My Toy Story

I am a toy collector in Singapore and I have been collecting toys for the past 11 years.  The main toys in my collection are My Little Pony, She-Ra, Lego (knights and horses), X-Men and Justice League action figures, plus many more.  My interest in toy collecting traced back to1996 when I had some free time of about 6 months between graduating from Junior College and starting University. 

I Started With X-Men Collection

It was during this period that I became hooked on the X-Men animated series shown in the local TV channel back then.  I chanced upon a comic book store near my home and after a few visits, I bought a deck of 100 X-Men foil cards containing the detailed character analysis of who’s who in the X-Universe.  It was a great ’starter’ kit for a newbie like me at that time.  I also picked up some back issues of X-Men comics that were on sale each week.  Gradually I got acquainted with the X-Universe from reading those cards and from reading paperbacks of famous and classic X-Men stories like ‘The Phoenix Saga’, ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, ‘X-Tinction Agenda’, ‘Fatal Attractions’ and ‘Bloodties’ to name a few.  I also own and love the mini comic series on Rogue and Gambit.

My first collectible toy purchase was made at a toy store located at Bras Basa Complex in 1996.  It was the X-Men animated action figure Rogue.  She cost SGD 9.90.  I fell in love with her because she was, and she still is my favourite X-Men character.  I told myself that I would only buy her as my one and only action figure.  Then I saw her screen love interest Gambit on sale for SGD 6.90 at another place some time later and I told myself again: “One more figure wouldn’t hurt much”.  Alas somehow I went on to acquire the 10 inch version of both Rogue and Gambit within a few weeks and in 1-2 years, I had built up a sizeable collection of over 100 pieces of X-Men, Marvel and DC action figures. 

I also branched out to collecting attractive female figures from other toylines to ‘balance’ the overwhelming male population of my X-Men figures.  I even chased after the Toyfare magazine exclusive figures like Firestar, Kitty Pride, Multiple Man, Havok (black and white costume) and Guardian (leader of Alpha Flight).

Then I Moved On To My Little Pony Collection

In 1996, I learnt about a Sunday flea market located at Clarke Quay.  It was the gathering point for local toy collectors and traders, and that as where I managed to expand my toy collection so quickly in such a short time.  It was during one of those weekly visits in 1997 that I made my first find of a My Little Pony - a blue baby pony called Baby Fifi.  My favourite childhood toyline was actually My Little Pony and since I already owned most of the prominent X-Universe figures by 1997, I switched my focus to searching for and collecting My Little Pony. 

In the following week, I was delighted and somewhat surprised to befriend a 14-year old schoolboy who was also, and still is a My Little Pony collector!  From being competitors,we quickly became good friends and we combined our resources.  That was when I learnt about online shopping on Ebay from him.  The internet wave had just begun and I was still using dial-up connection then.  I did a random search on the internet for ‘My Little Pony’ and was surprised to find so many fans around the world who share the same interest.  Some of then even build pioneer identification websites for the over 1000 different My Little Pony characters ever made, which my friend and I, as well as most other My Little Pony collectors still use today to identify the ponies that we find.

I Built My First Toy Webpages

When the internet took the world by storm, it became very fashionable to have your on webpage.  ‘Website’ was the term used for businesses.  We could just sign up with Yahoo!, FortuneCity or Lycos for a free webhost account.  We built simple webpages using Microsoft Frontpage and uploaded them onto the free servers.  Of course our webpages would have ‘banner ads’ put up at the top by the webhost providers but as it was free webhosting and many of us toy collectors were still schooling, we let it be.  It was a great deal and very rare back then for people to have their own domain names, uness your website was for your business or you had cash to spare. 

Building and maintaining hobby webpages can be very tedious and time consuming.  The personal webpages then were basically the predecessors of blogs, since most people used them to describe themselves and talk about their hobbies.  You basically could not sustain your webpages for long if they were not based on an ongoing hobby or interest that you were very passionate about.   My first webpage ‘collapsed’ within a year because the free webhost provider that I used, FortuneCity sort of ‘broke down’.  It was even impossible to remove my webpage.  I subsequently moved on to use Lycos and though the service was much better, I let the webpage ‘wither’ since 2003 due to work commitments.

I Joined And Learnt To Use Toy Forums

Gradually, I learnt to use forums.  For My Little Pony, the forums were initially used as alternative online platforms (other than Ebay) for buying, selling and trading (i.e. barter trade) ponies.  They then also served as discussion boards to share your interests with other like-minded collectors from around the world.  I remember that at the beginning, many collectors in the USA had not heard of Singapore.  My local pony collector friend and I would show them links about Singapore and now many My Little Pony collectors have an idea of Singapore.

To be continued……