The State of My Shelves.

There was a time when every item in my collection was displayed in all it's glory. When I would spend a little time each day tweaking each pose, making sure that it was the most befitting of the character, and of course, canonically accurate.

I was so young then, and missing so many members
of the cast of the 1986 full-length motion picture.

Those days, are over.

Initially, the problem became the scale of everything.  So, I built custom shelves for all of my bots, but they eventually outgrew them.  I would occasionally colonize a book shelf, or an impromptu spot in my closet. but the important thing was for them to all be together.  When this became impossible, the challenge then became which ones to pack away. But really, to not have 24 incarnations of Optimus Prime displayed at the same time felt just plain wrong.

Impressed?

I was also limited a little in terms of space, because well, I liked being married, so I relegated myself to the space under the stairs in our basement (I know...).  It made for a cramped, but semi-private escape, and also allowed me to pick and choose who I let in on my dirty secret. Until that is, my children evolved the ability to open doors...

Now, this is the norm...

I won't tell you the dollar value of any of this (it's only crushing my soul a little). 

Or this...

Oh man, some of these aren't even from the same continuity.

My 5-year-old shares my need for the bots to all be together and he plays with them with such zeal, that "please only take out three at a time" has become, "okay, you need to at least come back here and help me put away 10 of these!"  It's been a good exercise in Zen. My blood pressure used to go up at least 20 mmHg when he would even hold one of my sought-after trinkets. Now, I can actually react calmly with a "that's okay, those were only custom decals, they can be re-ordered."

So now, most of my plastic friends live in our new home's family room.  It's a common area, and certainly invites questions from house guests, but it turns out only a few people have run screaming.

Or mocked me openly.

But hey, screw them! I get to go to bed with this at night.

Put the sword away, big boy.