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Attendee Adam Baugher with Storm Trooper. Photographs by Thomas Crone
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There’s a point at which you start blaming your family. It’s sad, but true. Because it’s your family who bought you toys when you were a child, fully expecting you take the item out of the box for full use as a plaything. It’s likely that the box didn’t make it past a tear-away stage, freeing your prize from all that annoying encasing plastic and cardboard. And yet, had your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings and other interested parties really cared for you, they’d have offered you a glimpse at the toy, a visual-only inspection, before slipping the package back in the gift bag for a nice, 20 to 30 year stint in a storage locker. You’d have complained then. But you’d be smiling today.
Occasionally, yesterday’s toys have gained real value, because they’ve somehow stayed intact, inside that original packaging. If not sealed, then, dealers have kept those toys nice and neat, with all the original parts still in play, giving vendors a fighting chance at high-dollar resale. And yet, for a customer, even beat-up toys—if they were ones that you enjoyed as a child—suddenly look-oh-so-intriguing in the booths of the ToyMan Toy Show, North County’s long-running convention of dealers, sellers and the simply curious.
Yesterday morning, I found myself at the ToyMan at 8 a.m., part of mid-sized group shooting a video project on-site. We were using the location as a setting, foremost, but no one that took part in the outing left without at least examining a few of the wares. Those who’d been to the show before knew the score (even the layout, to a large degree). That portion of the crew could walk into the venue, point in any direction and safely guess that “Star Wars guy” was there and “game boards table” was over there.
A few of the dealers offered comic books, but it’s toys that carry the day here, along with collectibles dedicated to pop culture, like posters or prints. About a half-dozen times a year, the collectors mass on the first floor of the Machinists Hall at 12365 St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. And each time out, the same vendors try to head for known locations, giving the show a sort of deja vu-like quality that album collectors feel when they attend the St. Louis Record Collectors Show at the Czech Center in South City.
But for someone who hadn’t been before, the scene was all new. And, truth be told, it was pretty fun, even at the early hour of 8 a.m. That’s when the Hall first opened to an early bird audience who paid more than a little extra to get a first glance at the goods. While the show charges a $4 cover from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. (when the vendors pack up their wares for good) the early birds pay $12 and zoom through the stands looking for either very specific needs in their collections, or for deals in general. And by 8 a.m., the room is pretty much fully outfitted, only a few tables empty and with 90-plus-percent of the dealers loaded in. The stragglers fill what space is left by 9 a.m., and the trickle of early birds becomes a short-lived flood. From 10 a.m. to noon, the place takes on a feel that’s not quite frenzied, but definitely full of a certain buzz.
Audiences have been coming to the ToyMan for nearly 21 years. In fact, it will celebrate its 21st anniversary this November 6, one of two sessions remaining on the fall calendar. Now 42, Chris McQuillen’s been there since founding the show with his late father half his life ago. Today’s he’s the father of two boys himself, each just coming into their tweens, and he imagines that they’ll be taking on the show eventually. These days, though, they’re known to peel through the aisles, checking out the merch and even doing a bit of dealing, according to their pop. Meanwhile he’s overseeing the entire operation from the back of the room, in a cozy corner “office” where dealers check in, pay their fees, ask questions and generally use the space as a landing zone for issues. (See our video for more with McQuillen.)
ToyMan Toy Show from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.
As at the Record Show, there’s an occasional burst of information from the microphone, which McQuillen wields for various announcements. Dropping knowledge on the crowd, he might tell you that a table’s gone everything-for-a-dollar; or that deals are definitely to be had at certain stand, where the dealer’s flipped into a highly motivated state. As the day progresses and with the food stocks starting to dwindle, he might announce that all remaining items are two for one for the rest of the day, which could send a good dozen people scurrying towards the small kitchen for hot dogs.
Now, that crowd. Let’s go ahead and talk about it, okay?
The crowd’s mostly... guys. This may, or may not, surprise you. And these guys, between their late 20s and early 50s, are fans of this, that and the other. Their T-shirts often reflect that fandom, with zombie films a real hit, but that’s far from the only genre, or sub-genre represented. Star Wars, of course, still maintains a mass of fans, as do Marvel and DC comic characters, but you’ll also likely to see a few concert Ts mixed in, too. In case you were wondering, everyone’s pretty nice, if curious about new faces, particularly if you’re traipsing around carrying a camera, lights or other video shoot gear. Walking through the tightly packed aisles takes some doing when that’s the case; the six-foot tables are often heaving with products, and one bump in the wrong place could set off a minor retail catastrophe.
For me, there wasn’t anything disastrous along those lines, thankfully. I was able to move through the place without ever slamming into a Stormtrooper (there were two... really) or sending a table full of Smurfs flying. But I did, apparently, have one of those epiphanies that can only happen at a show like this.
First a bit of background. On Saturday, I spent a goodly chunk of the afternoon trying to track down a pair of DVD box sets for the Judd Apatow TV series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. I’d hoped to use one, or both, for class purposes and I exhausted every option I knew by mid-day Saturday. I rang up local used record/DVD stores, punched in the addresses of the big boxes, and so on. I even reached Tom “Papa” Ray at Vintage Vinyl; when he picked up the call, I thought I’d reached a recording, but it was actually the VV co-owner, himself. After some moments of confusion, he came back on the line, telling me that Vintage was out of the goods in question.
Alas, on Sunday, I went to two DVD vendors at ToyMan, with no luck. At the third booth, John Strauser had a wide-ranging selection and within 15 seconds, I landed upon not one, but both sets, literally sitting next to one another. I immediately fled the Hall and went to the parking lot, hit up the ATM, wandered back in, bought them, then exploded in joy at the find. “You’re geeking out,” said bystander/witness Dan Nichols. “I’ve had that feeling hundreds of times at one of these.”
Truly, the ToyMan Toy Store takes you back, it fills the soul with good, old reminders of youth. I saw friends like Johnny West, Big Jim, Greedo. I didn’t buy them, but I know that they’re there, all at the ToyMan. Back in the day, kids like me bought toys at your local Ben Franklin, through a Sears catalog, or via a toy show. Today, online purchasing’s killed a lot of that buzz—that idea that you have to be somewhere, when stock is “in,” so that you can feed your needs.
But ToyMan showed me—if through DVDs, not toys—that the old way’s still got merit. While I might not be burning the extra few dollars for the early bird option, I can pretty well say that ToyMan’s on my list of things to do again. For that, I can thank co-founder Chris McQuillen, vendors like John Strauser and all the weird and wonderful customers of ToyMan for making me imagine that the old kid’s stuff, even if a bit costly, still has a place in this modern world.
