Toy Hunters - Pilot Episode

Back in January the Travel Channel premiered a show called "Toy Hunters". The basic premise is some dude, named Jordan, travels around and finds toys. He haggles with the owners, and then tries to sell the toys at a convention. It's like a toy version of American Pickers.

The pilot episode essentially tested the waters and saw if there was an audience for such a show. Apparently it didn't do that horribly because it was picked up for a series.

Instead of doing a 'proper' review of the episode I'll just give you a brief summery and points that I liked and didn't like. (I'll try not to spoil anything for people who haven't seen it yet.)

This first episode has Jordan traveling around to search for vintage toys to sell at the New York Comic Con. He stumbles upon a couple "Holy Grail" toys, meets a few notable people and then proceeds to haggle with the owners of said toys. It's pretty straight forward. Formulaic if you will.

Things I like:

• They touch on the history of Kenner toys and actually talk to some of the toy designers. I think this show would be great if it focuses on the history of toy lines and the companies that produced them.
• Some reviews of the show thought that Jordan was low balling people when buying the toys. I thought he was being reasonable. Planning on selling something for $50 bucks at a con and paying $25 for it doesn't seem unfair. That's how it works yo.

Things I didn't like:

• It seems everything was incredibly staged. For example: a comic shop owner had a complete set of original unpunched/MOC Starwars figures just sitting in a box in the back room. I'm positive he would have known that they were valuable. It's not toy rocket science.
• One guy jumps up and down and squeals like a little girl when he sees a rocket firing Boba Fett.
• It's on the Travel Channel

I think this will be a fun show to keep up with and I'm glad it was picked up for a series. I am worried however that shows like this will cause collectables to sky rocket in price. The show Storage Wars apparently made bidding on storage lockers much more difficult because more people attend storage auctions now. I'm afraid that shows like this will make toy collecting more expensive/popular and sellers on eBay will boost prices. It might also increase the amount of flippers*.

*Not the dolphin.