On Collecting Fandoms

(Warning: Unclean language.)

Recent happenings in both collecting fandoms I'm part of have led me to want to have a bit of a ramble about them. 

Grumbleweed here is going to be my ramble supervisor. You'll find out why as you read on. 

I would say I originally started out as part of the My Little Pony collecting fandom. I practically lived on the old MLPTP messageboard and even went to several "pony meets," where I got to meet fellow collectors in person, sell and buy ponies, and do fun activities. I won my rare Twice-As-Fancy Baby Sugarberry in a trivia contest at one of the last meets I'd go to and I'll never part with her. Pony people were pretty chill, though there were definitely a fair share of debates and arguments on the board. 

I edged away from ponies into dolls. I remember being on Yahoo Groups, talking about the Lollipop Girls and it was one of those fellow collectors that introduced me to Bratz. I'd buy my first, XPress It Meygan, shortly after and then there were the My Scene groups after that. I dabbled in the Jem collecting fandom, it being my most treasured vintage line, but the people there...well, they were rather off-putting. There were ones that had vast collections and tended to lord it over others. There were ones that freaked out any time a doll line had a pink-haired doll, saying it must be a Jem ripoff. Man, what do those people do now, when so many more lines have unnaturally-colored hair? That was one of my pet peeves at the time. People tossing around the word "ripoff" and not understanding how elements of one successful thing can inspire other successful things that are of equal value. Bratz inspired My Scene absolutely, but did both lines succeed? Most definitely. For a time. Was one any less than the other? Not in my opinion. While I liked single lines of the Bratz better than any My Scene lines because Bratz was less afraid to be "edgy," My Scene had the better character development, webisodes and movies. Then I got into Pullips and divided my time between them, Bratz and My Scene. 

Then in 2004 came Winx Club. Winx was my first fandom that was a doll line based on a cartoon, not a doll line with accompanying animation. I fell completely in love with Winx and even created a Livejournal community for it that I ran for years. Soon after, I'd do the same for W.I.T.C.H. and Disney Fairies. I still hold all three of those properties in high regard. Running communities though is undoubtedly a pain in the ass. Scalpers using the groups for information was a problem. Disagreements popped up frequently. And then there were the people that treated me like I was there to serve them and thought I shouldn't have any say over a community I'd created. Yeah, they didn't last long. As a moderator, I was absolutely a hardass. Sometimes too much so. 

While I was collecting all those lovely lines, I also got into Ellowyne Wilde, dabbled in Fashion Royalty for about five minutes, and got some Momokos and other Asian lines. I did like the Ellowyne boards I was part of. Those were mostly decent. 

Ah, and then came the next big thing. In April 2010, I was lucky enough to become one of the earliest buyers for a then completely unknown line we know as...MONSTER HIGH. Somehow Toys R Us had gotten the dolls and sold a few early. I ordered Lagoona Blue and then the Cleo de Nile/Deuce Gorgon 2-pack on the same day. I quickly added Frankie Stein, Clawdeen Wolf and Draculaura. Thankfully, all of my orders were fulfilled and for maybe a month and a half, I was one of the very few people who had MH dolls in hand. I'd like to think I answered questions as best I could and drummed up support for the line I'd completely fallen in love with. I created another Livejournal community for them, as my past ones were dying off alongside their properties. Monster High, as we know, turned into one of the biggest hits doll world has ever known. I added on a community for Ever After High when that debuted, too. Now we'd come back to doll lines that had accompanying media, as opposed to ones that were based on shows or books that came first. It was these two lines that ran me ragged. I loved the lines themselves, though they definitely had their frustrations. I'm still mad we got barely any EAH boys and no Ramona Badwolf. I'm still mad characterization went all over the place for MH. Poor Deuce. Poor Clawd. They got dumbed down something fierce. And what ever happened to all of Frankie's boyfriends? She never was allowed to settle down long. With the rise of Monster High though came the rise of doll collector entitlement. I'm not a fan of entitlement of any kind, but this...ugh. I got so tired of people writing off lines because they weren't articulated enough. I still have zero patience for articulation snobs. Even worse were the ones that acted like dolls were for them and overly criticized anything meant for the target market. KIDS. PLAYLINE TOYS ARE FOR KIDS. DEAL WITH IT. So honestly, when Livejournal became too risky to be on, I was very, very, VERY relieved to be done being a moderator. 

With that, I concentrated on this blog. It was so nice to write things for myself and not have to constantly police spats in the comments. So nice to not have to read the neverending negative posts from certain members who sought out new things just for the joy of ripping them apart with needless criticism. Just so damn nice to be away from the entitlement. I still maintained my Flickr account, but with the rise of Instagram, which I despise, people were on there less and I didn't have any drama to deal with there anymore either. 

Things are still pretty quiet now, except for one little thing: Rainbow High. Facebook seems to be the main gathering place for doll communities now. You can't really relate very well on Instagram with it's godsawful format, after all. So to Facebook they all went. I started out not very involved, but eventually I ended up taking over a friend's Hairdorables group. That's run mostly smoothly. Scalpers and bad transactions were our biggest issues. Then I was in a LOL OMG group that wasn't awful. Right now though, the most activity is from the Rainbow High group. It's mostly fine, but every now and then, the old entitled crew reappears. There was a post not long ago laughing at kids who couldn't find the new twin set because adult collectors had bought them all. The comments on that were absolutely deplorable. Thankfully, I reported it and poof, no more posts hating on the TARGET MARKET FOR PLAYLINE. (I really cannot all-caps that enough.) There are a few idiots there who try to resurrect the old Mattel vs. MGAE war, but the appearance of that awesome Barbie Looks line shut that up quick. Currently, our biggest issue is from the ignorant attention whores who keep posting leaked photos despite the very obvious and frequently mentioned rule against it. MGAE literally has people in these groups waiting to shut them down for infringement, yet people keep breaking that rule. 

So all in all, the doll fandoms I've been in have not been the greatest. I've met some of the most fabulous people ever, ones that became lasting friends, through these groups, but I've also seen the entitled horrible behavior that makes doll fandoms pretty toxic. I'm still glad to mostly be on the outskirts of it all, just posting my reviews here and reporting the occasional dumbass over on Facebook. 

I'm getting to the part where the dragon will make sense. 

All of this doll talk leads us to Charlie Bears. I first knew of them in 2013, but didn't buy my first until January 2016. I was still healing from the most abusive relationship I'd ever dealt with and bears became my solace. They made me happy more than dolls at the time, though I've never stopped collecting dolls obviously. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the CB fandom and I'm part of the best Facebook group dedicated to them. 

Bear collectors on the whole have been far more gracious and kind than doll collectors. There isn't a dynamic of plush vs. mohair collectors with the mohairs lording their obvious ability to spend hundreds at a time over those of us who are more poor. (I'm looking at you, Integrity Toys. The entire company that does this.) There isn't a sense of entitlement because people know some of the most sought after bears are very limited and have to chosen by drawn names. 

There are, however, problems with these practices. No matter what, you are going to have profiteering assholes in any collectible where there is low supply and high demand. Whenever things sell out, they seem to turn up on ebay for well over twice the price. Then the fallout of that is the split in comments. You've got the people who are rightfully angry about it. I'm not talking about deciding you don't like a $200 toy and listing it for an opening bid of $200. I'm talking about people who buy it for the sole purpose of trying to resell that $200 toy for $600. And yet there are also the stupid people who defend the scalpers. Why? I don't get it unless they're scalpers themselves. But I'm so sick of reading "It's their property. They can do what they want. Just don't buy it." Yeah, no shit don't buy it. Yet people do because they have more money than sense. Then you've got the spin-off of this, which is a third group of people that get tired of people being upset about the practice. I'm sorry, but profiteering deserves to be spoken against in any collecting fandom. 

So very recently, there was huge drama (and it still goes on) about this dragon named Scorch. (Now you see why Grumbleweed is here?) He's part of the Secret Collection, which means he's only available through QVC and the CB Direct websites. Possibly eventually certain stockists may get some. Everyone went nuts for this purple dragon when he was shown during the 2021 collection reveal. One of the most positive responses I've seen for any of their pieces in the 5+ years I've been doing this. Naturally, he was going to sell out, which is not typical for a Secret Collection piece. However WHY he sold out...well, that's the issue. 

You see, QVC items all have numbers. And someone found Scorch's and leaked it. QVC was then inundated with calls from people trying to buy him before the show aired. They knew he was supposed to be on this show. I'm not positive if it was well-known that he was only supposed to be available DURING the show and not before. That's the tricky spot for me. Because if people knew they were trying to get him too early and did it anyway, they're wrong. If they didn't know, then I guess it's okay but it still doesn't feel right. Charlie Bears had made it clear to QVC not to sell him until the show, but apparently, QVC didn't listen. Not the first time they've fucked up on QVC UK. So what happens? He sells out before the show and therefore doesn't even appear on it, making fucktons of people rightly pissed off. Ordering it early feels underhanded and a lot of people said so, but there are also some big name CB collectors and some of them, who do seem to get everything...not gonna lie, ordered, so then there was a backlash of people defending those big name collectors. 

Lately, the majority of posts I've seen on the UK-based CB groups have been:

-People confused about the situation.

-People angry/sad about the situation. (Justified.)

-People showing off their Scorches. (Tasteless, in my opinion. It's too soon. Read the room, people. And some people got 2, which is even more tasteless to rub in people's faces. I'd never keep 2 of something if someone really wanted it.)

-People posting all the Scorches being scalped on ebay. (So many. UGH. They should have made a buying limit.)

-People bitching about people posting all the Scorches being scalped on ebay. (See my above paragraph about profiteering needing to be spoken against.)

-People bitching about people being upset about this. (Now this is the one that makes me the most angry. This was done in an underhanded, wrong manner. CB did not want him sold before the show. He was. People have a right to be angry about this and speak against it, whether you think "it's just a stuffed dragon" or not. Fuck off with your self-righteous garbage.) 

It's A LOT of drama. It's not the first time, but it is absolutely the worst time because it's the clearest case of something being done wrong. Other times the sought after items were done through draws, so you can't exactly stop scalpers from being part of those and there were limits of 1 in place. 

CB collectors are for the most part quite the sunshine and rainbows bunch. It's really hard to criticize anything without someone getting overly defensive of the very nice people behind the brand. Yes, they are very nice and very thoughtful, but that doesn't mean they should never be given constructive criticism when something isn't working. 

Case in point, I posted recently about how we are abysmally behind in shipments here in the US. The pandemic put us behind. Yes, I get that. You don't need to tell me it exists. Obviously it does. But just writing everything off as the pandemic's fault doesn't mean we can't talk about possible solutions and that's what I was suggesting. I said they should consider cutting back the 2022 collection to help everything get caught up. It's their business looking bad due to the pandemic, not only us collectors suffering, after all. Naturally, this was met with some agreement and some bitchiness. I don't need anyone to snidely tell me the collection is already too "in the pipeline" to be changed. Fuck that. It's their business. They can make changes anytime they like. I also don't need the same person telling me I can't manage my money if I don't have enough saved up for all the pre-orders we're behind on. (I buy on layaway, which can be spread from 3-6 months, so that argument doesn't hold water.) 

My point is that while doll collectors criticize too much and unjustly, bear collectors are forced to bite their tongues even if their criticism IS justified by the overwhelming atmosphere of "We need to be nice and especially not ever hurt the feelings of the creators." I deleted my post after the money comment was made because I was so close to going off on that snotty bitch. It was only my huge respect for the moderator that made me delete instead of defend. And if you know me, you know exactly how big a deal that is because I am not one to back down hardly ever. 

I suppose where I'm going with this is that no group of collectors is ever ideal. Not that anyone probably was under the assumption that it was. The CB world seemed a lot nicer after my doll fandom experiences, but it definitely has its down side as well. You just have to find your own way and decide if there ever comes a point where being part of the fandom isn't worth it anymore. I'm glad I stepped away from the doll ones as much as I have. I'm much happier without all that nonsense. But I'm not quite ready to give up on the bear groups yet. If anything, I may drop out of the biggest UK group. That seems where most of the problems are. But we'll see. I'll give it a bit longer. At this point I'm mostly crossing my fingers our US launch of Scorch does not have these problems!