Category: General Musings

Like everything else I write about here, I am more inclined to describe the memories I have attached to whatever I’m talking about, rather than give a history lesson. I just have a lot of big feelings about random things lately, especially stuff I grew up with. Recently, my local mall closed, and it really hit me like a ton of bricks. I started thinking about all the stuff I grew up with that no longer exists, and how malls (and to a lesser extent mall culture) are one of the last holdouts from my childhood. 

As a kid in the 80’s and 90’s, malls were a magical place to be. I remember walking around people watching, bouncing from store to store looking for that perfect thing to spend my money on. As teenagers, the local malls were a central hub for us to meet, grab a bite to eat, and then plan out the night. As an adult, they are becoming a fading memory of what once was. 

Much of my formative years were spent in a small town in Northern California. We didn’t have many big box stores around the area, but there was a pretty rad mall. It was semi-famous at the time because a few episodes of America’s Funniest People were filmed there for some reason. I didn’t care about any of that though. When I was there, it was for Kay-Bee Toys (Rebranded as “KB” in the late 90s). Well, that and the arcade, of course. 

The best way I can describe KB Toys is that it’s the retail equivalent of one of those weird, syndicated shows that you would watch at odd hours of the day on random channels. They were entertaining and quirky, even had some good actors, but just never made it to those primetime slots. And that’s how KB’s was. Fun, quirky, even had some really good stuff to buy, but always had that “mall store” feal to it. In fact, the second you entered a mall you could actually hear KB’s. No matter where you were, you could hear the faint echoes of little barking dogs doing backflips, plastic balls with raccoon tails connected to them rolling around that distinct mall tile floor, and my all time favorite, the penguins that walk up the steps and go down the slide. I hate to say it, but it’s definitely one of those things you would have to experience to fully understand.

Inside was a masterful blend of old stuff, new stuff, and stuff that was absolutely bizarre. With the internet being in the palms of our hands at all times these days, it’s really easy to find even the most obscure things. However, thirty-five years ago that wasn’t the case. Much of what KB’s had to offer was a novelty to see back then. For example, I used to buy a lot of weird knock-off Power Rangers figures called Sonic Rangers. Each figure had the same accessories, and they were all from the same mold, but the eyes lit up and that’s all it took to captivate me. Man, I wish I still had those! 

That was half the fun of KB’s though. You were never 100% sure what kind of oddball things you would find with each visit. For example, as a kid I remember there was always a large inventory of Robocop figures. As an adult that lived in a different part of the country, I once stumbled on to those same exact figures. They must have had thousands of cases of those figures scattered around various warehouses or something. There were also these awesome Terminator hand things, with a Wolverine claw that would attach to it. They were a big hit once we figured out they could give the middle finger. Once KB’s closed down I never saw those again. 

During my teenage years, the video game section is where you would mostly find me. Like everything else in the store, you never knew what you would find. In the early 2000’s I stumbled on to a bargain bin filled with NES games. I distinctly remember picking up Metroid, Legend of Zelda, and Star Tropics. Some other notable finds were a heavily discounted Atari Jaguar with a dozen or so games, a Virtual Boy, and a Sega CD. Sadly, I sold all of those at a single garage sale so I could buy Resident Evil for the PS1. OOF! 

Unfortunately, KB Toys shut its doors in 2009. Another victim of Bain Capital buying up a business just to transfer debt and force a bankruptcy. A similar fate that Toys R Us faced less than a decade later. The fact that I am getting old is really starting to set in as I see more and more of what I grew up with slowly disappear. Circuit City, Suncoast Video, Funcoland, Radio Shack, KMart, etc. All staples of my childhood, all gone. Like I said, my local mall shut down in January and is set to be demolished this summer. They are putting Costco there. And the local Toys R Us, well that’s a car dealership now. Who knows though, maybe I will have nostalgia for Costco and car dealerships one day too?

The history of the Nerd Rage Toys, ironically, has its roots in a blog site. Specifically, an up-and-coming G.I. Joe fan site known as TheTerrorDrome.com. I don’t remember how I discovered that site, or how I befriended the owner, but somehow I ended up as an admin there which led me on the journey that brought me here. 

I spent my time there during the hype of G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra. This breathed some fresh life into the franchise, sparking new toy lines, TV shows, video games, and other such media. In that time I learned quite a bit about the collector market. Though I had been a collector for decades at that point, I had never really been immersed in it quite like I was during that time. I networked with fans, collectors, developers, retailers, and toy designers. I spent hours digging through Chinese auction sites looking for images of action figures that had not been released yet. Hours policing message boards, and endless amounts of time learning the ins and outs of all things collecting from collectors themselves. 

All of that brought me to a sudden realization. That metaphorical lightbulb lit up over my head. I wanted to start my own shop. As a collector I knew what I wanted. I had learned what people were looking for. I knew what people were complaining about, and I knew what was hot and what was not. I took all of that knowledge and applied it to my business model. “A collector site for collectors by a collector,” I think was the tagline I once used. 

In 2011, I officially opened the doors to Nerd Rage Toys. Well, I clicked a button that made the website go live, but you know what I mean. I had new stuff, I had old stuff, and everything in between. I used my prior networking to land some wholesale deals. I was also able to get the word out pretty quickly through various forms of advertising. People knew who I was, giving me a small, built in client base that I had already established. Things were moving pretty smoothly for a little start-up online retailer. 

Along the way I made some pretty big partnerships, most notably with “Pixel Dan” Eardley. I had been watching that guy for a couple years by then, and he was getting huge around that time thanks to the MOTU Classics line. I started sparking up conversations with him about sponsoring some videos. He did a couple unboxing videos featuring stuff I had sent him, and new customers were rolling in. However, y big break came in 2014 with his coverage of the San Diego Comic-Con. I fully sponsored his entire series of SDCC videos that year, which brought me to a new level of exposure. My business was now big enough to fully sustain my life. I was now 100% self-employed. I felt like I had officially made it. 

During that time I had been hitting the convention scene pretty hard. Small local shows, Free Comic Book Day, Boston Comic-Con. Youname it, and I was there. It was big money. Boston could almost fund my entire year. While there, I was starting to get recognized. People would walk up to me and say, “Hey, I saw your logo on a Pixel Dan video!” It was pretty rad. I was able to make a lot of connections, which brought in a lot of vintage products and a ton of sales. Unfortunately, the convention scene would eventually be the end for Nerd Rage Toys. 

There is an age old saying, “Don’t turn your hobby into your job.” Honestly, that mostly didn’t apply to me. At least that’s what I thought. The self-employed part was great. I loved buying and selling collectibles. Networking with awesome people, collaborating with content creators. I loved the hustle of it all.

What really started to bring me down were some of the other retailers I ran into at the conventions. Think of conventions as a traveling circus, or a carnival. Once you go enough, you learn all the regulars. You learn who is good and who is shady. Who to talk with and who to avoid. There were a few I tried to avoid, but there was no one I avoided more than the one I dubbed, “Captain Douchebag.” To say that I could not stand that guy would be an understatement. 

He was notorious for trying to buy out your entire stand prior to the start of the convention. He would walk around the floor while you were unloading and setting up, badgering you to buy your product. Every convention, every year. If you didn’t give in, he would bad mouth you to his customers. Many times I had sparked up a conversation a potential customer that would say something along the lines, “That guy over there said you were a scumbag.” After a few years of this, I started to lose interest in conventions. Online sales were going good, but conventions were the real money maker. I had been trying to find a brick and mortar storefront for some time, but I was never able to find a place that wasn’t hidden on some side street, or in a spot where nobody goes to. 

I had started losing my steam. After five years, I decided I was going to wrap things up and pursue some other options. I was heartbroken, but also relieved. Collecting had always been a passion to me, but at that time I was kind of bummed out about it all. I sold off a lot of my personal collection at the time, which I have some major regrets about. That’s a blog post for another time though. In 2016, I wrapped things up and shut everything down. Nerd Rage Toys had officially closed its digital doors. 

The one thing I wish I would have done would have been to keep renewing the URL. I let it go, and it was auctioned off, or whatever they do with that. For ten years someone else owned it, but never did anything with it. Because of the traffic it once had, the URL was valued at I think $6,000, so maybe they got it cheap and hoped to flip it? Either way, it would be another ten years before they gave up on it.

In that time a lot of life had passed. I hit middle age, started contemplating the meaning of life and what makes me happy. I started focusing a lot on nostalgia and the memories of things that made my childhood so much fun and brought me so much enjoyment. It was there that the metaphorical light bulb lit up once again. I thought to myself, “I want my URL back, and I think I want to turn it into a blog.” Will anyone go to this site? Probably not. Let’s be real, blogs are a thing of the past. Will it make me happy though? Absolutely.

As fate would have it, nerdragetoys.com had just been released for purchase from whoever had owned it. After ten years, and $4.99, I am now the proud owner once again. So where do we go from here? I just want to talk about things. Nostalgic things. Things that brought me joy growing up, and that still bring me joy to this day. Maybe I will be able to interact with some like-minded people. Maybe I won’t. Maybe that algorithm will pick me up, and I will be the next Dinosaur Dracula? Who knows. But what I do know is that I am really happy to have this website back, and to be writing this right now.