The Story So Far

Hi, I'm Jenn, or Jenny since we're friends. I've been a toy collector for as long as I can remember.

(Hi Jenny!)

My story begins with Playmates Toys, although whether it began with the seminal classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or the flash-in-the-pan Dick Tracy tie-in is a matter of historical debate. Regardless, I was hooked. Mutants and gangsters were soon joined by superheroes, monsters, soldiers, wrestlers, Ghostbusters, and assorted other little plastic people and creatures.

I was born in the neighties, that period of the late 80s and the early 90s where the past was dying and the future was struggling to be born and popular culture was all over the place and everything was neon. My dad was a shrewd deal lover, so a lot of my early childhood collection was made of the dregs of the 80s that were still lingering at closeout chains. This might have been the origin of my preference for things from just before I was born--because I could still get Fearsome Flush, but the Slimer and Mr. Stay-Puft figures on the back were long gone. I guess it speaks to the core American millennial experience of having seen the tail end of the peak before the long, slow slide into mediocrity and imperial decline. 

I adopted the collector mentality fairly early, and by age 10 I was hanging out at the flea market having conversations about Star Wars with people three times my age, spending my allowance money on Harley Quinns and Grand Moff Tarkins, reading White's Guide and Tomart's (before the much hipper ToyFare came along), and making myself an inscrutable pariah to my contemporaries. I have a distinct memory of hiding a BeetleBorgs figure behind my back when I unexpectedly ran into a friend from school at Kay Bee. He was probably there to buy the latest Sega release, and I was there to buy Roland the Titanium Silver BeetleBorg, and somehow I knew this was to be kept a secret. I played video games, sure, but they never really captured my interest the way action figures did. Toys are tactile, physical objects; there's sculpting, engineering, and paint work to consider, then there's the intricacies of manufacturing. They represent a collaborative creative effort to see an idea through to three-dimensional reality. 

I'm romanticizing things a bit, yeah. But that's how it is with something you're really passionate about.

I also like writing. Not to brag, but I did win a statewide journalism award while on my high school newspaper. Unfortunately all those toy magazines are long out of business and the online world has pivoted to video. Well, not me. Reading and writing about toys is part of my enjoyment of them. As we outsource more and more of our daily lives to robots and algorithms, connecting with actual humans through written language is a welcome reprieve. You will never see generative AI content on Toys Don't Cry, that's a promise. If you think something was written with AI, that's probably just my neurodivergence always looking for two dollar words when a fifty cent word will do just fine.

Mainly you'll find reviews of figures both contemporary and classic. Probably very few superarticulated 6" figures, because everybody writes about those, and they don't really interest me anymore. My focus is on classic form factors and neo-retro stuff these days, although in my time I've dabbled in just about everything. I'd also like to write longer-form pieces about the history of specific lines and franchises, and maybe some of the people behind them. ToyFare in its early days ran features like that and I learned a lot from them. I just want to share my love of toys and the knowledge I've accumulated about them over my four decades on Earth. 

If that sounds good to you, stick around! I've backfilled some older content written for other venues over the past couple weeks as a sample of what to expect. The next few months of my life are going to be pretty busy but I'm going to try to update at least twice a week. Thanks for spending part of your day with me!