Women of Wonder! July 2024: Jinx (GI Joe Classified)

 What is this? A July Women of Wonder in August? Oh how the quality begins to fade after awhile...

I could gloss over July and pretend like there was no toy to interview. However, I had every intention of doing a splashy interview/review with the new Jinx release. I am a big fan of GI Joe Classified. Back in the day on the message boards it was usually seen as a horrible idea for GI Joe to ever have a six inch line, but I always had hope that Hasbro would release a highly detailed Marvel Legends style line of Joes. Hopes and dreams were answered. They've simply been killing it since the Classified line began.

Ninjas are always great and highly welcomed in my collection, and this figure is no exception. I wanted a more splashy post with more action poses and toy interviews. All I was able to really accomplish were the photos below. Life happens.

Toy collecting and aging, it's a strange journey. I'm only 42, which in the grand scheme of things is still sort of young. Like I have written about before, I really began a big push to downsize my collection in February 2022. Some of you have seen the old collection photos, I owned a lot of stuff. Trying to downsize has been a task and a half. Just when it seems I'm making progress, I look around and sigh, "Crap! How is it multiplying?!" This collection is essentially Critters.

There have been donations and lots of gift giving. Of course there's also been the process of selling off stuff. I had the idea to create my own online store, I'd still love for that to happen but right now it has just been easier to sell on eBay and Mercari. I was also selling on Instagram, but it felt a little weird to turn my social media that was all about celebrating toys into a sale page. I'm trying to find the right balance.

At the end of the day, I really believed that I was going to grow old and hold onto everything. That it'd just keep growing, I'd keep finding all these things to love and consume, and they'd be part of super fun adventures and toy soap stories, all I had to do was just find a really big house and turn it into my own toy nirvana. Only that never happened. There were also other things I started to realize.

Like, I wasn't out here really enjoying all this stuff like I thought I was. I was finding things I had completely forgotten I had. Which, we all joke about that right? Like, "Whoops, I bought three of these because I forgot I already had two." It happens. I really want to enjoy my collection though. I'm still figuring out how to do that.

This past year I've even pushed myself to sell things I never thought I'd part with. My vintage ThunderCats I had as a kid, gone. Off to newer and better homes. I had a moment where I was like, "Do I really want to do this?" Turns out I did. Well. I still kept my vintage Cheetara. I'll be honest. But the rest, they are gone. 

While this might sound like some push for minimalism and we should all just get rid of things, that's not what this is. I just had to take a long hard look at what was working for me and what wasn't. I mean I parted ways with so many 2012 TMNT figures. That particular era of Turtles had us all in the jaws of life! I know you all remember. It's absolutely beloved. Especially now with at least two different companies offering revisits of that era. Those 2012 figures were going to be buried with me in my pink glittery plastic pyramid! 

So this past month was really a lot of that. Listing a bunch of stuff like crazy, turning my house into a mini warehouse/shipping facility. I didn't have the time I would have liked to devote to this blog. That's the other thing, I want to get to a space where I can enjoy writing again. It's hard to enjoy connecting on the internet with others when I feel like I am drowning in my own plastic tomb. 

Selling online is something else though. I feel like I could write a book about some of the crazy things buyers ask or expect from me. Or accuse me of. Like, I'm not going to say that this is true of all Monster High fans, but some MH buyers on eBay are like a whole other level of something else. I had a buyer win an auction, then immediately ask to cancel their order, that they made a mistake. I was a little annoyed, but I get it, so I canceled and re-listed. Well, I notice that if a buyer does not pay for their auction and it gets re-listed, people ask me why the sale didn't go through. Which I can understand, so in this instance I decided to explain in the MH listing description why the item was re-listed.

I then had some MH fan message and accuse me of over bidding on my own item in some attempt to get others to over bid and that I was trying to pull one over on people. I was dubbed, "Lil Miss-Outbid-Myself." I was shocked. Like, clutching my pearls shocked. (Not really, I actually found it amusing because I'm not selling off stuff to make millions while twirling some evil mustache as I take advantage of innocent collectors) But people will really make some assumptions on these online marketplaces. It's crazy.

Collecting is still a passion though. While I am downsizing, I still get excited about new things coming out. As well as some things I can't help but want to own. That new Marvel Legends Phoenix figure coming out in October is chef's kiss. I remember the first ML Phoenix from ToyBiz, and just thinking, "Wow, it can't get any better than this!" It actually can. I mean that flame base/stand!? Y'all! We don't deserve that. 

Anyway, I want to be more consistent with posting. I'm not at a point where I can post like I used to, but I want to still feel connected in some way. So, stay tuned for more. I appreciate you all for continuing to read and check out my posts both new and old. Hope all is going well!