Who remembers the “thrill of the hunt’? Driving from store to store, trying to find that one thing you needed for your collection. Sometimes you would strike gold, landing yourself in a toy aisle after a fresh had been put out, getting everything you wanted (and then some!). Other times you would drive around for hours and come up empty handed. It was a gamble, but it was so much fun. I have a lot of great memories hitting up toy stores and collectible shops with my cousin on the weekends. Finding a little hole-in-the-wall shop that was an untapped resource, or hitting up a “connection” we had at a big box store that would hold a case of something in the back room for us.
The hun for me officially started in July of 1995, with the release of the Star Wars Power of the Force line. I was already a massive Star Wars fan at that time, so when these figures were released I went crazy for them. Every month I was heading to Tower Records to check the new Lee’s Toy Review to see what was coming out, and make sure my checklist was up to date. Then it was off to hunt down what I needed. No internet, no cell phones, no GPS. We would stop at phone booths to check the Yellow Pages to see if there were any collectible shops in the area. We would buy newspapers just for the new toy ads. We would network with people met along the way, getting intel on what shops had what. It really was a magical experience.
This was the case for everything we collected back then. When my parents weren’t driving me around, I was out with my cousin, who had an extensive knowledge of where all the best shops were. We were hitting local toy shows that would seemingly pop up in the most random of places. Sometimes we would even meet up with random strangers to buy and trade figures with them. That’s pretty common now, but in the 90’s it was a rare occurrence. So what happened? Where did that thrill go?
For me, toy hunting began to fade while collecting the Star Wars Saga Collection, followed by the 30th Anniversary Collection, and the G.I. Joe 25th Anniversary line. Hunting them brought back a lot of those childhood feelings of wonder and excitement I felt back in 95. I had a toy route that I would try to hit every weekend, consisting of two Targets, two Walmarts, three KB Toys, a Toys R Us, Ross, Kmart, and a handful of small comic shops. It was one of the best toy routes I ever had, always netting me at least a few figures every run. When I started collecting those lines, the retail price for a single figure was $4.99. The average gas price was just over $2 per gallon, and I was making a pretty solid living. Times were good. However, like all good things, there is always something that spoils it.
Now, I’m sure a lot of you will instantly jump to “scalpers.” Yes, scalpers have always been an issue, but I never saw them as a huge deterrent for me. It’s annoying when you run into one, but that’s just the nature of collecting. However, I did have an interesting encounter with scalpers when I attended the midnight release of the Clone Wars figure line. I saw grown men literally grabbing toys from the hands of kids, taking items out of people’s shopping carts, and arguing with parents. It was an absolutely wild experience. Outside of that, what really started to kill the hunt for me were the prices. Around 2008 gas had jumped to almost $6 a gallon in California. As a result, all the plastic things increased in price as well. $4.99 figures increased to $7.99, and then $9.99. The increase in gas prices delayed shipments, so you started seeing less and less in the toy aisle. My giant toy route just wasn’t worth it anymore. I was coming up empty handed more often than not, and was spending way too much on gas for it to be worth it.
This is where I started my turn to online ordering. Websites like Entertainment Earth and Big Bad Toy Store were now my go to. Why waste all that time and gas money, when I can just pre-order a full case of something months ahead time? Not to mention we were also losing big-box stores left and right. KB Toys started closing locations in 2004 until it finally went out of business in 2009. Both Kmart and Toys R Us were in decline, eventually losing both of those stores in 2018/2019. Even the collector shops were thinning out, as the 2008 market crash wreaked havoc on small businesses.
At this point, were pretty much left with only Target and Walmart, and I never really find anything at Walmart anymore. Every now and then I will stumble across something, but their toy aisles are mostly just empty pegs these days. I tend to have better luck at Target, but their toy aisles are just as empty most of the time. I know the tariff nonsense is having some effect on distribution right now, but these ailes have been empty for several years now. I am really not sure what is going on with that, especially since Target and Walmart are pretty much the last of the big-box toy aisles. Luckily, there is a neighboring town that is absolutely filled with collector shops, which is really great to see. In fact, I just scored a nice little lot of Star Wars and X-Men figures at one of those shops the other day.
Looking back, it really wasn’t one thing that killed the hunt for me. It was many things, over time, that slowly encroached on my excitement for the whole thing. Ultimately, the convenience of purchasing online won me over, and the perpetually shrinking toy aisle is what’s keeping me there. I do still enjoy hitting up a few stores just for the heck of it, even though I know chances of me finding something are slim. There is always that chance though.
