On Toy Reviews

Disclaimer: I don’t have a running list of the specific sites that receive product samples. So, this isn’t targeted at any specific site or reviewer. That said, the criteria I used focused on sites that posted reviews for items that had yet to hit retail. I mean, if it can’t be bought in stores, they probably got it from the company. 

So,  I started this on Twitter, but in my haste,  I forgot some key words and my message got mangled. Let’s try this again : if you are a toy reviewer who gets free product samples from the manufacturer,  I don’t trust your opinion. Now,  allow me to say that I don’t trust *most* reviews. While I enjoy reading your thoughts, I’m not going to be swayed by what you have to say. It’s just not in my nature. The main reason that I cant trust these reviewers, though,  is because I cant trust their judgement of whether X is worth buying ; if you got the toy for free,  you never had to answer that question for yourself.

I think this is a problem unique to toy collecting. Oddly enough, I don’t feel this way about comic, book, or movie reviews. Hell, my Adventures West Coast feature is mostly based on books I got for free. So, I clearly don’t have an issue with free comics. The difference, to me, is the matter of *experience*. The other media that I mentioned are things that you experience, or take in. You take in a movie or a good book. It makes you feel a certain way. Plus, you have options with other media: you can get a book from a library rather than buy it OR rent a movie from Redbox instead of seeing it in the theater. This is only my opinion, but I don’t feel that way about toys. As an adult collector,  it seems like 2 things are paramount : sculpt and articulation. Sculpt is more important than ever these days,  especially if you’re a MOC collector, as the buck pretty much stop there. If you like to open your toys, you’re going to care about articulation,  as you’ll want to be able to pose it in cool ways on your shelf /diorama.

However, there’s an aspect that’s commonly missing in toy reviews: experience. Sure,  some sites discuss the notion of play value,  but few reviewers would admit to commonly playing with their toys. Hell,  if you want a real opinion of play value,  ask a damned child! Instead,  we’re left with grown ups who attempt to surmise what the child’s opinion might be.

Sure,  the collector market is important,  but the big toy companies will tell you they’re trying to court moms,  and moms get their info from kids (and assorted mommy blogs) . Because adult collector reviewers hardly delve into the play value aspect,  it has left me feeling that their opinions are incomplete. I don’t experience toys. Its more like a passing fling. I see something attractive,  the price is right,  and if it was amazing,  I steal her panties and keep them as a souvenir. Or put the figure in my Detolf.  You knew where I was going … Based on that chain of events,  the process of the adult toy collector is a bit…lacking. So,  lacking any real depth,  the matter of whether X is worth buying becomes even more important. Shit, that’s pretty much ALL that matters, which brings me back to why I cant trust toy reviewers who get free samples. They didn’t have to answer the most important question of the whole endeavor. They never had to. It’s like taking marriage advice from your bachelor friend who gets enough ass that he sees no point in settling down. Yes,  to me, reviewers who get free samples are basically Larry Dallas.

I’ve come to realize that some people truly do defer to certain reviewers’ opinions. Its an odd phenomenon to me (I should probably point out that I’ve never understood groupthink concepts,  like school spirit. I’m borderline autistic in that regard) . It seems like toy companies also understand certain critics’ sway, earning them a spot on the coveted product sample list.

How did I get on this train of thought? You see, this afternoon I saw a tweet featuring a review of the upcoming SDCC Movie Masters Bruce Wayne. A toy that isn’t out yet. A toy that many of you will never have a real shot at owning. Even if it sucks,  I do not believe he would negatively review it PRIOR to its release. That’s just bad mojo. So, he’ll, as we say in MD, “sice it” (translation: over promote it),  and everyone will rave over how awesome the figure is and how much they want it. To me,  this is disingenuous because it violates the one tenant that I’ve established that toy reviewers must follow: just honestly tell me if it’s worth buying. In this case,  by not paying for the product, he is no longer an impartial reviewer. He’s now a representative of the toy company,  albeit in an almost freelance capacity. He is no longer in a position to honestly answer the only question I would have in this arena : is it worth the price?

There are far more costs involved in transactions besides *price*. There are opportunity costs, as in what you might have given up in order to buy toys instead. There’s your time. There’s gas. There’s the fact that what you want is shortpacked, on top of the fact that the manufacturer has a reputation for spotty distribution. In the grand scheme of things, all of these factor in to the “cost” of acquiring the toy.

Now, let’s look back at that SDCC Bruce Wayne. Here’s a review from a guy who not only got the item early, but he got it without even having to GO to SDCC. You know what the experience would be like for you or me? First,  we’d have to go to SDCC (hopefully we’re going for more than just the chance to get this one toy) . Once there, we wait. Sometimes you just wait in one line. At other times,  you wait in line for the *chance* to later wait in another line to buy the toy! Can you believe that?! You’re “engaged to be engaged” in the process of buying a TOY! If you wait long enough,  and they don’t “run out”, which is laughable since they’ll certainly have “limited stock to throw up on the website”, you’ll get your toy. If you don’t go to SDCC,  you can still wait,  along with everyone else who didn’t go, to buy some of that “limited stock” off the website. Of course, those will be made available in the middle of the day,  while you’re at work. So now you either take a sick day, long lunch, or have your unemployed bud do you a solid. Or maybe you have a cool job where they don’t care if you buy toys on company time. And if you miss all that,  there’s the Sears & Roebuck interpretation of Dante’s Inferno known as eBay. It seems that JediLover69 somehow has a whole case of the fuckers, and he only wants $100 each. Now,  remember, you just went through all this because some dude told you it was awesome. A dude who didn’t have to go through a fraction of what you did in order to say that.

So, am I being cynical? Perhaps. But we’re talking about something that geeks and nerds love, so there’s no such thing as TOO much cynicism. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: some of my best online friends are reviewers who get free product from toy companies. Hell, I’m not hating the player OR the game. I think any of us would love to be on that list. If I ever get that amount of clout, though, I won’t do reviews. I might post a bunch of TwitPics, saying “Look at me NOW!”, but I wouldn’t post a review. That just wouldn’t be genuine.