Good Morning Friends. This morning’s post is going to be a bit meandering, but stick with me and I promise I will wrap things up into a point. One of the things that I have long lamented was the closing of Toys R Us. Sure it generally offered the highest possible price point you could pay for an item, but what I miss is the foundational memory that it provided for me growing up. Getting to go to Toys R Us was a big deal because it was this magical place that had every toy that you knew about and a lot more than you had likely ever seen before. It was an even bigger deal for me because I grew up in a tiny town with Walmart as the only retailer, which meant that I had to make a special trip to the “Big City” in order to go there. This also meant that generally speaking I was on my best behavior in the vague hopes that maybe just maybe my parents would let me go to the magical oasis of toys.
Another piece of this puzzle is that my wife and I have had this weird pipe dream for years. We always wanted to create a store that had a jumble of all of our interests. So there would be a section for used books, teacher stuff, video games, vintage toys, and tabletop games all rolled into a single store. The closest thing to this that really exists is Gardner’s Used Books here in the Tulsa area and I feel like it probably only really exists because it was run at a loss for decades as a bit of a tax dodge for a successful accountant. Now that it has been taken over by his daughter though, the place has even got better and probably actually properly is a successful business. There are tales of warehouses full of stock that he bought throughout the years that have never seen the light of day. Going to Gardner’s at least in some part harkens back to some of that magic of a Toys R Us trip because there are just so many interesting and unexpected things to see.
Because of these combined interests, one of the things that I really enjoy is what I collectively refer to as “Shop Tube”. There is a wide array of channels devoted to running a brick-and-mortar store, specifically in collectible spaces. They generally offer a behind-the-scenes day in the life of a store experience as folks bring in items to sell and they figure out how best to price them. Since my wife and I have never really prioritized our daydream of running that penultimate combo store idea we have… this gives me a bit of a way to live vicariously through the eyes of folks who did go down that road. I’ve talked before about Toy Federation which has become a Sunday morning ritual of watching their new video each week. I’ve also talked a bit about Retro Rick’s Game Point channel which is actually close enough to me to reasonably go there, and at some point, I probably will.
So all of this said… when the YouTube algorithm started suggesting to me this new channel with a weird name, I was primed to click through and see what it was about. Essentially it is a Toy, Video Game, and Children’s Clothing store located in Jasper Indiana, and the channel is devoted to the process of standing up this store and then annexing the other part of the building to expand the business and the assorted growing pains that come with that. What is so cool about the store is that it is purposefully built to be a spectacle giving kids that magical experience of roaming through a place with seemingly endless possibilities. The name is explained… but also does not really matter because it is extremely memorable.
The channel is most often presented through the narration of Dallas the owner and his co-owner girlfriend, and the cast of characters that work at the store. What is so cool about this experience is that it is targeted specifically towards trying some interesting things out. For example, there is a giant bin of Mr/Mrs Potato dolls and parts and kids can effectively build their own custom-made ultimate version to buy. There is a Lego table with cups letting you fill up whatever parts you want to then purchase. There is a free make-your-own bracelet table with tons of assorted beds dumped into a big bin with pipe cleaners letting kids have a little arts and crafts activity for free as part of the total experience. Everything is bright and colorful and specifically designed in a way to be at the eye level for the target demographic… kids… or adults who are kids at heart.
The thing is this channel and store go much further than just a YouTube thing, but are attempting to be a force of interesting activities in their small community. On September 13th they held a Mario Kart Tournament and gave away store credit to the winners. The channel showed off the behind-the-scenes process of getting ready for the event and trying to figure out how to make a very cool and memorable trophy for the winners. It was just generally fun to watch a bunch of kids and a few adults having a blast playing Mario Kart. There are future plans to do something totally different and hold a Hot Wheel race throughout the store as their next big event. It feels like they are genuinely trying to create interesting memories for the kids who frequent the shop, and I am here for it. Like I said before… that is the big thing that the death of Toys R Us robbed us of, is those deep foundational memories from childhood.
Right now the channel is honestly sort of criminally underrated. It only has around 2200 subscribers but is doing some really interesting things. They recently started a live Saturday show from the store and Dallas has wired up a few cameras so that they can swap between the podcasting area in the Video Game store and behind the counter in the Clothing/Toy side of the store. What is sort of infectious is the generally chaotic energy of the store owner which has deep “big kid” vibes to it. More important than that though is that the employees seem genuinely happy there. There are often asides in the videos where one of them has been roaming around with a go-pro and just yammering unscripted about whatever is on their mind. A good number of retail store channels are very clearly staged and at least loosely scripted, and this just has more of a “giving a toddler your camera” vibe.
Dallas aka the face of the Duck Duck Blue channel had/has another channel with nine years worth of content called Tendo’s Trash. Once I started watching the Duck Duck Blue videos, the algorithm of course started recommending various videos from that channel. It was way more focused on Thrift Shopping, Garage Sales, and hitting up the Goodwill Bins to find deals to ultimately then flip on eBay or stock an Antique Mall Booth. It has the same chaos goblin vibes that Duck Duck Blue has but is a bit less focused. However, it also gives a bit of a behind-the-behind-the-scenes view of all of the events that led up to the grand opening of the store. There are over nine hundred videos on that channel dating back nine years, so I doubt I will be getting through all of them, but it has been interesting seeing the process that they went through to stock the store almost entirely through aggressively seeking out garage and estate sales.
If you are a child of the 80s/90s and have deep foundational memories centered around visits to the toy store… then you might legitimately dig all of this. I am legitimately hoping that five years from now we don’t find out that Tendo was a milkshake duck, but so far he seems like a genuinely good dude with a good heart.
The post Duck Duck Blue appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Morning Folks! I’ve loved toys and assorted video game/nerd culture kitsch for my entire life. The problem that I have run into is that I just don’t really have any more room for anything… and I am not exactly displaying what I do have in a reasonable manner. This has deeply curbed my desire to pick up things that I otherwise think would be cool. Don’t get me wrong… my office is stacked full of nonsense that I could not pass up and that I have not had a chance to deal with. For example… the pile of “mini” consoles behind me that I got on closeout but never really did anything with. Thing is… there is a specific brand of YouTube material targetting folks just like me. I’ve been collectively referring to this as NostalgiaTube which is centered around Toy Stores, Video Game Stores, and assorted Garage Sale and Flea Market pickers. This morning I am going to share some of my favorites in this relatively broad genre.
Toy Federation
This is probably my favorite channel of the bunch because it is also potentially the most professionally run. Essentially this is the marketing wing of a very popular toy store of the same name in Greer, South Carolina. The channel is sort of a “day in the life” type view of running the store and evaluating trade-ins and collections that come through. This style reminds me quite a bit of the way that Alpha Investments felt when I got heavily into that channel during the “Rudy owns a Store” phase of that channel. As a result of folks bringing in a non-stop chain of collections, you end up getting to see so many items that summon forth “member berries”.
Would I love to have a showroom full of complete collections of all of the things I remember fondly? Hell yes. Will I ever actually collect this stuff? Very unlikely. Also of note, this store and team are behind Retro-Toy Convention which also lends its way to seeing a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff of setting up a convention. Probably the best aspect of this is it is part of a “Saturday Morning Cartoons” block of channels that tend to release content each week on Saturday mornings and I often watch the latest video while eating my breakfast.
Eternia Dreams
Eternia Dreams is another channel that is based out of a Toy Store that has a location in Gettysburg Pennsylvania and another in Westminster Maryland. In addition to two storefronts… one of which that is located in a still functional mall, there is a lot of footage as the team goes and sets up as vendors at toy conventions. As the name would indicate, the channel focuses a lot on the Masters of the Universe toy line but largely covers pretty much everything else that is out there. I’ve seen way more focus on newer toylines on this channel than say Toy Federation, which is sort of cool. Mythic Legions for example is a hot property targetting these independent toy sellers. Again however probably the most interesting aspects are the “day in the life” stuff focused on what it takes to keep the stores and convention business running.
Pixel Dan
This is a channel that I found through some of the other channels and tends to be focused on a lot of stuff that was coming out when I was in high school or college, so a bit younger than me. I think Pixel Dan is probably most widely known for his work as an archivist on a Masters of the Universe photo reference guide, or at least that is where I first heard his name. There are a number of tomes that have been created featuring some of the best reference photos for various figures and equipment along with assorted variants, which end up getting used by the various toy stores to “complete” disparate parts of figures. The channel itself tends to focus on his trips out to find various stuff with his family and is edited in a sort of montage style where he talks about things from his studio/office and then shows examples. Worth watching, especially if it looks like it is going to be something interesting. He also visits a lot of other toy stores around the country giving you a glimpse into what each of them is like.
Froggy Flips
Froggy Flips similarly gets a lot of traction but instead of visiting stores he largely visits big regional toy and vintage shows. He is based out of Greenfield Indiana and tends to cover a lot of the upper Midwest area as he roams around. What I dig about him is his focus on Madballs and assorted early Horror and Monster toys. He also seems like a genuinely cool dude and comes off as very respectful towards everyone he meets. I appreciate that he has a following but his videos are peppered with moments of him stopping to have a chat with a viewer. He also seems to genuinely get to know all of the vendors that he interacts with, but I guess if you are making a lot of regional shows you are going to see a lot of the same faces over and over. I remember when I worked at a card and comic shop in high school, we saw the same vendors time and time again when we worked shows. I often have videos like this on in the background while I am doing something else and it is cool to see the various stuff that he finds.
Little BIG Robots
This one is a bit of a departure from the rest, mostly because it is less a show about acquiring vintage toys and instead about what is new or interesting that is currently on the market. Some of you who have been around the MMORPG blogging world for a while will know Beau Hindman and Little Big Robots is what he is up to these days. He takes a less holistic approach towards toy collecting and instead focuses on the things that he really likes for one reason or another. I don’t watch every video that comes out but if something interests me like the D&D remake line for example that I linked above, it is well worth a watch.
Retro Rick
Shifting from Toy Collecting to Video Games I thought I would throw in a few different channels that are similarly feeling. Retro Rick is effectively a picking channel that sort of branched out into a bunch of different things. Last year he purchased a game store in his area and as such has branched out into another channel called Retro Rick’s Game Point and from that point on… the two channels have sort of blended a bit where they are part “day in the life” of running a video game store and part going out into the field and hunting for stuff either for personal collection or to restock the shelves. Mostly a large chunk of why I dig this channel is because he exists in my area. It is not out of the realm of possibility to go up to Conway Arkansas at some point to visit the store. Additionally, he has hit a bunch of stuff in the Bentonville>Rogers>Fayetteville sprawl which is an area I am in way more often.
Arkansas Picker
Lastly, there is the Arkansas Picker which I found through Retro Rick, and I am mostly including it because the above video is from a show in my area that I did not even know existed. I would have potentially gone to it just to look around. As the name would indicate the channel is way more about going out and “picking” for items but there is also a little bit of running a booth in a flea market. He had some issues where folks stole from his booth and there was a whole saga of trying to secure it better while also tracking down the thief. I’ve just started watching the channel and again don’t watch every single video but given he operates in my neck of the woods it is interesting to see places I have been before.
Do You Watch NostalgiaTube?
Do you partake of NostalgiaTube? Are there any really cool channels that I am missing? The other thing that I really dig are found footage from the 80s/90s of folks walking around toy stores or just stores in general. I miss the existence of the Toy Store. When Toys R Us was a thing, I went there probably once a month at a minimum just to roam around and see what was there. I dig that there are independent stores that are stepping into that niche, but I do miss the existence of giant walls of toys in physical stores. Nothing used to be as magical as getting to roam around one of those stores and spend your birthday money. Anyways different post from my normal posts but thought someone out there might enjoy it.
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