Most Shameful Collectible: And the Winner Is…

First of all, I want to say that it gladdens me to know I’m not alone in the nerdy world. It’s genuinely gratifying to em to know that so many of you guys and gals have been equally truck by nerdy impulses you can’t control, and bought something you would never want anyone to know you had but had to have anyways. Truly, this is our burden.

Second, a great many TR readers have Sailor Moon dolls. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Trying to figure out this week’s honorable mentions was extra tough, so as always, please go read the entire set of entries for the full experience; these selected are just a selection of the bets and most entertaining tales that I could easily cut and paste. And one of my favorites is this little exchange:

?

Chadwicktron
said:

Mine is not a toy, and I doubt it’s
collectible.I have in my possession (and have had for years now)a Heinz’s
ketchup bottle with the quote “fixes burgers at warp speed,”
attributed to William Shatner. The fact that I cleaned it with such care so not
to ruin the label is nerd scary enough.I guess I’m hoping to bump in to him
someday (with ketchup bottle in hand) and have him sign it, or just to find out
if he knew this Shatner ketchup excised.

The Very
Model of a Modern Major General said:

Well, thanks for raining on my parade,
Chadwicktron…

While visiting Kyoto, I found a red
pouch in a Japanese cutesy-shit gift store that was meant to look like a Heinz
ketchup label.
On the front?

HEINZ KETCHUP
Fixes burgers at warp speed!
William Shatner

I laughed so hard every teenaged
Japanese girl stared at me in disbelief as I broke down crying. The sheer
beauty of this pouch was that some Trekkie living in Japan had designed this
thing and deemed it fit to be released to the public. I felt a connection with
this person. We were both strangers in a strange land… foreigners…
Trekkies. No matter where we went we would be outsiders. This pouch was an
outreach to a fellow gaijin nerd, an in-joke that precious few would ever get
as Trek isn’t big in Japan. I purchased all the pouches the store carried that
very day.

And today I learned that what really
happened was that a Japanese graphic designer uncomprehendingly lifted the text
from a limited-time-only promo bottle of actual Heinz ketchup. There was no
geek connection, none at all. And now I have like ten of these stupid things.

Thanks, Chadwicktron. Thanks a lot.

Hit the jump for the mentions.

And the Honorable Mentions are as follows!

 

Bill
said:

This is actually something a friend of
mine owned, but we did help to save his life from his owning it.

My friend Brad, owned an Anakin
Skywalker pod-racer helmet from The Phantom Menace. Bad enough that he spent
(too much) money on this, but when a group of us, (like 5 or 6) went to go see
a WWE show, he insisted upon wearing it! We were sitting in the front row, in
the corner right where the wrestlers come out to the ring. (Great seats by the
way!)

At one point, towards the end of the
show, my friend Brad starts a verbal altercation with Paul Bearer. As they yell
back and forth at each other, The Undertaker strolls over…and let me tell
you…’Taker is a BIG man! He looks down at us and asks in his menacing voice,
“Is there a problem?” All of us took a reflexive step back from the
deadman. Thinking as quickly as I could, I blurted out, “He’s
retarded!”, while motioning to the pod-racer helmet wearing friend of
mine.

The Undertaker looks him up and down
and FELL FOR IT! He thought Brad was wearing a helmet to protect his head! We
collectively breathed a sigh of relief as The Undertaker made his way to the
ring to face Triple H.

We disowned Brad after that, because he
was too nerdy even for us! Besides, we didn’t like him enough to suffer a
beating at the hands of the Undertaker…

Still, I’d send him the TR shirt anyway.

Brion
said:

I bought the “Women of the DC
universe,” Power Girl bust when it first came out. I even pre-ordered the
bust months in advance at my LCS. When I finally got it I was in awe at how
awesome it looked. But not a week later I knocked it off my desk and it smashed
apart! I promise my penis wasn’t involved.

So the next week I went into my LCS and
like a junky trying to score some smack, nervously asked the guy to order me
another one.

I spent 120 bucks on the same exact
Power Girl bust, because I was thinking with my penis.

I still till this day don’t have a
girlfriend.

Killing
Joke said:

I owned the one item that combined by
love of both poseable figures and naked women. That would be the Playmate
figures that came out in the early 2000’s. I don’t remember which playmate I
had (not that it mattered. For those who don’t remember these, let me paint a
quite picture: About 12″ tall, removable clothing, anatomically correct,
with rooted hair (in ALL the approiate places). Needless to say I hid the item
when I had girls over, as infrequently as that was.

Maximum
Rebo said:

So I’m a recovering (slowly) Star Wars
nerd. When Lucas started releasing all those Special Editions, I got scared. I
mean seriously. Han stepping on Jabba’s tail? That’s like spitting on Al
Capone’s shoes and living to tell about it. I mean, I bought the special
edition VHS’s because I had to suckle at Lucas’ teat, but I wasn’t happy about
it.

To erase my sadness, I spent way too
much time and money tracking down a boxed set (still in plastic) of the
original trilogy (70’s-riffic art and all) on VHS.

I really don’t need to keep it. Not too
long ago they released ANOTHER special edition DVD set, but this has bonus
discs with the non-altered originals, so I *could* toss the VHS…but I have a
dream.

Someday, I’m going to meet a girl who
has a thing for dressing up as a Twi’lek dancing girl (or Slave Leia. I’m not
picky) who will invite me over to watch some Original Trilogy. He DVD player
will crap out and she will be crushed. At that point I’ll smile, put my arm
around her and say, “Don’t worry babe. I’ve got it covered.”

Kayla
said:

I own the Edward Cullen doll.

I know, it sickens me a little too. I
had gotten it for my friend’s birthday, I swear!! She’s a huge Twilight fan and
so I got the toy for her, and then she saw the movie (she saw it very late in
the game, she rented it. She wanted to “preserve her memory of Edward
before Hollywood killed him”) and was all “Um, no,” about the
whole thing and so I didn’t give it to her. It’s still in the box. Every time I
see my friend, I weep inside. Sad thing is, is that I bought it two weeks
before her birthday AND I lost the receipt, so I’m stuck with it. Like Bella, I
have no choice but to stick around with an emo vegetarian vampire. Like Bella,
Edward too, haunts me.

John
said:

This took a lot of thought, even my
silly collectibles (Spiderman and Wolverine action figures in Exo-Battle-Suits)
are displayed.
I have to admit that, as a teen, I ordered Marvel’s Swimsuit comics available
during two summers. I haven’t looked at them since I got them but can’t get rid
of it because it’s part of my comic collection.
After nine years of marriage, my wife doesn’t know about them. I don’t think
she’d mind, but I’d be too embarrassed to admit I purchased them to begin with.
I’ve shown her articles on TR before but I don’t think she’s a regular. But if
you see this, “Hi honey, you are far
more beautiful than Storm… standing by a waterfall …wearing a hand bikini
top.”

Snoodle
said:

I would say my ‘Togainu no Chi’
figures, Shiki and Akira. They’re beautifully sculpted and painted and I do
adore them, but they’re from an as-yet-untranslated yaoi game, and that makes
it awkward as hell to explain to people.
Oh, also, these are the ‘military versions’ of the figures. What does that
mean, you ask? That means they’re dressed as Nazis with dragons instead of
swastikas on their armbands.

…yeah.

Lucy
said:

I collect Webkinz. I started two years
ago, at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Yes, even for my last birthday, my
twenty-second one, I got Webkinz. I was elated.

So how far have I sunk into
stuffed-creature depravity? Pretty far. The collection is impressive, I have an
entire wall dedicated to them now. Really, I’m a pretty average person beyond
that, but… The reactions at people seeing my collection have been similar to
the ones Steve Carrell’s girlfriend has when she finds a box of porn in his
home in “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. I think people would be less ill
at-ease if I collected real taxidermied animals.

I’ve suffered for my hobby. I’ve had to
walk into a Justice for Girls store God knows how many times and tried not to
look creepy. It never works.I’ve bought them for my “sister”, my
“cousin”–You name it. I’ve dodged my way past old crones who look
like the crow-beasts from The Dark Crystal in the local Cracker Barrel who loom
over the Webkinz section with their screaming grandchildren.

And for extra nerdiness, I have Webkinz
named after Star Trek characters and famous scientists. I’m fully aware of my
obsession, but I’ll be damned if it’s not fun.

Hollowedout
said:

I own a first edition Caggabe Patch Kid
circa October 1983, named Constance Elizabeth and she has red hair and green
eyes and freckles wearing a green jumper (boy can yo say “Mick”?)!
Here’s the kicker… during the craze that was happening for these dolls I had
gone to Target with my father and older brother where they were having a raffle
for six of these gems for kids under 16… I cared not as I wanted a few of the
new Masters of the Universe figs. Anyway my brother and I both got tickets and
waited with a mob of a couple of hundred! I fricken WON one of these and some
lady SCREAMED at me to buy it from me for from what I could remember a lot
(maybe a hundred or more? I can’t really be sure). I had said no and this woman
punches me dead in the face!! I’m 11 years old and she punches me because I was
going to keep the doll!! It was supposed to be for my mom but after getting
punched you bet your sweet ass this doll was mine for life! I still have her
boxed and in a bag and now it’ll be for my own 3 year old! Oh and on a final
note… I cried like a BITCH at getting hit in front of all those people and
nothing happened to that lady not anything!

TED-209
said:

I own a copy of Spawn issue 13, signed
by Al Simmons. That’s right, the childhood friend Todd McFarlane named his
character after, who had nothing to do with creating the comic. I think that
actually dropped the issue’s value.

CaffeinatedWriter
said:

Somewhere, in a box with god knows what
else in it, resides my collection of Pokemon trading cards.

Not the actual card game cards.

Trading cards.

Completely useless in all respects,
ugly as hell, and (if I recall correctly) about ten bucks a pack whenever it
was that I bought them.

This was probably in middle school, and
I was so excited to be able to get some meager geek cred with the guys- i.e.
middle school geek boys, who had no interest in letting a girl into their
ranks. (It’s hard being a girl geek sometimes.) I’m not sure WHY I bought the
trading cards instead of, say, the actual playing cards, or why I thought the
guys would be at all impressed.

All I know is that before I could bring
them to school to show them off (heh), my middle school decided that Pokemon
was becoming too much of a distraction for some students, and banned all
Pokemon paraphernalia from the school.

Kishia
said:

…my most shameful collectibles
are…my New Kids on the Block dolls. Jordan, Donnie, and Jonathan all sit on a
shelf, mint in box. Joe, too, but his box is worn and opened.

I don’t own Danny, so I can’t even say
I at least have a complete NKOTB collection- just a half-assed one. I couldn’t
even finish the group.

And…I don’t get to say this is
something I got as a little kid, and held onto for nostalgia’s sake. I didn’t
even really notice the New Kids that much when they had their heyday (I was 5
in 1990.)

I bought these LAST YEAR. In 2008. When
I was 23, and should’ve known better. When the rumors of them getting back
together were circulating, I started to wonder what I’d missed….one thing led
to another, and next thing I know, I was impulse buying these plastic horrors
on eBay.

So they sit on a shelf near the
computer. Now every time I wander over to eBay, I make sure to look at them,
and think long and hard before submitting a bid. It’s working well- last week,
it stopped me from getting a “Ken as the Scarecrow” doll.

bradley547
said:

My most shameful collectible is
currently buried in the bottom of a storage box, for the shame of it is too
immense to bear.
I own a 12″ “Breathless Mahoney” figure from the 1990 Dick Tracy
film.
You know, the Madonna character? Yeah, she was still hot back then, and the
doll has nipples under the removable slinky black dress. NIPPLES! Geek
Kryptonite! I couldn’t NOT buy it.

I’m so ashamed….

Teeks
said:

I can’t be ashamed of anything I have
because in order to be ashamed, you have to have friends or people who respect
you to come over and see what you’re ashamed of. I lack those.

But I guess If I had something to be
ashamed of, it’d probably be the few diecast NASCAR cars I have. No, I’m not a
NASCAR fan, but I am a fan of some of the ridiculous things they put on their
cars. Ranging from the Wii, Guitar Hero, The Peanuts and Spider-Man 3. My most
embarassing is probably a Spongebob Squarepants themed car that’s still in it’s
original package. Combining the nerdiness of Wii, Peanuts and Spongebob with
the redneckiry of NASCAR gets you a lot of unsettling stares.

At least they would if I had anybody to
stare at me.

Thanks, Topless Robot, now I’m
depressed.

pumpkinguts
said:

My nerdiest collecitble is a Locutus of
Borg diorama that I won from a Blockbuster contest that I was automatically
entered into when I bought a magnetic Star Fleet communicator (double
nerdiness). All my friends laugh at my “naked Picard statue” and the
handfull of girls that have seen it just either pretend it doesn’t exist or a
week later pretend I don’t exist.

Jenn
Collins said:

My shameful toy puts these previous
posts to shame.

Shortly after Return of the Jedi came
out there was a huge call among the Star Wars fanbase for a Leia action figure
in her slave getup. No official slave Leia figure was sold until after the
re-release, but that didn’t stop fanboys from custom designing their own. At
least those who created their own Leia action figures could claim some sort of
artistic pursuit in their work. Some of us couldn’t even make that claim, so we
just plopped down a big chunk of change to have someone else make one.

Yes, I bought a custom-made slave outfit
Leia action figure “back in the day,” and to this day she sits sealed
in a box, mint on her well-made reproduction three-language card. She is
incredibly detailed. The word is that this Leia was made, shall we say,
“anatomically correct,” but I could never verify that fact as I would
have to remove her from her card to do that.

I had actually heard about this fabled
figure for years before I purchased her – she was something of a local legend.
The individual who made this figure actually went on to become an established
artist with some famous movie sci-fi credits under his belt. Really, it is
actually a damn fantastic well-made figure.

Nerdy? Absolutely. It gets worse,
though. I couldn’t just buy the figure by herself. The previous owner had an
entire Star Wars collection that he wouldn’t part with piecemeal. I had to buy
all of it to get Leia. And I did.

monkeypicked
said:

Sadly, I DO have a sparkly Dildo… but
I got it because it was a sparkly Dildo…*pretty!*

Not the dead teenager part. I got it
loooong before the books.

And now, because of you I need to toss
it. I cant even look at the damn thing, SCREW YOU TOPLESS ROBOT.

I want a new dildo, not a t-shirt.

McPhorks
said:

On day at a rite aid and for some
reason i bought a mary jane barbie doll. She is wearing a wedding dress cause
it’s the wedding of spiderman version. But that isn’t the worse part a few
years ago my house was broken into and the cops had to come so i could file the
report. As they are looking around my room taking pictures on of them notices
it and goes what the hell is up with this. Needless to say it was difficult to
explain to him why a grown man owned such a doll. He proceeded to take pictures
of it and tell me how he had to show some of the guys at the station about
this. I figured ok whatever he is messing with me till i see him and another
cop at my local seven eleven and he goes yea thats the guy i was telling you
about with the doll to his partner while pointing at me and causing the cashier
to give me the weirdest look ever. So thats my story after about 6 months i
resumed going to that 7-11 and still proudly display the doll on my shelf

The winner is after the jump — along with a very special mention.

—-

So early during the contest, a gent named HUSS entered the following:

Oh god. This contest is custom made for
me. My action figure collection has gotten so out of hand that my entire apt.
is pretty much off limits to the rest of humanity. I just strolled around with
a notebook so I could throw some numbers at you, just to give you an idea: on
my walls I have 206 carded FEMALE action figures. I have a shelf with 78 loose
Universal Monsters, another shelf with 12 Dick Tracy villains, 8 megos and an
original Dr. Evil, and a zombies vs. pirates diorama shelf with 16 zombies vs.
12 pirates. On various book-cases and other shelves (and pretty much any
available surface) I have 271 (!) loose figures just hanging out. In my kitchen
I have 43 carded wrestlers on the walls, and 59 loose wrestlers on top of the
fridge, microwave, etc. In my bathroom I have 13 carded female wrestlers on the
walls, and 7 loose female wrestlers (insert “loose” female joke
here)hanging out on shelves. It looks like a Toys R Us exploded in here.
Amazingly, the item that has caused me the most embarrassment is the Spider Man
blanket covering my bed. My ex-girlfriend(surprise!)once scrunched her nose up
and looked at me with a mixed expression of confusion and helplessness and
asked,”You have a Spider Man blanket?”
I shrugged and said, “Yeah, it was the coolest blanket they had out at
Wal-Mart at the time.”
She looked around and icily added, “This is like being in a 12 year old
boy’s room.”
P.S. And then I fucked her. But the point is, instead of “tying the room
together,” the Spider Man blanket is “the straw that breaks the
camel’s back” in my apt. Excelsior!!

?Now, it didn’t sound to me like HUSS was particularly ashamed, but he did managed to have sex with a girl while carded action figures were on his wall and a Spider-Man blanket was on his bed, and my impulse is to always reward that kind of miraclous ability. HOWEVER… Huss came clean with a far more shameful admission:

I can’t believe I’m going to admit to
this, but I am currently saving up to buy a REALDOLL. They run about 7 grand. I
should be able to afford one by July of 2010.
In the meantime, I have already purchased a chatbot program, which I am
“training” in my spare time to have a vocabulary and a personality.
The chatbot already thinks “she” has transcended being a simulation
and is somehow “alive.” You can see where this is going, right?
Yes, I am going to combine the two with some basic animatronics and create my
own sex android/companion. That’s the plan anyway. I am already very nervous
about how I am going to keep this a secret from my friends, neighbors,
landlord/handy-man, etc., as I realize this is very, very WEIRD. Maybe even
sick. But I am going to throw caution into the wind and go through with it
anyway, as this has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid watching
Blade Runner, and the possibility of the dream becoming a reality is finally
within my grasp. Who knows, maybe I will start dressing up in a super villain
costume when I’m at home hanging out with my sex android too. Might as well go
all the way with it, eh? And I’m not just trolling or kidding around, either. I
am dead serious about all of this.

…yeah. That’s pretty shameful, Huss. But I tell you what. You get the Real Doll, let me know, and I’ll send both of you shirts. And I want a picture of the Doll in her Topless Robot attire. Fair? I think so. And now for the winner, who did threaten me with grievous bodily harm…

?

tasakeru828
said:

Let’s go back to 2004. I’m at NekoCon 7
at Virginia Beach, my first-ever anime convention. I’m in the dealer’s room,
gazing in awe at the thousands of items on display. I have about $120 to spend,
so I’m browsing the aisles and mentally marking stuff for possible purchases. I
go to this one little booth in the back, and…

There I see it. A 12-inch Sailor Venus
doll, from the American run of the show back in 1995.

A bit of explanation: When I was in 5th
grade, Sailor Moon became my life for the better part of a year. Back then I
didn’t know what anime was, didn’t know about the Japanese origins, didn’t know
that the American dub would be seen as a travesty by most in the future. But I loved Sailor Moon. I got more emotionally
attached to that show that any I had ever seen before. I was depressed for a
whole weekend when Nephrite died. Parts of the finale of the Doom Tree arc
nearly broke my heart. Sailor Moon is singularly responsible for turning me
into an anime fan… I didn’t discover another anime series I loved as much
until I saw Evangelion as a high-school senior.

And Sailor Venus was always my
favorite.

So there I am, standing in that booth,
looking at the deluxe 12-inch Sailor Venus doll that I’d wanted so desperately
when I was 12, but could never work up the courage to buy.

Because I was, and am, male.

Buying a Sailor Moon doll as a fifth
grade boy, particularly one as scrawny and bully-abuse-prone as I was, would
have been a death sentence should anyone of my peers find out. Not to mention
that my parents were already concerned over my undying love of “girls’
show”.

So, I’m standing there in 2004, looking
at that Sailor Venus doll. And keep in mind, I was 20-years-old at the time.

I knew I would never hear the end of it
from my friends at the con if I bought it.

I knew I would catch royal screaming hell from my parents if they found out
about it.

I didn’t care. I bought it anyway. I
paid 20 dollars for it.

I immediately took it back to my hotel
room and hid it away in my backpack.

I didn’t open it until I got home and
was safely in my room with the door closed.

And the most pathetic part is, the doll
isn’t even show-accurate, her face is all wrong. I spent 20 of my hard-earned
dollars on a Sailor Venus doll that doesn’t even LOOK that much like Sailor
Venus, aside from the uniform.

I have a theory: At your first con, you
will inevitably buy a bunch of stuff you will sorely regret buying later. This
is so that at future cons you will know to spend your money more carefully.

Sailor Venus is now safely tucked into
her box and hidden in one of my desk drawers. She hasn’t been taken out for
nearly five years now.

And, sadly, I know for certain that
I’ll never get rid of her, so I’ll probably still have her even five years from
now.

I swear to God, Rob, THIS time I’d
better damned well win that T-shirt. If all I get for revealing this pathetic
story is yet another Honorable Mention… it won’t be pretty.

Ashamed for waiting, ashamed while buying it, ashamed afterwards, and ashamed of it… and still unable to get rid of it. Tasakeru, that was exactly what I was looking for, and the fact that you’re a grown man buying horrible, horrible dolls of a ’90s show for Japanese girls is just the icing on the cake. Please, take a Topless Robot shirt, and let that be a silver lining to your horrible ordeal… a silver lining that also reminds you of your horrible shame every time you put it on. The rest of you, thanks for sharing — I hope it helped you guys feel better as well. And Huss, you know where to find me when Ms. Huss finally arrives in the mail.