When it comes to childhood collectibles, Johnny Jimenez of the Toy Shack doesn’t play around
Johnny Jimenez never bent his Wookiee. (That’s for the Ralph Wiggums of the world. The ones who actually took their toys out of their boxes.)
No, Jimenez had the collector’s instinct all along and kept everything nice and minty fresh. It paid off in 2005, when he opened his first iteration of the Toy Shack, dealing in part from his personal collection. Since 2010, Jimenez has been at his Neonopolis location, where he deals in the vintage, the rare and the offbeat. If your stocking was bereft of your personal Rosebud, this might be where you can make up for Santa’s shortcomings.
What was the thing that got you into toys?
My dad was a coin collector, and he collected old cameras. We would look every morning in the classified ads and go to yard sales or estate sales. I gravitated to toys. He taught me how to date something, without knowing anything about it, by the materials and where it was made. I learned a lot of that stuff from my dad.
What were the toys that got you into collecting?
I started collecting early tin toys. I started doing tin toys from the ’50s and ’60s. I started doing Star Wars later. As the years went by, I would see it and I’d start picking it up, and it kind of grew until people started looking for the toys in the early ’90s.
When a new toy-based movie franchise starts up, how much does that change your strategy?
Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. When G.I. Joe came out, the first movies weren’t all that exciting, and it turned off a lot of collectors. The Star Wars thing will never die. With Marvel, everyone was scared of that, but they’ve done a great job with the Marvel movies.
What was the one gift you always wanted for Christmas that you never got?
I was very lucky because I had three brothers, so I would convince my brothers to go after the toys I wanted. I would be able to play with their toys and keep mine in the package. What I didn’t get as a kid were a lot of Transformers I wanted. They were kind of expensive, and there were so many of them. I remember going to kids’ birthday parties, and everyone was there to see him get Devastator. Come to find out the kid gets some Go-Bots and everyone disappears out of the park.
---
1950 Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
Gilbert, famous as the maker of the Erector Set, was looking to expand on its line of chemistry sets by capitalizing on all the whiz-bang fun of Hiroshima. So they made the U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, which contains actual uranium and a Geiger counter so you can “prospect” for radioactive material. Fun for the whole family! Of which you’ll be the last of the line, after you go sterile.
1950s Leslie-Henry Gene Autry cap guns
It was a better time. A time when mildly simulated violence wasn’t treated like a threat to the very bedrock of civilization. The Singing Cowboy seems, in hindsight, an odd choice to bust a cap. But cap guns were big business, even for the most mild-mannered of cowpokes. Jimenez has about a dozen finely crafted cap guns from the heyday of the ’50s and ’60s, and this lovingly jeweled Gene Autry holster set will make you want to practice your quick draw and slightly irritate your coworkers’ eardrums.
1978 Kenner Star Wars Jawa, vinyl cape
Any child of the ’80s worth his salt knows that the cheap vinyl capes that came on Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia and Darth Vader action figures were only slightly less disappointing than the miscolored lightsaber that slid out of Luke’s hand. (Yellow? Were they watching the same movie we were?) The Jawa figure also had the same flimsy cloak — for a hot minute. Kids and parents complained that they were paying full price for the half-size Jawa, so Kenner, to demonstrate value, replaced the easily ripped plastic with a slightly less tacky cloth robe. But now the vinyl Jawas command big numbers. This one, still on the card, is worth $10,000.
1984 Mattel Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain
He-Man’s pad, Castle Grayskull, had been out for two years before Skeletor was able to stake claim to his own piece of Eternia real estate. Snake Mountain was the far cooler of the two, because it came with an evil attack snake, shackles to get boring old Man-at-Arms out of the fight and a giant, detachable wolf-head microphone to distort your voice. For the six weeks it worked before crapping out. And by distort, Mattel meant “sound like you were messing up your cousin’s Burger King order.” Still. Giant wolfophone.
1968 Mattel Hot Wheels
From their initial year, Hot Wheels outshined the more staid Matchbox. Jimenez has several from the debut set, including a few pink ones, which turn out to be the hot ticket item. “Hot Wheels thought if they painted a car pink that girls would play with it,” Jimenez said. “It wasn’t true. And the boys didn’t want the pink ones. What happened with the pink cars, when I buy a collection, the pink cars were absolutely perfect because a kid never wanted to show his friends he had a pink car, or he’d take a hammer to it, or paint it another color. In the collector world, those are the most sought-after cars.”
1983 Kenner Strawberry Shortcake Berry Happy Home
