↓
 

Category Archives: Collecting

Self-Checkout (or: “Dabid vs. Small Talk”

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

Suffering through checkout is the worst part of any shopping trip. The judgmental nature of a clerk quizzically assessing why I need to purchase $320 worth of Marvel Legends action figures in one go doesn’t really bother me ( I need to make certain to get the whole waves while I can to ensure I have all the parts to complete the series’ Build-A-Figures—Duh!), but having to endure a few moments of forced social niceties sure as fuck does [I went back and forth for hours thinking about the usage of the objectionable word “fuck” here, but I think utilizing a little harsh written language in this scenario gives appropriate emphasis to my feeling regarding these types of interactions, and is thus the correct usage for such language].

My best friend/brother (I promoted him to brother in a YouTube unboxing video, so it’s legal) feels strongly about using the checkout lanes with actual employees, so I try to acquiesce to his wishes whenever we’re on a comics/toy/grocery run. I think I understand his moral values about wanting to support those workers’ jobs by using human-run rather than automated lanes, but hell if my blood pressure doesn’t spike every time some disinterested schmuck is forced to ask how I am and propriety requires me to choke out a robotic response that’s meaningless to all involved.

Consequently, I think self-checkout lanes are one of the great renaissances of our time. When used, no longer do I have to avoid eye contact with some kid or grandma trying to make “small talk” with me, nor do I have to be alert for rare instances where I’m oblivious to being “flirted” to. I can put my own Pokémon cards into a shopping bag without bending the pack or tossing them down too recklessly (risking damaging them).

I don’t want to sound like a sociopath or anything—I generally don’t have anything against (or for) hardworking employees. It’s just that whether it be calling for a pizza or a necessary doctor’s appointment, I’d rather bash my head into the wall than have to have that requisite interpersonal interaction. Having to communicate with another person sucks, and it’s particularly nightmarish having to interpret what others are really meaning by what they say or if they care at all. Add in complicating elements like oral “tones” and “body language” and the whole thing becomes even more of a Hellscape.

One of the cardinal sins of telling a story is to tell and not show, but I think I’m guilty of that here. I’ve been d so pall-encompassed by these difficulties all my life that it’s hard to recollect specific anecdotes .

Let me just let it be said that in the majority of the tens of thousands of times I’ve ventured into retail stores in my life, if an employee comes to ask me if I need help with anything or have any questions, I immediately leave the store. Even if I did need help or would have bought something, I feel too uncomfortable and just abandon ship. No Beanie Baby, Funko POP or Pikachu-colored anything is worth that kind of duress.

So yes, I am happy to pay rising prices for my toys and action figures, Target. Just please—please—keep those self-checkout lanes functioning.

Shortpacked (or: “Dabid Hunts Grampa Simpson”)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

A shocking revelation came to my attention earlier this week: my best friend of over two decades somehow didn’t know what the word “shortpacked “ referred to. This word is so basic and commonplace to my vocabulary that I was absolutely astonished someone so close to me could be unfamiliar with it.

No, I’m not talking about “Shortpacked!”, the wildly inconsistent and frequently unfunny David Willis webcomic about collecting that I spent far too many minutes of my life reading, but in fact the terminology for a toy or figure from a set that is contained in the least quantity in a sealed shipping case assortment.

Shortpacked figures are something I thought about almost every day of my life from childhood through adulthood, as I was pretty much always on the hunt from my youth onward for the “rare” action figures from one series or another.

“Shortpacking” is a practice that occurs because manufacturers recognize that not all characters will be equally popular or marketable to the same extent, despite there still being sufficient interest to produce and sell these characters for a profit.

To prevent characters with a more “limited” appeal (such as random Mos Eisley Cantina aliens like Hem Dazon and Kitik Keed’kak in a Star Wars assortment) from clogging up the toy pegs in retail stores and thus lessening the chances of the retailer ordering more cases, toy companies will often choose to include these “hardcore fans only” figures in much smaller quantities than marquee characters (like Darth Vader).

Because the most ardent fans of a toy line tend to want to “collect them all”, these lesser-produced characters often almost paradoxically end up being the most sought after and fastest-selling figures in a lineup (making them favored targets of both fans and scalpers).

Thus, I spent many liters of gas on countless toy runs driving around looking for action figures of Grampa Simpson and finding only piles of Bart Simpson instead. (Playmates Toys misjudged their audience and falsely assumed Bart would be four times as popular as Grampa, so Bart was stupidly packed at four-per-case.)

(There’s a famous urban myth that Waylon Smithers was shortpacked in this same Simpsons toy line by Plsymates Toys, with the alleged reason being that it was because of Smithers’ sexual orientation, but that’s untrue–the figure was just slightly delayed and shipped even-packed at 2-per-case once he started to ship. After shortpacking Lisa Simpson, Grampa Simpson and Mr. Burns in Series 1 led to huge aftermarket prices for those characters and unhappy collectors, Playmates Toys went to an even-packing strategy for future assortments wherein there was rarely any shortpacked character. Hence, Smithers was not one-per-case as Grampa, Lisa and Mr. Burns had been.

Playmates Toys The Simpsons Grampa Simpsons Figure Series 1

Smithers was still tough to find, though, at least somewhat due to these controversial rumors increasing demand and also the fact that retail stores didn’t necessarily reorder a large quantity of restocks of World of Springfield Series 2, the set Smithers was a part of. I found my Smithers at the Saratoga Sorings Wilton Mall KB Toys in 2000, the only one I ever saw at retail. Smithers was the hardest figure in the whole line for me to find, as it took me months to find him–I found Grampa relatively quickly in comparison.)

These quests brought a spirit of life and adventure to toy hunting odysseys that has largely been lost in the modern internet age, wherein major toy manufacturers generally allow online retailers to order whatever quantities they want of individual figures, rather than being totally beholden to predetermined case assortments and ratios.

This fundamental shift has definitely changed the collecting landscape in a way that benefits the half-blind Dabid of today, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the thrills and disappointments of hitting dozens of stores each week in hopes of securing that rare Jean Grey figure amongst a pile of slow-selling Wolverines.

The Fever (Or: “Dabid Reviews ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’”)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

There’s a particular psychological phenomenon that has happened to me throughout my life that I’m not sure others experience in themanner that I do. I call it “The Fever”.

In essence, I am overcome by The Fever when my mind fixates on some particular specialized interest—usually brought about by some newly revealed or released toy/collectible—and I can no longer function except in ways that help feed the breadth of my knowledge of or interest in whatever my brain has fixated upon collecting.

The Fever cannot be reasoned with, circumvented or fought against. It can only be extinguished by being allowed to run its natural course until abatement, which can be anywhere from minutes to years.

From playing tedious LEGO video games to add enthusiasm to purchasing LEGO Indiana Jones sets(inspired by movies I’d never seen at the time) to reading thousands of old Marvel comics to learn about the significance of characters I’m happily buying expensive resin Bowen statues of to watching 80s He-Man and She-Ra cartoons in the modern day to justify buying “ultimate” retro-styled figures based on shows I never watched, The Fever is an “ailment” that has helped me to expand my knowledge within my sphere of interests to virtually unrivaled capacities.

My most recent bout of The Fever occurred while I was out hunting for the new NECA Gargoyles figures of Bronx and Demona at Target. This quest brought me to the specialty collectibles section on the back wall at Target, which is an area filled with various collector-aimed (and often pricey) items from a plethora of brands.

There was no sign of Demona and/or Bronx, but while slowly scanning the shelves (which takes a while since I’m largely blind now), something else by NECA called an “Ultimate Gamer Gremlin” caught my eye. While I had only seen the original Gremlins movie once in my life and never the sequel, seeing this excellently executed action figure immediately caused me to become overwhelmed with a need to know everything about this franchise—and toy line—that I had previously ignored.

It turns out that NECA has been pushing out Gremlins figures for the better part of two decades now, but not being enamored with ugly/creepy/horror toys, I was oblivious to the many, many NECA Gremlins collectibles released.

After doing as much internet research on the toys as possible, my next destination was an Amazon site search for any Making Of books or novelizations that could explain the property to me textually. None are in print or available on Kindle. So I had to fall back on what I didn’t want to do: actually attempting to watch the movies.

When your brain primarily only processes motion as a shadowy blur and you can no longer see the left hand side of the screen at all, trying to take in what is happening in a film is not the relaxing recreational activity it once was. So watching movies is no longer my preferred choice for fueling my collecting-related obsessions.

Having previously viewed the first Gremlins about 15 years ago and the sequel never, I opted to first stream Gremlins 2: The New Batch, a critically panned and fan-despised sequel.

Opening with a bonafide Looney Tunes cartoon, it turned out that the film was in fact all-out insanity with a barely coherent plot. Upon finishing the movie, my wife declared it one of the worst things we’d ever seen… but I wasn’t so sure.

While I couldn’t necessarily discern what was going on on-screen to the same extent as my wife, I felt like there was definitely something there in this film. That the director had made deliberate choices to subvert what viewers wanted and to throw it into their faces.

While the original movie is iconic and beloved, it’s also a pointless romp with nothing to say—suitable material for this admittedly needless follow-up to parody and make into a full-blown mockery. As a self-hating sequel made with the clear intent to satirize itself, the Gremlins “franchise” and sequels as a whole, I view this movie as a rousing triumph.

The bold decision to include such absurdities as a Vegetable Gremlin, Bat Gremlin, Spider Monster Gremlin and sex-changed Lady Gremlin (her name is Greta, according to her first official action figure ever, which was released this past winter) makes this film quite a bit more toy-etic than its predecessor.

Coupling these wild varieties of Gremlins with bombastic scenes such as the Gremlins attacking a film critic who blasted the first movie and a segment with Hulk Hogan threatening the Gremlins speaking directly to the audience made for a movie experience like none I’d had before

The human characters are milquetoast and poorly written, but I think that kind of works for the type of story being told here: an unnecessary one that directly calls out within itself that profit and merchandising is its sole motivation.

As a whole, the sheer lunacy factor of Gremlins II and its own self-hatred make it a movie I’m glad to have experienced. Taken as a serious movie in a vacuum, my grade for Gremlins 2 would have to be an ‘F-‘, but as a parody/satire it earns a conditional ‘A’ from me.

And thankfully, I managed to do enough reflection and research to stall out The Fever long enough that it ran its course before I spent a fortune buying random Gremlins merch. (Although I’d totally still buy a NECA Bat Gremlin if it didn’t cost an unbelievable $200+ on the aftermarket.)

Wrestling (or: “Dabid’s Unlikely Favorite Sport”)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

If anyone asked me what happened in the world or in my life in 1992, I would stare at them blankly and silently. But if asked about Wrestlemania XIII from that same year, I could rapidly rattle off the full card, results, and the storylines/circumstances building up to each match.

Professional wrestling came onto my radar in early 1992 in a predictably toy-driven fashion. The Hasbro WWF line of 4” action figures was hitting its stride and starting to have more and more shelf space devoted to it in stores, and memorable characters like morbidly-obese Earthquake and the crown-wearing “Macho King” Randy Savage quickly drew my eye and a few of my dollars. Most of Hasbro’s figures featured some sort of spring-loaded punch or throw “signature move” action feature (which arbitrarily sometimes were or were not actual moves the superstars performed in real life).

Not knowing exactly how to properly play with these action figures since I wasn’t an existing wrestling fan, I started to bring home 99 cent VHS rentals of past WWF Pay-Per-View events to learn the histories and backstories of these colorful characters appearing on toy store shelves. One or two VHS rentals multiplied into dozens, and soon I’d consumed all of the locally available WWF videotapes—some multiple times!

Although I have a love of–and knack for–memorizing stats and numbers, I’ve never been at all able to get into any kind of “traditional” sports (with one exception as an adult that I’ll talk about later). “Real” sports just didn’t have enough of a narrative for me to sink my teeth into. I needed athletes who were larger than life, with a wide spectrum of personalities, backstories and alignments! As I delved into professional wrestling fandom, I discovered that it delivered all these and more, adding an overlay of good vs. evil onto a competitive athletics backdrop.

Before I knew it, I had memorized the stats and histories of every even somewhat notable wrestler in the WWF, and then turned my sights to the “lesser” major wrestling promotion at the time, WCW. (I knew it was a “ lesser” company since their action figures were non-poseable plastic chunks with many less characters produced, primarily being sold at discount stores near me instead of bigger toy retailers.)

There were far fewer easily-accessible video tapes of WCW around, so I had to learn about this company’s competitors by reading magazines at the grocery store and paying close attention to when WCW Saturday Night aired on TV each week.

Historically, people have been surprised if not openly disgusted when they discover that I’m a pro wrestling fan. Prior to wrestling briefly being “cool” in the late 90s, it was vocally regarded by many in my peer group as being a sort of “fake”, cartoony carnival sideshow. Once it became edgy and trendy during the “Attitude Era”, it temporarily became more socially acceptable to be a wrestling fan. But not for me, as my peers couldn’t reconcile that my Lawful Good, rule-abiding character could enjoy shows filled with copious swearing, raunchy themes and sometimes extreme violence.

On a side note, I cannot fathom why wrestling haters gleefully declare that “wrestling is fake!” with such frequency, thinking that such an argument should automatically invalidate others’ fandom.

I’ve never heard anyone say “Comic books are fake!” or “Game of Thrones is fake!” In attempts to suck the joy out of fans of those stories, and it’s a bit baffling to me why wrestling seems to be such an almost universally natural target for bullies.

Art is art, and wrestling is an art form that trained athletes participate in. Even if individual wrestling matches, shows and TV segments are oftentimes tawdry and poorly-conceived, as a whole, wrestling is still in the genre of arts and entertainment.

One goal I had in my life was to see someone win a wrestling world championship in-person. I’ve attended a fair number of wrestling PPVs with my wife and/or best friend, but I always came up short.

I was actually at the inaugural New Year’s Revolution PPV in Albany In 2006 where Edge cashed in the first-ever Money in the Bank briefcase to win the world championship from a weakened John who had just survived a grueling Elimination Chamber main event six-way match, but we left during the main event in an effort to beat the crowds out (and not anticipating the then-unprecedented cash-in). I was bitter about missing that historic event for a long time. (At least I got to watch the legendary “Live Sex Celebration” for Edge on TV the next night.)

Eventually, I did see a world championship win in June 2014, when my best friend and I watched John Cena ascend to the top of a ladder to win the WWE Title in Boston.

John Cena is easily one of the greats of all-time in my book, and this would be his 15th and penultimate world title reign. He would lose the WE World Heavyweight championship soon after at Summerslam 2014. In one of the most memorable matches I’ve ever seen in my life, Cena was absolutely destroyed by Brock Lesnar, eating 16 duplexes after being near-killed by an F-5 in the first 30 seconds. To me, this is the night that John Cena made Brock Lesnar’s career.

Around this time, Cena became a full part-timer and WWE Owner Vince McMahon became utterly obsessed with making a guy named Roman Reigns the next big mega-star on the same level as Cena, The Rock, Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin. (Reigns torpedoed the company for years being booed out of arena after arena as an insufferable “good guy”, but eventually reached his potential once a global pandemic allowed him to develop his skillls and character in empty arenas without a crowd).

Having achieved my goal of seeing a world championship victory already and having a burning hatred for Roman Reigns from 2015-2020, I lost a lot of my zeal for the company and didn’t attend a live show for over half a decade after TLC 2015 in Boston.

I would eventually see one more Pay-Per-View live in Las Vegas in 2021 right before my stroke quadrilogy, but that’s a story for another entry.

spider-Man No More! (Or: “Dabid Quits a Job)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

Around the start of April in 2021, I got up the guts to ask to leave my job (which I have not yet talked about in this blog, but may or may not circle back to) as a marketing and communications executive in the collectibles industry. I hadn’t been doing well for months at that point, and It turned out that making the decision to resign was the correct choice for me.

I felt an extreme amount of pressure and responsibility on my shoulders in that job (almost certainly overvaluing myself, but whatever),and it ended up taking an immense toll on me physically and psychologically. You should never work for an employer whose well-being you set above your own, but that’s what I chose to do for too long, and by the end, I was seriously coming undone.

A big part of working in marketing is, well… marketing, which can be defined as the “action or business of promoting and selling products or services”. When one is zealously trying to promote or sell something, they oftentimes choose to present a rather lopsided perspective of their item in order to convince consumers to purchase it.

As an independent toy reporter, I had been blessed for years with the privilege of complete autonomy and being able to present a full analysis of collectibles—both the good and the bad—without being beholden to anyone. But being a company man, I suddenly had a responsibility to only give collectors partial viewpoints of items—something that contradicted my principle of 100% honesty.

I also had to learn to keep a multitude of secrets from my friends and fellow fans, violating my predilection for complete transparency in interacting with others and making me nervous about slipping up when talking to some of my closest friends . I might be spoiled, but staying true to my values is a priority in my life. Having to work around them for a job was tough for a brat like me.

Additionally, I frequently have enormous difficulties interpreting what others are saying or feeling or asking for, so I was constantly terrified I’d accidentally give an unsuitable response to one of the hundreds of social media comments I’d be moderating each day and the company would suffer for my mistake. I spent quite a few sleepless nights during that year and a half worrying about haplessly bringing shame to my employer. Those nights compounded and I felt more and more drained and sleep-deprived.

And I was being dramatically underpaid for the monumental amount of work I was doing and the damage I was doing to myself to do so, which didn’t help matters. (I also got tired of being called a “retard” by randos on the Internet who saw me in my company videos, which didn’t exactly encourage me to keep doing my best for them to keep their interest in collecting fun and interesting.)

My wife absolutely abhorred that I ever took such a high-demand, low-return job in the first place, and it was a frequent point of contention between us during my year and a half working in the industry. She loathed my devotion to the company and was delighted when I decided to give it up, so it was nice to have her full support on abandoning my job while in the midst of a pandemic and going back to my career as an independent reporter with limited and uncertain monthly income.

I gave about three months notice that I was quitting so that my boss would have adequate time to find a suitable replacement for me who could handle all my duties without disrupting the status quo, but it ended up being irrelevant—no one was actually hired to replace me at all. Nothing to make a guy feel superfluouslike his job being eliminated basically entirely. It actually made my decision to leave a easier for me, though—if my duties could be dissipated so easily, clearly I wasn’t as necessary as I feared.

While winding. down my preparations to leave my position, I spent many hours writing an elaborate step-by-step document detailing precisely how to perform all of my duties—but it was also a waste, as most of those tasks weren’t taken up by anyone else anyway and were never performed again.

And so, on August 1st 2021, I left my proverbial Spider-Man mask in a random alleyway trash can and retired from the corporate business world forever, beginning serious brainstorming for this book/blog, which I intended to be the capstone great work of my life. Little did I realize at the time that I might be starting such a chronicle too late…

Scalper Grandma (or: “Dabid’s Collecting Arch-Enemy”)

Penguin Dome! Posted on by

As part of reflecting on my life for this blog, I’ve been reviewing some of my past adventures in collecting—and while listening to some old Star Wars collecting podcasts last night, I came across a legit gem (of a sort).

When there are new toys I hardcore want, I generally consider myself to be the most obsessed and dedicated fan in my area to snagging the latest figures. When in the zone and on the hunt, I can be downright scary with how many stores I hit in a singular day and how many times in a week. But in April 2010, I failed to secure the newest wave of Star Wars 3.75” figures… and didn’t take it well.

Scalper Grandma Scalping Star Wars Toys Action Figures

I had been prowling my local Toys R Us in Clifton Park, New York, daily (sometimes multiple times daily) for the hotly-anticipated Star Wars Expanded Universe wave of figures (including characters from the novels like Jacen and Jaina Solo–I was heavily invested in the Star Wars novels at this period in time, so the inclusion of these previously unmade characters was a huge deal).

And on one fateful day I found them—but was beaten to the punch by a floral-wearing, white-haired grandma who proceeded to snatch all 21 new Star Wars figures–three of each of all seven new figures in the Toys R Us exclusive assortment–from the pegs and dump them into her cart.

To say that I went off the deep end a little bit would probably be accurate. How psycho did I go? I made a post in a fury to the (sadly now-defunct) Star Wars Action News forums, and the host of the podcast got such a kick out of my righteous indignation that he did a dramatic reading of my post on the air.

I wasn’t sure if a recording of that podcast still existed anywhere, but I managed to track down the full episode on Podbean and saved that three minute snippet, which you can view and listen to below:

While I felt rather embarrassed and freaked out by my post being read for thousands of fans way back when, it turns out to be something of a blessing, as it allows me to re-transcribe what I wrote now below, years after the forums themselves have been deleted (although I have to admit that the transcription really does not convey the same amount of pathos and power as Arnie’s dramatic oral recitation of the post):

“Scalper Grandma Screwed Me Out of the Star Wars EU Wave [by R2-DB]

So I’ve been going to the local Toys R Us once a day–sometimes twice a day–every day, for over two weeks now, looking for the final wave of Legacy Collection, the Expanded Universe wave exclusive to Toys R Us. Until today, I’ve never seen ANYTHING from the wave. No repacks–NOTHING.

This morning I got to Toys R Us about 15 minutes after opening. There was your typical, spectacled, floral-wearing white-haired grandma standing in front of the Star Wars display with an empty cart, pursuing the figures.

I was PSYCHED to see the pegs totally bursting full with the EU wave, at least three cases’ worth, as there were five rows I could see. I couldn’t really get at the display, since Granny’s cart was blocking the area and she was standing there, so I figured I would walk away and leave for a couple minutes while she picked out the Clone Wars figures she wanted for her grandkids or whatever.

Five minutes later, I walked back to the aisle and she was still there–except now her cart was FULL!!!–of figures, all of which the new black-carded Toys R Us exclusive Legacy Collection EU wave.

They were all there: All 3 Dark Troopers! All 3 Jacen Solos! All 3 Jaina Solos! All 3 Space Troopers! Etc! I got back just in time to see her toss the last Shaak Ti in her cart and rifle through the pegs before leaving, with not a single new figure left behind. 😨

Not ONE Clone Wars figure was in her cart. Not ONE older Legacy figure was in her cart that I could see. Her trail of destruction was so calculated and thorough that she had managed to take all 3 of the EU wave exclusive alien Bespin Guard Utris M’Toc, while leaving every one of the human Bespin Guards behind! EVERY ONE of the 21 new figures contained in those cases had been taken!!

If you wanted to tell me that MAYBE she wanted to get all of the Darktroopers and Spacetroopers for her grandkids and have an army or something, I MIGHT be able to force myself to believe it. But the NOTION that she went there to get Sonny 3 K’Kruhks and 3 alien Bespin Guard Utris M’Toc–NO! There’s just no way. This was a total Scalper Grandma. 👿.

So my only local Toys R Us put out three cases this morning, and all the nearly two dozen new figures were wiped out in the first 20 minutes by Scalper Grandma. I’m pretty sure that’s all the cases of this wave my Toys R Us will be getting, so I’m feeling pretty crappy.

Man! I’ve missed plenty of figures before, but never quite like this. The hunt for these definitely isn’t worth the spike in my blood pressure. I think I’m gonna go for these off ebay… ”

For some time after this incident, I had a bit of a fixation on hitting stores even more frequently and earlier in the morning, so as not to be outdone by Scalper Grandma. (I did secure that whole wave of exclusive Star Wars EU figures not long after for normal retail price, including all of the pieces to put together the BG-J38 Build-A-Droid).

My wife and I briefly talked about doing a comic strip called “Collector’s Wife” portraying a relationship where one partner was involved in a collecting lifestyle, in which I imagined Scalper Grandma might appear as a sort of recurring nemesis for me.

I never encountered Scalper Grandma again. But whenever I go on a toy run and see evidence that the latest series of figures has been there and gone, I still sometimes picture an old woman, skulking away and snickering as she pushes her cart filled with all of the newest and most scalp-worthy toys.

If I had not fully illustrated yet in this blog exactly just how much collecting means to me, I hope this story drives the point home: Collecting is serious shit.

A Word About Collecting (or: “Dabid Unboxes!”)

Before we go any further, I think it’s important to stop and say a few words—and also introduce a continuing series of videos—about collecting. For those who don’t know, Oxford Languages defines collecting as “systematically seeking and acquiring (items of a particular kind) as a hobby”.

Now, while that’s a fine definition and all in general and a suitable starting point for discussion, it kind of falls apart for me at the last three words. Collecting is the central driving element of my life. More than food, more than friends, more than money, more than sex, more than comic books or video games, more than anything. It cannot be overstated just how integral collecting is to my existence—it consumes me, but it also gives my life structure and joy.

When I wake up in the morning, my first thoughts are about whether any new toy or statue or collectible news has transpired overnight. When I play a game or read a book or watch a movie, my mind is always barreling forward, contemplating what would make the best merchandising items for that property and what I would want to have on my shelves. As much as I love different mediums of storytelling, its primary function–to me–is fueling my specialized interest in collecting.

I think it may be difficult for outsiders to grasp my words and really comprehend exactly how much of my life is dominated by collecting, so I decided to make a series of videos—“Dabid Unboxes!”—to give a visual representation of my obsession as a supplemental to this book (made possible by the fact that this book is a blog).

These videos will be interspersed sporadically throughout the blog, and may or may not be accompanied by written commentary, depending on if I feel it enhances them. We’ll really have to see.

You may not care about gardening statues that look like rabbit cactus monsters or stylized wrestling championship belts or post-it notes shaped like the various forms of the frozen yogurt Pokémon, but I think if you watch some of these unboxing videos, you’ll learn something about me and the way I see the world, respond off-the-cuff verbally and experience life that you may not absorb just from reading my words.

Or maybe you won’t. But I have many, many things to unbox. You can find all of the videos made to-date on my YouTube channel. And this is the first…

↑