Boxes, and Backcards, and Backlog, Oh My!

When it comes to new items in store, I think I'm reasonably good at judging which items to pick up before they disappear and which ones can wait until a sale comes up.  But once I have those items in hand, I become the Slowest Person Alive.

Ah, 2015.  That brief moment when Target stores were operating in Canada AND managed to have their shelves stocked.

I am not now, nor am I ever likely to be, a MOC/MIB collector.  And yet, I seem to constantly have a pile of unopened figures hanging around.  But why?

My current backlog. Some of these haven't been opened in 4 years.  I'm a terrible pony hoarder.

For one thing, I like to take pictures of everything in order to catalogue the accessories that came with each pony, and this is most easily done right when the package has been opened.  But I also like the pony to look her best, which means a shampoo and conditioning before she's ready for her close up.  This obviously means that I can only open a few packages at a time without risking mixing things up before I can get the pictures taken.

Another slow down involves the Geek Cave itself.  I've got to have space in the Cave to lay out the accessories and then the ponies while they dry, and finally to set up my very makeshift photo booth.  As the Cave is often a mess, it's not always practical to try and open several sets at once.

I also tend to wait for sales as often as I can, which means I'm sometimes picking up 3-4 sets at once (occasionally more than that).  And I often make a stop at TRU as we're running errands in the evening after work, which means I don't have time to open the packages the same day that I buy them.  This all contributes further to the backlog.

I was just as bad during the G3 era - you should have seen me when the sales were on.

On the plus side, when I'm going through my backlog, I don't often find a lot of sets that I've changed my mind about.  I find this encouraging, because it means I'm mentally curating pieces before I purchase them and that shows me that I'm paying attention to what I'm buying and not just picking up anything on impulse or because I haven't bought something for awhile.

Much as with the G3s, I imagine the wind down of G4 and ramp up of G5 will give me a bit of time in which to catch up and get more of these pieces on display.  I look forward to having the time to set up some new displays with these ponies.  Not to mention reclaiming that corner of the guest room where my backlog is currently waiting for some attention.

Elf

G4 - what happened, what's here, what's next

With the announcement from Hasbro that G4 is coming to an end, much of the collector community is already looking ahead to G5.  I haven't been looking at any of the online conversations because I'm not ready to rush G4 out the door yet.

My G4 collection circa April 2017

G4 is the 3rd pony generation I encountered as an adult.  During G4 I was gainfully employed for the whole run, I finished paying off my student loans, and I generally had spending money when new products hit the shelves.

And hit the shelves they did, with much more regularity in Canada than G2 or G3.  After years of frustration as G3 Target and TRU exclusives failed to make the trip north of the border, we found ourselves in the enviable position of having ponies on the shelves that weren't making it south of the border instead.  It would, of course, have been nice to have more individual background characters made into toys.

G4 also had strong support from a wildly successful cartoon series.  Although the show was strongest in its early seasons, it had some excellent writing, enjoyable characters, and plenty of throwbacks to the G1 era throughout.  Whatever else it brought with it, for good or ill, Friendship Is Magic gave MLP a mainstream presence it hadn't had before.  This level of popularity likely won't make the jump to the new generation, and I suspect that G5 will find a collectors community much more like what G3 was familiar with.

 I am not the hardest collector to please.  Overall, I have loved the G4 run.  There's no character in the cartoon that I really dislike, and many that I really love.  Aside from a brief foray into cheap, bad hair, I've been happy overall with the quality of the toys.  The playsets, although largely flat, are beautiful and make great display pieces (which is unfortunate, as they're also huge).  My only real complaint is with the lack of differentiation in poses.  I had a brief hope after the toy redesign that we would get more variety, but sadly there wasn't much.

There was also a plethora of Mane 6 toys, while many popular background characters either weren't made into toys or were only featured once or twice.  While I'd have liked to see other characters as toys (whether or not they appeared in the show), I wasn't as bothered by this as some collectors.  I do understand the logic behind making sure that you main characters are always available for children just getting into the brand.  But perhaps there's such a thing as too many Pinkie Pies.

I hope that the last year of G4 will offer us a few nice surprises, a few really good figures (I've already picked up three that I really love), and a satisfying finale.  And then I'll be ready to see what G5 is made of.

Elf