The "Toy Museum"

*warning* LONG POST *warning*

but worth reading if you ever played with a toy

We were punished today for not reading the papers about what apparently was a TWO TIME MALAYSIA BOOK OF RECORD...

We learned today of a place called the "Toy Museum" that just opened up not long ago at the Copthorne Hotel in Penang. Banners waving their record breaking displays. The record wasnt the only thing broken tho...

So Boon, Rons and myself decide that its worth a try...well, actually Boon n me decided to check it out and dragged Rons along, heh heh, but moving along...

We arrived with hopes of reliving our childhood with encounters of many things familiar to us then from hands-on playing with them, envying a friend for having them or even just plain seeing it on TV and wanting them...yes, the toys...i mean, what else could you expect from something like a "Toy Museum"...

When i think TOY MUSEUM, i think of going into a place where i get to see things that at least have something talking about whats in the displays, not the boxes they were previously packaged in displayed behind them.

I want to see displays showing what they were to the people that they thrilled for ours on end in their own times
NOT on shelves just posing them facing the crowd, with absolutely no label to what they are about.
I want to see many things that i would have had in my childhood, or wanted to have...
NOT recent 'collectibles' from movies and collectors editions still not even in their teens.
I want to see things that inspired imaginations to flare. Things i would have wanted to play with...
NOT display pieces that have no moving parts and meant just to be nice to look at.
I want to see things that we used to take for granted and are now rare items held by a few lucky people...
NOT things that carry no other meaning than to be a collectible a few years down because they were continued.

DOESNT ANYONE EVEN FUCKING KNOW WHAT TOYS ARE ANYMORE?????

Things i would have played with in my youth...things i would give anything to play with now!...Things i could have encountered in my youth, even things that my parents could have considered their "toys"!! These are all things that would be nice to have in a place calling itself a Museum. I found nothing to muse about.

Isnt the idea behind a museum that a museum is a place where people can see and admire things they would find hard to get, rare, or amazing? I found little of that. What i did find was a collection of toys from recent movies and collectible series that can still be obtained relatively easily from a mall or ebay. In other words, I felt like it was as though i payed money to enter a big Toys'R'Us showroom and was not allowed to buy anything....

Star Wars was everywhere. There were a few "big" displays like a couple of human height Gundam robots and a life size Alien centrepiece, but i think those were supposed to accentuate the displays, not be the center of them.

There was a display of Voltron, and im like "WOW! VOLTRON!!!", and when i get there, all i see are the cheap plastic second generation voltron toys. No sight of the diecast Voltron toys that were so popular in my generation's youth. Id like to add that THAT diecast Voltron is now a TRUE collectors item, and seeing that would have at least let me feel that the 10 bucks spent at the entrance wouldnt have been a waste. What we got was a plastic replica voltron, some smaller plastic Voltron crap and a plastic Voltron V as the centerpieces of that display :( that was a crappy let down...

Im not asking for ALL my childhood memories to be brought back to me, but at least a few...
I thought, maybe my expectation were too high, so i got some of my buddies together to list what were the popular things at the times of their youth...heres the list of stuff...i cannot rememeber seeing ANY these in that "Museum" :
-TRANSFORMERS
-MASK
-GI-JOE
-THUNDER CATS
-HE-MAN
-STARCOM
-GHOSTBUSTERS
-MOSPEDA
-MACROSS
-TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
-FAMOUS COMIC FIGURINES(Marvel, DC etc etc etc)
-CENTURIONS
-and every toy any kid would love to have ripped the wrapper off on his birthday...
The list goes on and on...and these are just what we got off the guys...im sure the ladies would like to add to it...I want to be reminded about what we used to have, not sit in a coffeeshop brainstorming what should be there...

What do all those have in common? They connected us. All of us that sat at the table to discuss the list did not even know of each others existance when we were enjoying these things, yet we can bring back these things from our childhood...and could talk on and on about the toys we had from those titles...and how RARE they all are now. We played with them, crashed them together, burned some, destroyed others when we were having fun with them and now those few hundred that are moving around the hands of collectors are worth something.

Those are what true museum pieces should be...those pieces were not meant to be collectors pieces but became that because of what they were to people, to us...a link to who we used to be.

Entities on their own like Lego, Hotwheels, franchise toys that McDonalds used to provide in Happy Meals that made a set after 4 weeks of bugging our parents to get them...yo-yos, classic Super Soaker, Lucky Trolls!!! OMFG!!! The list is endless...These things could make so many people stop at every other display and think back...or even slap a buddy on the shoulder and go "hey, remember those?!? god! we used to...." or "OH MY GOD! ITS A ....!!"...Why arent these things acknowledged?? even a small display would suffice...its as though they never were...

What we get instead is hundreds upon hundreds of Star Wars figurines(almost all from episodes I, II and III, and many of the rest from recently launched reprint sets), Displays of the Matrix boxed dioramas, Lilo n Stitch dolls and other things of that like. Many displays carried the many McFarlane Toys collectible series...Tortured Souls, 6 Faces, many spawn posing display statues and other stuff nice or cool to look at, but not before, or ever playable.

These things were made to be "Collectibles" and did not earn the title by themselves or what they meant to people.

Dictionary.com describes :-
- mu·se·um(n.)-A building, place, or institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical, or artistic value.

This place was fair in saying it had over a hundred thousand toys. It would have made a fine "Toy Showroom" or something to that extent. BUT for the Malaysia Book of Records to give it the title of FIRST TOY MUSEUM is a total and absolute disgrace...

I am not attacking the owner of these toys and saying its not impressive, but calling it a "Museum" is really really not fair to anyone who happened upon it with no idea whats inside.

The expectations offered only to be faced with tremendous let-down is something no-one has to bare, especially if it has to do with ones childhood...would any of you that had one disagree?

-a sad ed