Jon, hi!
Yea... I am probably a little older than many 3 3/4" collectors (I was born in 1953....)
I got into collecting action figures (and ultimately Joes and Action Force) because of my 2 sons (who are both now in their 20's). My sons and their friends loved action figures so much: Joes, MASK, HE-Man, Star Wars etc - I loved to observe the kids during play!!! Playing with action figures brought out so much in them - creativity, passion, problem solving skills, social skills etc - that I wanted to preserve action figures for posterity (I had no idea at the time that many other people were also collecting - If I had realized it, I probably would have left the collecting to others
So, not knowing that others were already preserving these awesome pieces of plastic, I kind of made it my mission to do just that...
Then around the year 2000 - thanks to the internet - when I discovered international action figures: Action Force, Comandos em Acao, etc.... and got to meeting collectors from around the world, I realized that the same cool phenomenon of action figure play that existed for my sons and their friends, had been taking place in countries all around the globe! I thought that was the coolest thing!!!
At first, I decided to try to simply find all the Joes and Action Force from around the world (figures) to give to my son as a welcome home present (he spent a year as a foreign exchange student in Russia, and just before he left we had learned about Action Force).
But that turned out not to be so "simple"... (I was very naive
As I encountered gaps in information etc....and difficulty in obtaining that information, I, slowly but surely, (thanks to the help of so many cool people everywhere!) began to piece tidbits of information together, I thought it would be cool to share what I learned with the collecting community in general. Hence the idea of putting all I learned in a book came about...
And once I made that decision, and spent so much time and emotion on gathering that information and pieces to photograph, I found myself mesmerized even more by these little guys and I got pulled deeper and deeper into the enjoyment of them - to the point that now I collect some stuff that my boys are not so keen on... But hey - I have my tastes - and they have theirs
Well, in a nutshell, that's my story...
Thanks for your interest (I hope I wasn't too longwinded!)
Take care,
Aire
PS - There are also additonal reasons that I collect action figures, stemming from my own childhood....
Also, I forgot to mention that before I became ill and had to stop working fulltime, I was working on my PhD in developmental psychology and language acquisition. While at university I did research with children using action figures as important tools in determining specific cognitive developments. Those experiences further convinced me just how beneficial playing with action figures can be!
