after all my friends had stopped watching, I was still renting all the vhs tapes that my local video store stocked.
I was always so nervous that I run into my friends on the way home and they'd interagate me over what I was renting. I think it happened maybe once but to me it seemed like every. single. time.

thankfully never had the same experience with toys that I can remember.

[MIB41]

Hi. My name is Tom and I am a toy-holic. Great story Brian. Confessional time. I think it's a foregone conclusion that any of us who were in middle school or high school in the late 70's or early 80's were closet collectors. Let's be totally honest here. It was not even remotely "cool" to like action figures at that stage with your peers. Hell, you couldn't even like KISS anymore and be considered cool! And society had certainly not recognized our beloved Megos as "action figures". They were seen as dolls. And with the dawn of the MTV age, there was no room for Mego's or any other toy in the public realm. And that is both the blessing and the miracle that came with the birth of the information age. When the internet went live, everything slowly began to change. As each home acquired a computer, a new society began to build. People began to relate according to what they LIKED. And being in front of a computer allowed you to share things you would never have had the courage to speak about in a face to face meeting. No one wanted to be ridiculed if they misread their audience. With the internet all the walls came down. And low and behold, we closet collectors found out we were NOT alone! And not only in one country, but all over the world! It's really a miracle folks.

But I can vividly remember pacing (and sweating) in a Children's Palace back in 1981 when I was looking at a 12 inch Mego Captain America. I was SO scared that someone I knew would see me in a toy isle looking at these figures and say, "What are YOU doing here?" It literally ate me up. I did find the courage to buy some carded Hulks, Batmans, and a Robin. And I kept looking around when I was checking out. Heck anyone who saw me probably thought I was shoplifting the way I was acting. But that particular day when Cap was sitting there, I sadly did NOT find the courage to pick him up. And as the years went by, I saw his price explode as I leafed through price guides. I cussed myself for my weakness. I lowered my head with shame in thinking I did not possess enough self assurance to do what I wanted to do back then. But then again I was just a kid and peer pressure was so intense back in those days. But more importantly, I didn't know whether it was okay or not. I didn't know there were others out there, just like me, that shared this kind of love. And what a release it was to see so many diverse and talented people loving the very same thing I did. Of course today my confidence is NOT in question. In fact, I'll race a kid into a toy isle if I think he's after something I want. At 6'4, put your money on me he'll lose.

[David Lee]

Great read B! Oh the shame....

-Dave

[LadyZod]

I felt your pain in that story.

can't wait to hear more.

[Earth 2 Chris]

I could almost feel the cold of the snow radiating through my shoes. You weave a mean yarn, Mr. Heiler.

I remember dealing with such things when the first Batman movie came out. It was okay to wear a black Bat-symbol shirt, but if you were caught with Toy Biz figures, you were screwed. I solved that problem by purchasing most of the figures out of town, where no one knew me! By the time Batman Returns and BTAS came out, I was a stock boy at Wal-mart, and could just raid the cases in the back room for swag. Of course, I still had to pay for them...

Chris

[samurainoir]

The benefit of having a brother ten years younger is that he was the perfect camouflage for toys... Not that we had much in common with what we like given the age gap, but I did get some Secret Wars and Super Powers under those pretenses that they were his (particularly since I had to convince my dad to drive through a gas station to get Super Powers). The reality of course was that he could care less about those, but to this day would tear your arm off for GI Joe RAH.

Never had any Jumbo Machinder either as a kid, though I did covet my friend's. Didn't own any until the nineties when I arrived back in the city from university. I picked up three from an antique mall at Queen and Bathurst, twenty five bucks each, missing missiles and things.

[Splitty]

I feel like a group hug.