Toy Collecting in the Year 2013

By: Ashton Lambert

    I recently visited Bounty Hunter Toys, located at 118 Ottawa St. North in Hamilton, Ontario. I sat down with the store owner, Mike Heddle and was eager to ask him some questions in regards to the relationship between technology and toy collecting. When the store was founded back in June of 1995 there was no such thing as an iPod, Xbox or MacBook and because of this, collecting toys was more of a common hobby. But over the years, Mike has seen both positive and negative effects on his sales and the toy collecting industry due to the advancement of technology.” Kids are now growing up with essentially a computer in their hands” he states, with access to information on a mass scale, as well as the ability to play thousands of games with their fingertips.  Mike stated that to this day he still sees some of the same customers he did when he opened the store, but has also had people he thought would never abandon their collection, come in and sell their toys to him. Whether that is an age issue or a technological issue, only the person selling the toys truly knows. Perhaps they are simply not interested in toys anymore, or perhaps with such entertainment systems as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, there is no desire to build on a toy collection.

 

An interesting tidbit is that while advancements are being in made in technological entertainment every day, retro toys and collectibles are still the most popular item of choice among Bounty Hunter Toys customers. As the years go, by retro toys increase in value and it seems that will never change. This is great for the toy industry as a whole as it seems no matter what kind of technological advancements come out, collectibles such as “Gears 1984 Transformers”, “Star Wars” and “G.I. Joes” don’t seem to be losing their value any time soon. A positive Mike has noticed that is related to technology and toys is that kids are playing videogames and seeing characters in these games that actually exist as a collectible toy. Kids then want to purchase the toy of the character they have seen in their favorite videogame. However, this does go both ways as some kids have simply become disinterested in collecting toys as they would rather play videogames. To summarize, it seems that the advancement of technology over the years has both positively and negatively affected the toy collecting business and only time will tell which aspect will overrule the other. One thing seems for certain though, retro is here to stay and that’s that!