- Hey, playa.
One topic I've wanted to address for a long time here
on the Josh Speaks is whether or not
collecting action figures makes you a loser.
A lot of people have left comments saying
that because I have action figures in my background,
I shouldn't be giving advice
but I think it's a very interesting phenomenon
how people get to that mindset
so I want to walk you through my story
and share my opinions on whether or not
it does actually make you a lose.
♪ This is the Josh Speaks ♪
♪ You're watching the Josh Speaks ♪
For me growing up, like most kids,
I've always had a bunch of different toys to play with
whether it was Marvel figures or wrestling figures
or Star Wars figures.
I always had a bunch of different random things
that I can jump into and create stories with
and I think that's one of the beauties of childhood.
Kids are able to craft these elaborate stories
using all these random figures from different universes.
But as I got older, things started to drastically change
and I don't mean change in a bad way.
Actually, I started to get more into wrestling
so instead of crafting elaborate stories
with action figures, I always just made them wrestle.
Somehow it went from Spiderman and the Ninja Turtles
trying to save the world to Arthur and D.W.
wrestling against Stone Cold and the Rock.
And I think as I got older that evolution of storytelling
started to change.
I started to get more practical with it
which is why anytime I saw an action figure,
I could only think of how I would make them
wrestle each other and some of you may be thinking
yeah, that makes sense.
As you get older, you're supposed to stop playing with toys.
That's just not what adults do.
And I can understand why someone can see it that way,
but well into high school,
I was still collecting wrestling figures.
This time around, though, I wasn't really
making them physically wrestle.
Instead I was just setting them up in different moves
and putting them for display on my shelf.
Well, that was the exact thought process
for one of my friends.
I remember her bedroom had SpongeBob everywhere,
I mean everywhere.
The bed sheets, the lamp curtain, the shades,
the carpet, everything was SpongeBob
and I used to think, that's so cool.
You love SpongeBob and you're putting it out there
but I remember one day going to her house
after she had started college
and all of it was gone.
There wasn't a SpongeBob item in her entire room
and it had me confused because how do you make
a complete 180 switch like that?
I figured I'd ask her if she even still liked SpongeBob
and she told me of course she does
but not that she was in college,
she didn't feel comfortable putting that on display
'cause then people would think she was less mature
and as I kept hearing explanations like that,
you just have to do it, this is what people do,
other people will look at you in a certain way.
I started to see the pattern developing.
As you get older, you become way more conscious
of peoples' perceptions of you.
So you tend to display the things that you think
will be more acceptable to them.
Now that's not a bad way to approach things.
Evolutionary, it probably makes sense
so that we can be accepted by our tribe
and not excommunicated for being the weirdo
or the outsider, but for me in college,
I was all like, screw that.
I'm gonna put up posters of people that I like,
I'm gonna put up manga books that I'm reading,
I'm gonna have tons and tons of shirts of Marvel characters
that I really really care about.
I was all about putting myself on display
with no restrictions.
My mindset was if someone couldn't accept me
for the things that I liked, then I didn't care.
When I graduated college and came back home,
I still had tons of little toys all over my desk
and I wasn't ashamed to put those on display.
Some of you may be thinking, well,
maybe the reason why you had trouble with girls
or you didn't really have a girlfriend
till later in college is simply because of your hobbies
and your mindset.
You were so attached to collecting toys and action figures
that it didn't allow you to develop into social norms
of speaking to girls, but I would challenge that.
I think that while there's a safety and comfort
in collecting toys, it's not the exact reason
why I had trouble with girls.
Maybe there's a bit of an overlap,
but they didn't correlate exactly.
I mean, if you really think about it,
we all have different things that we escape into
when we face situations that make us feel uncomfortable.
When some of us are too nervous to talk to different girls
or guys, we may resort to drinking
to get that liquid courage to feel more comfortable
and open interacting with them
or you may just end up joining a fraternity
or a club just so that you have that social acceptance
from the people around you.
That way, it becomes easier for you to do things
in a group rather than as an individual.
So I don't necessarily think it was the fact
that I had toys that turned girls off
or didn't want to make them talk to me,
I think it was simply because I didn't drink
and I didn't join a frat so I had to do everything
solely as an individual learning along the way
and it's really mind blowing to me how people
genuinely perceive others that do things
that maybe they don't personally feel comfortable with.
For example, one time I was driving on the highway
with one of my female friends
and we ended up passing Toys R Us.
So I told her that sometimes I go there
to collect different figures
and she responded with, well, I'm pretty sure that adults
who collect toys have some type of mental illness, right?
I just looked at her like what are you even saying?
And she just kept trying to assure me
that she read somewhere that adults who collect things
have some type of mental issues
and once I heard that comment or let's call it what it is,
that level of judgment from her,
I started to really think about why people
go that direction when it comes to things
that make them feel uncomfortable.
We all function on different levels of conformity
and those that tend to be really high
on the scale of conformity tend to have
a lower tolerance for those that are on the other end
and it tends to function both ways.
Those that consider themselves to be rebels
really hate the idea of conformity,
of following strict social guidelines
and doing what everyone else is doing.
Nevertheless, her comment did make me feel
slighted in that moment,
but as I thought it through, I eventually got over it.
Now some of you that follow me over on Snapchat
and Instagram have definitely seen my huge display of toys.
For those of you that haven't, here it is.
This display has a lot of things on it
so I'll just give you a quick breakdown
of how I got all of these toys.
First I wanna tell you about the Hasbro coupon trick.
Now back in the day, Hasbro created a $5 off coupon
for Transformer figures that was printed
on a McDonald's bag.
The coupon had everything it was supposed to.
It said $5 off any purchase of $25 or more.
There was an expiration date and that was pretty much it
until people started to realize that the expiration date
wasn't actually legit and you could
use the coupon beyond it.
Someone ending up scanning the coupon and putting it online
for other people to continue getting
$5 off Transformers figures.
That's when people realized that you didn't actually
need to buy $25 or more to get the $5 off.
So people were using the $5 coupon on figures
that were as low as $5, essentially getting them for free
and that's when they made an even bigger discovery
and realized the code worked on any Hasbro figure.
So someone went online and changed the text
and the Transformers logo to read Hasbro
and from there, people were printing out
this Hasbro coupon and using it on any figure
in the Hasbro line and to be honest with you guys,
this is how I really built my Marvel Universe line.
I would use those $5 coupons and get five or six
figures at a time, resulting in the total price
being like 10 bucks.
Now at the end of the day, it was Hasbro's error,
but I remember the day that the coupon stopped working.
I grabbed a bunch of new figures
and went to the register with my brother
and as I was gonna use it,
the person at the register said, hey, wait a second.
Is this a legit coupon?
And I just froze up and said, this is it.
The joyride has ended.
From there because I had already bought so many
Marvel Universe figures, I bought those figures anyway
and continued to build my collection,
but that's how I got all those individual figures there.
Now with the statues, it's a different story.
Once I started attending New York Comic Con,
I would cosplay every single year
so the very first cosplay that I did
was as Mr. Fantastic and because of that,
I decided to get a little Mr. Fantastic statue
to remember that and every single year,
I look for a statue of characters that I dressed up as
whether it's the Shocker or Bullseye or Baron Zemo,
whoever it's been, I want a statue of them.
But the ultimate question here is why should someone
like me get advice from someone like you
who collects toys?
Well, I would just say there are people out there
who collect jerseys or fitted caps or sneakers
and no one would deny their ability
to explain their own experiences
and things that they learned
simply because of things that they like
and this is what I think is the ultimate point,
that people turning away from the channel
because they're embarrassed to learn something
from someone that they feel doesn't conform
in a way that they perceive cool people to do it
are really the ones who are suffering.
I've had tons of experiences with different girls,
different jobs, and different people in life,
and never have my hobbies interfered with that process,
so this is something you should think about too.
If there's something that you like that people feel
is unconventional, don't be willing to give up
those things just so you can fit in.
It's totally okay to change and to grow
and to just even fall out of things
just like I fell out of playing with action figures
and I evolved them into just using them as statues,
you can make those same transitions
in different areas of your life.
So don't let others bully you into doing that
faster than you actually need to.
What do you think, though?
Have you ever been called a loser
for something that you like or something that you do?
Leave your comments below and we'll talk about it.
I really wanna know what you guys have to say.
I know a bunch of you out there are weird
and quirky in your own way and you may be
afraid that others may not accept you for it.
So share your stories and we'll talk about it
and if you're new to the channel,
make sure to hit the subscribe button below.
I put out a new video every Tuesday and Friday
sharing tips, ideas, and stories,
teaching you how to be your best self.
Check out the video I have over there
on the side and the playlist,
which I have more videos that I think will help you
break out of your shell and be your best self.
As always guys, love and peace.