Originally published on 8/28/14 at The Nerd In The Box (thenerdinthebox.com)

One day, a few years ago, my future roommate and cohort Jack randomly surprised me with the toy pictured above, a set of Ghostbusters Minimates, by the company Diamond Select Toys. The two-pack features Courtroom Pete Venkman and the Washington Square Ghost, as seen in the movie Ghostbusters II. When I was a kid, I had tons of toys…everything from Ghostbusters, to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to Batman, to Transformers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my collection was broken, lost, or thrown away by my parental units as I lost interest in it for the middle part of my life.

A ripple was sent from the past and hit me like a tsunami the day Jack put that toy in my hands. It brought back a flood of memories from my childhood- like dressing up as Egon for Halloween, or having the proton pack that made a lot of obnoxious noise when you pulled the trigger relentlessly, with the long, yellow foam noodle that attached to the end of the neutrino wand. The ghost trap that actually opened up when you stepped on the rubber trigger. The firehouse. The Ecto-1. The Real Ghostbusters action figures. The fondest of memories.

He knew I loved the Ghostbusters, but little did he know the monster he had just created. I was giddy, like I had never seen something so cool in my entire life. I didn’t realize there was a market for toys geared more towards adult collectors, for people like me that had watched all those fictional (but oh, so real) heroes growing up. I immediately rediscovered one of my few passions in life that day. Jack and I started scouring toy websites, hitting comic shops, the toy aisles in every store that had one, and I will tell of those exploits- past, current and future- here.

“The Toys Are Back In Town”.

Ryan