Toys R Us Kid II: Fiscal Boogaloo

From Youtube videos I’m finding out that many people who grew up middle class have no idea what a ‘dollar store’ is. They seem to think that just because a store has the word ‘dollar’ in their name that makes them a ‘dollar store’. I see suggested videos all the time titled something like : “I bought this crazy stereo at the dollar store!” No, you bought it at Family Dollar, where some things cost more than the Wal-Mart down the street.

True ‘dollar stores’ are places where, guess what, everything costs $1! Fewer and fewer exist in this day and age, one of the few chains remaining is Dollar Tree. (Even though they are starting to raise prices!) Most of the things you get at a place like this are either off-brand products, name brand products in smaller form or something they were just able to get a crazy low bulk price on. (Sometimes they up-sell though. Those canned vegetables you’re paying $1 for usually costs 85 cents at the super market.)

This is why it surprised me when all of a sudden I saw toy collecting videos purporting to be about ‘dollar store’ figures pop up in my suggested videos. And these weren’t just random videos, they were videos by collectors I had watched videos from to get reviews of those Masterpiece Transformers figures I talked about last time. Those are figures that sell for hundreds of dollars. So what is this ‘dollar store’ thing about? This is where I was introduced to…

This is indeed a toy line sold exclusively at Dollar Tree. Most of the toys they have there are like all the other products, either cheap knock-offs, name brand toys they got a deal on or sell for more than you’d actually pay other places. But this toy line is a complete in-house brand created and sold by Dollar Tree, and the figures aren’t that bad from the looks of it.

In the year 2050, a large asteroid collided with our moon. Among the debris, we discovered a hibernating alien mothership. Now, the Kharn are awake and they want to plunder our precious natural resources. So, we recruited teams of special operatives to defend Earth from their alien threat.

First you have the good guys, Alpha Team 1

The figures don’t look that bad! They’re about the size of GI Joes (not those dolls you old guys played with, but the smaller ones we’ve had in more civilized times since the 80s) and come with similar style packaging with little bios on them. Then there are the bad guys…

Hey, those look kind of neat! Weird generic alien monsters FTW! They are a barely more substantial toy than Happy Meal toys, but you don’t have to feed your kid a Happy Meal. (Which have sucked since they started putting apples in them!) The point that these Youtube Toy collectors (who collect toys that cost hundreds of dollars) have made is, you can buy them all! There is no secondary market pumping the price. They are all readily available on store shelves! No artificial scarcity! You can have the whole collection, remember they are $1 (or $1.25 going forward). You can make those few generic aliens into a massive army for less than it costs to buy most other toys these days.

But the craziest part? They made a fucking cartoon! Just like the big toy lines! But these are toys exclusively for Dollar Tree! And I have to admit, the cartoon is better than some I’ve been forced to sit through with my nieces and nephews. (It kind of reminds me of the Halo based fan cartoon Red VS Blue in some ways)