8 Hour Southern California Toy Hunt

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello folks, it's Roger. Daniel Alcocet here. I am here with my nephew and his fiance, Anna, and they're actually here visiting from Modesto, California. So they're actually collectors themselves and, you know, they reached out and asked if, hey, he chose a couple of toy [00:00:22] Speaker 2: stores and stuff. What are you guys looking for today? I'm looking for Mezco, Mapex, [00:00:27] Speaker 3: imports, stuff like that. Yeah, anything like SH Figure Arts, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z. [00:00:32] Speaker 1: Alright, cool. So here's the thing is I'm not 100% familiar with that stuff, like modern stuff, but I have a pretty okay idea of where we can find that. So we're going to be hitting Torrance, we're going to be hitting Whittier, we're going to be hitting City of Industry, and maybe a couple of other places today to see what we can find and see if I can help them out. Alright guys, you ready? With the exception of card collectors and my son, I used to think that people from their 30s and up were the last people who would ever care about collecting. Then one day my wife showed me our nephew's TikTok channel, who's in his 20s, and where I learned I was wrong. Anthony has actually started building a nice little collection himself, and he likes to share his unboxings and his experiences on [00:01:19] Speaker 4: his TikTok channel. Love will always find you when you're not looking. That's right, we found the SHF Mario. [00:01:27] Speaker 1: Am I doing it too close? Anthony and his fiancee, Anna, actually both collect, and that brought a lot of joy to me as we headed towards our first destination in Torrance, California, Rare Formula. I know Rare Formula has a good mix of vintage, modern, cards, and video games. As they browsed and gushed over every cabinet, I couldn't help but be happy for them. I told them not to spend all of their money in one place because it was barely our first stop, and we were slightly pressed for time and still had a long way to go. But my nephew is a pretty wise [00:02:09] Speaker 2: kid and he had already formed his own plan. I try to limit myself to one store, like one figure per store. So if I skip one, I can get two from another. After about an hour or so, a stoked Anthony stuck to [00:02:23] Speaker 1: his plan and made it out with some stuff so it was off to our next destination. While it was close to lunchtime but a little too early for it, we decided to take a quick detour to a nearby book off where Anna managed to score a few things. We still had a pretty long day ahead of us so we decided it would be a good time to grab a quick bite. Where are we at? We're at Thames. All of my sisters-in-law grew up in Compton. Most of them have moved out of town since. Every time they visit, one of the first places they hit is a world famous Thames and their kids always look forward to it. We had our meals, took some pictures and headed to our next destination which is about 25 miles away. Gosh, traffic for whatever reason today. I mean traffic is bad in Los Angeles but today of all days it has to be the absolute worst. Every possible terrible thing we could possibly see on the road we've seen today. I mean we there's been people cutting people off, cutting us off, flicking us off. I haven't had a chance to flick anybody off yet because they're driving too fast or whatever but I mean it's like it's it's insane but we're gonna get there eventually. We're on our way to Toy Arena. Toy Arena in La Puente, California. We were particularly excited about hitting this store because I was always curious about it myself and had never visited before. Upon entering you first see their amazing showroom loaded with the latest statues, models, action figures and other cool stuff. Upon going down the hall to the actual retail space we were amazed at all the incredible merchandise packed inside. There was every type of popular action figure you could imagine, a wide range of model kits and so much more. It actually felt like a compressed version of one of those multi-floor complexes in Akihabara [00:04:16] Speaker 5: with only the cool stuff. What did you find? Blanca by Jada Toys. I've been looking for this one for a while. Blanca is probably one of my favorite characters out of all the Street Fighters so I'm gonna take this if I can. [00:04:46] Speaker 1: After about an hour and a half there, my son Daniel, Anthony and Anna made some purchases and we moved on to our final destination of the day which was about nine miles away. That destination was none other than Toy Depot in Whittier, California. Toy Depot carries a wide variety of toys from vintage to modern of all kinds. My nephew was on the lookout for some Marvel Legends and I knew this would be a good place considering this is where I get some of mine since it's the closest toy store of its kind near me. Toy Depot is constantly rotating stock and like many places we visited on this day, it was hard not to find something cool. Once again, stoked, my nephew Anthony came out with some pretty cool stuff. As we headed back home, one thing I realized hanging out with my nephew and his fiance Anna during his trip was that it's easy to take for granted how great we have it here in Southern California. We had been out and about all of Saturday and we didn't even scratch the surface. It would have been great to visit other great shops. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time. At the end of the day, Anthony and Anna were very happy with what they found on this toy hunt. [00:05:57] Speaker 3: So I got this Nandroid Legend of Korra in her Season 1 outfit and then right here I have this Super Saiyan Trunks. [00:06:06] Speaker 2: So I was able to get this mass-produced Ava, Revoltek. Now Revoltek is very special to me. It's the first brand that I kind of got into as I was kind of getting more serious about collecting. So, you know, finally having a Revoltek figure, you know, it's all come full circle. I got this Mafex Spider-Man Miles Morales. Into the Spider-Verse is my favorite movie of all time. And so, you know, having this figure, such a good quality one, can't be mad at that. So now we got a new one. You know, the Secret Wars Daredevil. I don't even know if this one's officially released yet. But, you know, it's a cool one nonetheless and I'm super happy to have it because, again, you can't find this anywhere in Modesto. And then I got this Baron Zemo. I love his design. Lastly, I got this Rhino Marvel Legends. I need more rogues in my collection generally and anytime I can get anything Spider-Man, that's going to make me happy. So, as you can tell, it went pretty well today. We got a whole bunch of figures that we would have never seen back home. Modesto is basically a wasteland for toys. A complete desert. We don't have anything at our Walmarts, nothing at our Targets. You can find a gem or two sometimes at GameStop, but it's really nothing ever, you know, to really write home about. So, you know, being able to come here, it really feels like, you know, going from zero to 100 so quickly. And, you know, yeah. [00:07:43] Speaker 3: Yeah, we had a really good haul. Very good day. [00:07:45] Speaker 2: And if y'all are on TikTok, I've got my own page that's underscore packnerd. I post fig hunting and reviews. So go ahead and follow if that seems interesting to you. [00:07:55] Speaker 1: We really enjoyed hanging out with Anthony and Anna. Their excitement was contagious throughout the day and it gave me hope for the hobby. I used to think that people from my generation were the last of our kind as it relates to collecting. I couldn't be more wrong. This was Roger Daniel Alcacer for The Magnificent World of Toys and Creative Arts. May those who play never great. Show's over. Come back tomorrow.