April 19, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em - you've just got to love them. Here is a story of a unique American dream - and unexpected healing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories and our next story. Well,
we love this kind of story. It comes to us
from the Toy and Action Figure Museum in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma.
That's right, the Toy and Action Figure Museum. Its founder,
Kevin Stark, says it's the first museum to be entirely
(00:31):
dedicated to action figures. Take it away, Kevin.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My name is Kevin Stark.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I am the curator and executive director of the Toy
and Action Figure Museum and also the founder of the museum.
And I got started gosh. I started collecting toys a
long time ago. Back in nineteen eighty six. The girlfriend
I had at the time drugged me to an antique
flea market and I didn't really want to go spend
(00:58):
the afternoon looking at anti but they had all these
cool toys and they were cheap, and so I came
out with an armload of toys and I said.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well, that was fun.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
When are we going back? She said, well, it happens
every month, and I was like, oh cool. So I
started collecting toys and I amassed this huge collection. But
even as a kid, I had convinced my parents to
let me clean out our basement so that that could
be my private play area. And I shared a room
(01:30):
with two brothers. So when my brothers found out that
my parents thought that was a great idea, you know,
they were a little upset with me over it. But
my dad said, hey, he came up with the idea
and he cleaned it up, so, you know, get lost.
And I had gotten a job when I was like
ten years old in order for me to be able to.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Go and buy my own toys.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So I actually been collecting, you know, really since I
was ten.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
But I've just always been attracted to toys.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I've always enjoyed them and liked them, and then when
i'm you know, when it became my business to actually
design them all the better. In nineteen ninety, I got
a call to design toys. It was actually a guy
I went to school with, and he calls and says,
how would you like to design toys for the teenage
(02:24):
mutant Ninja Turtles? And I was like, you wouldn't believe
what I'm sitting around right now. So I'd already been
collecting for four or five years. He didn't know I
was a collector, you know, I didn't know he was
a designer, and so we just got together and he said,
can you be in LA on Monday morning at nine
am for a flight to LA And I was like,
(02:45):
you bet, I can't. He had been working for small
toy companies and every time they're toy companies got bought out,
he lost his job. So he decided to start his
own coming company that would do design work, but mostly.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Write copy for the action figures.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And toys and create the accessories that go in them.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And that's a lot of what we did.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We would create sewer maps for the turtles, a lot
of the extra things you know that went in with
the toys. We worked for a lot of different toy
companies that don't have an in house design team, big
huge companies like Mattel and Hasbro and Kenner, and so
a company would come to us and say we need
(03:32):
this designed, or we need like in the case of
Tonsylvania that we did for Spielberg and Toy Island, was like,
we need you to design this line based on a
cartoon series, and so that's what we did. We would
look at the characters and come up with different ways
(03:53):
that they could make toys, everything from plush toys to
wind ups to action figures, to play sets, and of
course we would come up with it. You then had
to send the drawings over to the company. They would
say yay or nay, or they'd make changes here and there.
A lot of times we didn't have a lot of
(04:14):
time to do it. The deadlines a lot of times
were really quick and really short. One toy line, in particular,
the Mummy we did for the Universal Studios movie, we
had I think two weeks to design and get some
sculpts done before.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The New York Toy Fair.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They kind of went for a long time, No, we're
not gonna do toys, not gonna do toys. And then
two or three weeks before they said, oh, we're gonna
do toys. Can you guys knock this out? And so
we were working twenty four hours a day, taking like
little cat naps on my couch in my office and
you know, getting up and doing more drawing. So sometimes
it's very fast work and other times you have lots
(04:55):
of time. So you know, it just varied with the project.
I point out to people that come here, there are
a lot of doll museums and there are a lot
of toy museums. But we are really basically an action
figure museum. Our focus is the design and sculpting and
art of action figures. So even though we have toys too,
(05:19):
most of them relate somehow to action figures, you know,
in the way of play sets or vehicles or things
like that.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So that's what makes us different.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And we have over thirteen thousand action figures in the collection.
Most of the collection, ninety percent of what you see
in the museum is from my private collection, but we
do get some things donated. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
A funny thing is people say, oh, you must do
eBay a lot. I never do eBay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I mean very rarely have I ever picked anything up
on eBay. I personally prefer to go out and see
the things I'm purchasing. I like to hold it in
my hand and say is this what I want and
purchase it like that. That's just what I prefer because
to me, I like the hunt. So really I go
on what I call toy Safari. We got a call
(06:10):
from a lady in Arkansas one time, and I didn't
talk to her, but one of our board members.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Did, and so he calls me up and he.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Says, you want to go on a road trip, and
I was like, what are we talking about. Well, this
lady says she had this toy collection she just wanted
to donate to the museum. And I said, well, what
are we talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
He said, well, he didn't really know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
He said he tried to get her to send pictures
and she didn't really know how to do that on
her phone, so she only sent like three or four
pictures that were of these little tiny figures on shelves,
you know. So we just hop in my Toyota four
Runner and drive all the way to Arkansas. Well, she
had so much stuff that we piled it all in
(06:56):
my car, drove back to Paul's Valley, Oklahoma, rented a
huge U haul truck, and went back still filled that
up in my car again because we had no idea
what we were getting into. It was her husband's collection
and he had passed away and wanted this stuff donated
to the museum. And we were like, are you sure
(07:18):
you want to do this, because you know, we told
her she could sell this stuff on eBay or whatever,
and she said no, she said, I'm actually a very
minimalist person.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I just want all this stuff out of here.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And it was funny because the whole house was packed
with toys. And she here was telling me she liked
to live very you know, spartanly. My wife and I
went to a garage sale one time here in Paul's
Alley and the family it was just, you know, the couple.
They had a daughter, and we were mostly going to
(07:52):
the garage sale for my wife, you know, she was
checking stuff out. Well, they had all these cool boy toys.
I'm talking about, great stuff that was worth a lot
of money, and I was just putting everything in my
arms trying to you know, pick it all up. And
my wife was clear across the way visiting with somebody,
and I was like, come here, come here, you know,
(08:14):
I said, we need to get this stuff. Well, it
turned out that the father always wanted a little boy
and he got a little girl, so he was just
buying her boy toys too, you know, and I think
because he liked them. So I just picked up a
lot of really great stuff for next to nothing for
garage sale prices and was very happy to get them.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
And they're all in the museum right now.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Some of my favorite exhibits in the museum deal with
my favorite character, which is Batman. In fact, we have
a whole bat Cave devoted to just Batman, so there
are a.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Lot of figures there.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And we created a World War Two display which we
had both the European campaign and the Pacific campaign all
done in twelve inch tall action figures. But we built
buildings and everything in order to create a diorama of
these action figures and recreated the World War Two scenes. Well,
(09:17):
the older generation of people who would come in here,
they loved that because they could relate to that, and
a lot of old World War Two veterans, and in fact,
we had one guy come in who These figures we
used are not Gi Joe's specifically, some of them are
from other companies that are very much accurate figures from
(09:39):
World War Two. Anyway, this one figure has a shoulder
patch on it which was a paratrooper outfit paratrooper unit.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, that guy that was his unit.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Okay, he couldn't believe that we had an action figure
of his unit in World War Two. He was just
blown away and we had a great time talking to
about it. Most everyone finds something that they can relate
to and that they're amazed at. You know, we have
people who come in and think, you know, why do
I want to be in here. I'm only here because
my husband's here or whatever. And then they see stuff
(10:14):
they had as a kid, and really we're less about
toys and more about nostalgia, more about your childhood. People
come in here, they almost always leave happy, you know,
so that's always a great thing.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
And you've been listening to Kevin Stark and he is
the founder of the Toy and Action Figure Museum in
Paul's Valley, Oklahoma. His story the story of a museum
of a man's making. Here on our American Story
This is our American stories and our next story. Well,
we love this kind of story. It comes to us
from the Toy and Action Figure Museum in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma.
That's right, the Toy and Action Figure Museum. Its founder,
Kevin Stark, says it's the first museum to be entirely
(00:31):
dedicated to action figures. Take it away, Kevin.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My name is Kevin Stark.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I am the curator and executive director of the Toy
and Action Figure Museum and also the founder of the museum.
And I got started gosh. I started collecting toys a
long time ago. Back in nineteen eighty six. The girlfriend
I had at the time drugged me to an antique
flea market and I didn't really want to go spend
(00:58):
the afternoon looking at anti but they had all these
cool toys and they were cheap, and so I came
out with an armload of toys and I said.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well, that was fun.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
When are we going back? She said, well, it happens
every month, and I was like, oh cool. So I
started collecting toys and I amassed this huge collection. But
even as a kid, I had convinced my parents to
let me clean out our basement so that that could
be my private play area. And I shared a room
(01:30):
with two brothers. So when my brothers found out that
my parents thought that was a great idea, you know,
they were a little upset with me over it. But
my dad said, hey, he came up with the idea
and he cleaned it up, so, you know, get lost.
And I had gotten a job when I was like
ten years old in order for me to be able to.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Go and buy my own toys.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
So I actually been collecting, you know, really since I
was ten.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
But I've just always been attracted to toys.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I've always enjoyed them and liked them, and then when
i'm you know, when it became my business to actually
design them all the better. In nineteen ninety, I got
a call to design toys. It was actually a guy
I went to school with, and he calls and says,
how would you like to design toys for the teenage
(02:24):
mutant Ninja Turtles? And I was like, you wouldn't believe
what I'm sitting around right now. So I'd already been
collecting for four or five years. He didn't know I
was a collector, you know, I didn't know he was
a designer, and so we just got together and he said,
can you be in LA on Monday morning at nine
am for a flight to LA And I was like,
(02:45):
you bet, I can't. He had been working for small
toy companies and every time they're toy companies got bought out,
he lost his job. So he decided to start his
own coming company that would do design work, but mostly.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Write copy for the action figures.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And toys and create the accessories that go in them.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And that's a lot of what we did.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We would create sewer maps for the turtles, a lot
of the extra things you know that went in with
the toys. We worked for a lot of different toy
companies that don't have an in house design team, big
huge companies like Mattel and Hasbro and Kenner, and so
a company would come to us and say we need
(03:32):
this designed, or we need like in the case of
Tonsylvania that we did for Spielberg and Toy Island, was like,
we need you to design this line based on a
cartoon series, and so that's what we did. We would
look at the characters and come up with different ways
(03:53):
that they could make toys, everything from plush toys to
wind ups to action figures, to play sets, and of
course we would come up with it. You then had
to send the drawings over to the company. They would
say yay or nay, or they'd make changes here and there.
A lot of times we didn't have a lot of
(04:14):
time to do it. The deadlines a lot of times
were really quick and really short. One toy line, in particular,
the Mummy we did for the Universal Studios movie, we
had I think two weeks to design and get some
sculpts done before.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The New York Toy Fair.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They kind of went for a long time, No, we're
not gonna do toys, not gonna do toys. And then
two or three weeks before they said, oh, we're gonna
do toys. Can you guys knock this out? And so
we were working twenty four hours a day, taking like
little cat naps on my couch in my office and
you know, getting up and doing more drawing. So sometimes
it's very fast work and other times you have lots
(04:55):
of time. So you know, it just varied with the project.
I point out to people that come here, there are
a lot of doll museums and there are a lot
of toy museums. But we are really basically an action
figure museum. Our focus is the design and sculpting and
art of action figures. So even though we have toys too,
(05:19):
most of them relate somehow to action figures, you know,
in the way of play sets or vehicles or things
like that.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
So that's what makes us different.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And we have over thirteen thousand action figures in the collection.
Most of the collection, ninety percent of what you see
in the museum is from my private collection, but we
do get some things donated. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
A funny thing is people say, oh, you must do
eBay a lot. I never do eBay.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I mean very rarely have I ever picked anything up
on eBay. I personally prefer to go out and see
the things I'm purchasing. I like to hold it in
my hand and say is this what I want and
purchase it like that. That's just what I prefer because
to me, I like the hunt. So really I go
on what I call toy Safari. We got a call
(06:10):
from a lady in Arkansas one time, and I didn't
talk to her, but one of our board members.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Did, and so he calls me up and he.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Says, you want to go on a road trip, and
I was like, what are we talking about. Well, this
lady says she had this toy collection she just wanted
to donate to the museum. And I said, well, what
are we talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
He said, well, he didn't really know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
He said he tried to get her to send pictures
and she didn't really know how to do that on
her phone, so she only sent like three or four
pictures that were of these little tiny figures on shelves,
you know. So we just hop in my Toyota four
Runner and drive all the way to Arkansas. Well, she
had so much stuff that we piled it all in
(06:56):
my car, drove back to Paul's Valley, Oklahoma, rented a
huge U haul truck, and went back still filled that
up in my car again because we had no idea
what we were getting into. It was her husband's collection
and he had passed away and wanted this stuff donated
to the museum. And we were like, are you sure
(07:18):
you want to do this, because you know, we told
her she could sell this stuff on eBay or whatever,
and she said no, she said, I'm actually a very
minimalist person.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I just want all this stuff out of here.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And it was funny because the whole house was packed
with toys. And she here was telling me she liked
to live very you know, spartanly. My wife and I
went to a garage sale one time here in Paul's
Alley and the family it was just, you know, the couple.
They had a daughter, and we were mostly going to
(07:52):
the garage sale for my wife, you know, she was
checking stuff out. Well, they had all these cool boy toys.
I'm talking about, great stuff that was worth a lot
of money, and I was just putting everything in my
arms trying to you know, pick it all up. And
my wife was clear across the way visiting with somebody,
and I was like, come here, come here, you know,
(08:14):
I said, we need to get this stuff. Well, it
turned out that the father always wanted a little boy
and he got a little girl, so he was just
buying her boy toys too, you know, and I think
because he liked them. So I just picked up a
lot of really great stuff for next to nothing for
garage sale prices and was very happy to get them.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
And they're all in the museum right now.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Some of my favorite exhibits in the museum deal with
my favorite character, which is Batman. In fact, we have
a whole bat Cave devoted to just Batman, so there
are a.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Lot of figures there.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And we created a World War Two display which we
had both the European campaign and the Pacific campaign all
done in twelve inch tall action figures. But we built
buildings and everything in order to create a diorama of
these action figures and recreated the World War Two scenes. Well,
(09:17):
the older generation of people who would come in here,
they loved that because they could relate to that, and
a lot of old World War Two veterans, and in fact,
we had one guy come in who These figures we
used are not Gi Joe's specifically, some of them are
from other companies that are very much accurate figures from
(09:39):
World War Two. Anyway, this one figure has a shoulder
patch on it which was a paratrooper outfit paratrooper unit.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, that guy that was his unit.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Okay, he couldn't believe that we had an action figure
of his unit in World War Two. He was just
blown away and we had a great time talking to
about it. Most everyone finds something that they can relate
to and that they're amazed at. You know, we have
people who come in and think, you know, why do
I want to be in here. I'm only here because
my husband's here or whatever. And then they see stuff
(10:14):
they had as a kid, and really we're less about
toys and more about nostalgia, more about your childhood. People
come in here, they almost always leave happy, you know,
so that's always a great thing.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
And you've been listening to Kevin Stark and he is
the founder of the Toy and Action Figure Museum in
Paul's Valley, Oklahoma. His story the story of a museum
of a man's making. Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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