I had a terrible shock immediately after posting yesterday’s blog. When I refreshed my blog page repeatedly yesterday, there was a ‘fatal error’ message on the screen, making me wonder if I had accidentally hit the wrong button while posting. I always checked my website after posting a new blog or after editing an existing one. I sent an SOS email to BlueHost in panic but fortunately within minutes, my website was up and running again. What a relief!

I recently got attracted to the cute My Scene mini dolls on roller skates, offered by McDonalds as part of their Happy Meals.  I do not usually bother with dolls, even during my childhood.  I had no Barbie dolls as a child because I did not like to play with dolls back then, preferring cars and animal-shaped toys instead.  Ever since becoming a late blooming ‘fashionista’ in the past month, I suddenly found myself more interested in anything to do with cosmetics, fashionable clothes and shoes, in-trend hair styles etc.  Apparently, this new interest also extended to my toy hobby and I bought one of the My Scene mini dolls from McDonalds. 

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This 2nd ‘Bumblebee lookalike’, a Lamborghini Murcielago, was spotted outside the same hotel on the same day as ‘Bumblebee I’, that was featured in yesterday’s post. Both cars were parked at the extreme ends of the same row of parallel parking lots.  Talk about coincidence!  I think both the drivers probably know each other and they could be at the hotel for high tea.

As usual, both ‘Bumblebees’ attracted attention from passer-bys and many snapped photos of this car too.  Usually it takes one individual to start taking photos and very soon, other people will follow suit.  I wondered if the other ‘photographers’ were fans of high-end sports cars like me.

While shopping at Orchard Road over the recent Christmas festive season, I spotted some high-end sports cars parked outside a hotel.  Here is one of them.

What struck me was how much their colors resembled the Transformers movie character - Bumblebee!  I guess that the drivers or the owners could be ‘Bumblebee’ fans.  After all, it is such a coincidence that the colors of their cars are yellow with black dorsal stripes!

Here we have the Hasbro catalog photo of the Ultimate Bumblebee Action Figure from the Transformers movie for compare and contrast.  While snapping the photos of the sports cars, I imagined that the cars would suddenly ‘transform’ into their robot forms!  That would have been so cool! 

There were many other passer-bys taking photos of those exotic cars too.  Maybe they were also fans of sports cars, or they were just taking photos because other people were doing the same…

I woke up this morning to find some of my Transformers Legends mini figures on the floor beneath the PC shelf where they were supposed to be on.  Barricade, Jazz and Bumblebee were all sprawled on top of one another.  Since the day I removed them from their box and displayed them side by side, I could sense some sort of ‘animosity’ between the good guys Autobots and the bad guys Decepticons.  I knew that ‘big bully’ Barricade had been picking on poor timid Bumblebee for a while.  It was always the macho and courageous Jazz who came to the rescue.

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It is flea marketing day today!  China Square Central is still ‘flooded’ with Transformers movie toys.  I do not collect these but I do own 7 of the Transformers Legends mini ‘transformable’ action figures.  I bought them 2 months ago from Toys ‘R Us, partly out of impulse and partly because I like their small sizes and ‘cuteness’.  Now they have made their ‘command base’ on my PC shelf.  Toyfics are played out in mind whenever I look at them. 

I also previously picked up a MOC deluxe Barricade figure from a departmental store in July last year but later sold it at China Square Central when I changed my mind about collecting deluxe Transformers movie figures.  The key characters had all been ’swiped’ from the retail stores and were all found at China Square Central selling at exorbitant prices.  It was too expensive to start collecting them.

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In Singapore, there are very few regular flea markets to find second hand toys from the 80’s.  The 2 largest ones that I know of and had been to during my early toy collecting days were at Sungei Road (near Bugis/Rochor Road) and at Clarke Quay (now moved to China Square Central, near Chinatown). 

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Some years ago at the Clarke Quay flea market, there were short trends of demand for 80’s action figures like M.A.S.K., Transformers, He-Man etc., while me and very few other collectors created a lesser demand for My Little Pony, She-Ra and Dino-Rider toys at there.  You had to be very sharp-eyed to spot your targeted toys from the countless piles and boxes of mixed toys on the floor of each stall as not all the sellers used tables.  It was possible to find ‘hidden treasures’ from those stalls, such as UK or Euro exclusive My Little Pony toys that cost a premium on Ebay but only a dollar at the flea market.  Of course you needed to contain your excitement until after you had paid and left the stall.  It was all part of the bargaining game which was also fun!

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Traditionally, toy collectors used to ‘plough’ the flea markets hoping to ‘unearth’ some ‘hidden treasures’ at a steal from clueless sellers.  I started collecting My Little Pony toys this way around 10 years ago at the Clarke Quay flea market (it had since moved to China Square Central a few years back).  Of course over time, the sellers learnt to recognise the most sought after toys that collectors would ‘die for’ and the toy prices escalated accordingly over the weeks.  Bargaining was, and is still widely practised at flea markets here and much haggling takes place between buyers and sellers at the stalls every week.  Lasting friendships and partnerships were made and updates on toy news were exchanged during these weekly trips to the flea market.  

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In this infomation age, there are no lack of places to acquire collectible toys.  These days most toys can be bought and traded online.  You can get toys from Ebay (an all-time favourite), from other toy collectors and sellers in toy forums or from online toy stores (Entertainment Earth, Amazon etc.).  For physical places, there are departmental stores and collectible toy stores in shopping malls, as well as the weekly or daily flea markets (if there are any near where you live). 

Come back again tomorrow to read more about the local toy collecting scene here in Singapore, starting from the flea markets.