Toy Room Display and Organization Ideas

akajomiha said:
Yep, I remember Bah as well. We could do a whole thread on old "where are they now" Fwooshers. Waiting, ActorJez, Long Road (?), ChurchofZod, 33%b-boy, Chupacabras, Left Field, Jin Saotome (just kidding about that one).
Click to expand...
Waiting was the one that had the Legends website with the really nice group pictures of each wave wasn't he?

Jin would have a blast in our politics and tariffs thread I'm sure.
 
Justice said:
Waiting was the one that had the Legends website with the really nice group pictures of each wave wasn't he?

Jin would have a blast in our politics and tariffs thread I'm sure.
Click to expand...
That was Waiting! He owned the domain marvellegends.net where he posted all his pics. He had the big mansion diorama with all the Toy Biz (and eventually some Hasbro) figures on display.
 
hmmberto said:
That was Waiting! He owned the domain marvellegends.net where he posted all his pics. He had the big mansion diorama with all the Toy Biz (and eventually some Hasbro) figures on display.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah I forgot about the big mansion. I wonder if he still collects and is still adding to it.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
A thread for all ideas for optimizing the display and organization of toys in our houses. My man cave is a mess so I won't share ideas for optimizing display yet, but I will share the way I organize my figures. It's better than most, but I'm not satisfied with it and want to improve that too.

I keep each 1:12 or smaller scale figure along with its accessories in polypropylene bags bought from clearbags.com, and I store those in stackable plastic containers made by Sterilite. I use several different bag sizes:
  • 3" x 6" bags for accessories that go into larger bags with their associated figure. I only use those for fragile and painted accessories; if they're durable and unpainted I just leave them loose in the bag with the figure.
  • 4" x 8" bags for small figures. That mostly means female figures and males that are around the average size for a human. I would prefer 3" wide bags, but ClearBags doesn't make 3" x 8" polypropylene bags. I requested that from them a few years ago, but they responded that there isn't enough demand for them to carry that size. Over half of the figures I have are in this size bag.
  • 5" x 8" bags for slightly larger figures or figures with stiff, wide capes.
  • 6" x 9" bags for even larger figures.
  • 8" x 10" bags for very large figures. Every Marvel Legends BAF fits in this size up to and including the MCU Hulkbuster. Much larger BAFs like the Toy Biz Sentinel or Apocalypse don't fit in this size.
  • 12" x 16" bags for even larger figures. The BAF Sentinel and Apocalypse do fit in this size, as do most of the larger Jurassic World Hammond Collection 1:18 scale dinosaurs.
Below is a pic of all of my current boxes. I plan to buy a ULine metal rack shelf to put the Sterilite containers on, but I haven't done it yet. Having this arrangement without a rack kinda sucks because you shouldn't stack the boxes more than 4 high, and getting to the boxes that aren't on top of the stack is a pain. A rack shelf solves both of those problems, and a single rack should allow me to store all of the boxes shown below easily with room to double this collection size on that same rack.

When I take figures out to display or my kids take them out to play with the figure's bag goes into the box in the lower-left shown in the pic below. It can be tough to match the bags with its figure when the accessories are similar, so I wish I had been clipping the name of the figure off of its box and putting it into the bags. I may print something out and insert it into bags to solve that issue, but I haven't done it yet. This is particularly problematic for figures that only come with two hands, or for Star Wars Jedi and Sith figures with lightsabers. Matching two hands or a saber to the right figure is a GIANT pain.


AP1GczPZwxz9y2oQzn8T3S3guFdvuCfhV751PL-2PmxM2PROduEI9pOgk-VQGj6H879_u1ixsOVb70zkv3_IRXfWrHBFe24nCpQ7616lz60n9jVEbIgh_BoHU5VMLrmYVg97q8CrqPEkTy-60MY_BdsKIv0LBw=w5000
Click to expand...
I've really come to like those clear bins with the blue clasps to close them. They stack much better than some of the other, more rounded corner bins I've been using for years.
Sadly, most of my collection is contained in 2 storage units, along with household items we can't fit in our current small apartment.

I try to keep most figures and accessories bagged together, labeled, and contained with the same license's figures among my collection, unless they are import figures, in which cases, I generally keep the boxes (normal retail figures get opened and packaging gets recycled).

I have 6-7 of those foot lockers pictured earlier in the thread, filled with the majority of my Mezco One:12 Collective figures, save for ones I've gotten in the last 2 years or so (quite a few since December, after almost nothing for over a year).

I've been bookmarking different cabinets in the almost certainly (right now anyway) fevered dream of someday owning a house that can contain my dream collection/craft/photo studio room.
 
akajomiha said:
Yep, I remember Bah as well. We could do a whole thread on old "where are they now" Fwooshers. Waiting, ActorJez, Long Road (?), ChurchofZod, 33%b-boy, Chupacabras, Left Field, Jin Saotome (just kidding about that one).
Click to expand...
I couldn't believe all the names I'd forgotten from the thread you posted and deleted (we mods see all). I wish there were a way to bring those folks over here.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
One way I have seen that seems like an improvement over my own storage is to have bins with dividers. Finding any given figure in my 37 quart containers can be challenging, and the advantage of using the dividers is that you can far more quickly locate figures by scanning them all visually without having to move any around. Below is a video example of this, but I never could work the issues out with this. I don't even remember why I didn't go down this route, but I heavily considered it about 4-5 years ago and had one container organized like this for a few weeks.

Click to expand...
I've been contemplating this method for a while, and it seems like an alternate storage solution I may indeed take up at some point.
 
JakeEkiss said:
I've been contemplating this method for a while, and it seems like an alternate storage solution I may indeed take up at some point.
Click to expand...

I want to try it again even though I abandoned it once before simply because I can't remember what the cons were. If I recall them I'll post.

The main reason I haven't overhauled my toy room despite having plans to do so for 4+ years is that I'm never fully satisfied with any solution I come up with. I want everything to fit perfectly and look amazing, and I always fall short of that goal so I delay delay delay. If I keep doing that my kids will probably be in college by the time I achieve my perfect man cave design and I'll have spent two decades with a messy room with dreams of a showcase room that I never could get quite right. :oops:
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
I want to try it again even though I abandoned it once before simply because I can't remember what the cons were. If I recall them I'll post.

The main reason I haven't overhauled my toy room despite having plans to do so for 4+ years is that I'm never fully satisfied with any solution I come up with. I want everything to fit perfectly and look amazing, and I always fall short of that goal so I delay delay delay. If I keep doing that my kids will probably be in college by the time I achieve my perfect man cave design and I'll have spent two decades with a messy room with dreams of a showcase room that I never could get quite right. :oops:
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is why I'm trying to pivot away from regular figure purchases and into dioramas and display setups. The collection needs to stop growing so I can finalize how I want it all displayed. Especially now that I have a makerspace job, I can do some cool totally bespoke stuff, I just need to commit to some designs and get to work building. I'll definitely post some of it here as I complete my setups.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
You guys really haven't sold me on keeping the accessories separate from the figures. So much easier to have them in the bag with the figure. My kids use accessories more than I do, and they'd be bugging the hell out of me to find accessories constantly if I kept them separate. Even when my kids grow out of figures it seems far more efficient to keep them together.

The missing part of the conversation is that you all who keep them separate probably don't store your figures, do you? I know a lot of people are opposed to that entirely, but we haven't brought that point up yet. If you're going to own it why wouldn't you display it is the idea, and I totally get that. I know TSI has said he curates his collection to always be small enough to display for example. My own answer to that is I store them because I don't have enough shelf space to display more than about 5% of what I own, and I enjoy swapping figures in and out of displays every few days, weeks, months, or whatever I have time for.
Click to expand...

For me, and I'm not trying to sell anyone on anything, but these days for me I get a ziplock bag (I just buy the cheap boxes of the freezer bags from Walmart, you get like 200 of them or something) and I put the figure and its accessories into it. Done. If it's a "set", like - Rocksteady and Bebop - both figures will often fit in the bag with all of their accessories, so I keep them together. When it comes time to display them, I take the figures out, grab the hands/accessories I want, and the rest stay in the bag and the bag is put into a tote. Eventually, the figures and the accessories go back in the bag for storage if they get swapped out. I don't separate accessories by size, or by worrying about paint chipping or anything like that. For me, nearly 100% of the time, the figure will only ever be displayed with their "iconic" accessory and nothing else. TMNT get their traditional weapons, I never use the shurikens or the other blades they come with. My Shredders don't use weapons (he is the weapon), my Ghostface carries his knife but leaves the flamethrower & scythe at home (I actually recycle most of these accessories for other figures where they make more sense).

I don't label the bags unless it's a character I'm completely unfamiliar with, but that doesn't happen often because I'm not usually buying properties that don't mean anything to me. When it comes time to find the bag without figures in it, I can usually spot what I need right away because "there's Bebop's hand."

The exception is for things like McFarlane display stands, or flight stands. Those just get tossed into a tote because they are all completely interchangeable, except for like the "digital" ones. I have a huge bag full of guns and muzzle effects that I can use with whatever character needs them. I have been guilty in the past of being lazy, and instead of opening the tote to find a specific bag I'll just grab a fresh bag, toss the figure in, and put the bag into the tote. Later, when I need to combine them, it's not particularly painful to do - just takes a few minutes. I feel like most collectors overthink this stuff - not speaking about this thread, I just mean in general. It's just storage, you find something that works for you and you do it. We all have brains that prefer to sort things differently, some thrive on chaos and others on neatly and finely defined rules.
 
I guess I should mention the current setup I have, since that was part of the thread lol Our living room is very long...you walk through the front door, and to the left you have the regular living room setup - tv, couch, chair, tables, all of that - and to the right you have the other half of the living room that is equally as large as the part on the left. The right side (behind the door, my kids call it) is where we keep our collections right now. We have a 3 bedroom house made in 1912, no office space or anything, so the missus and I display "behind the door." I have a double-wide curio cabinet that is basically 2 detolfs wide and that's where I keep Hot Toys & 3rd party 1/6 scale figures so they don't get dust on them. Above that, I bought 2 6' boards at Lowes and hung them on the wall spaced out to accommodate some taller things like Transformers or playsets. These boards run along a good section of wall, where I normally would have to only put pictures or something because of the cabinets below them.

Along one of the walls are a couple utility shelves, the metal ones from Lowes, and they do give off that garage/shop-y feel but they are incredibly versatile. Since the shelving is adjustable, and there are many holes in the metal to do so, it gives you tons of options for running wires for lighting and the metal is shaped in such a way that 99% of the wiring is hidden. It's given me more freedom for running lighting than traditional shelving has, although mileages will vary I suppose.

Additionally, since the shelves are adjustable, I purchased mirrors that fit along the back of each shelf so that the shelves look deeper than they actually are (they are already 2' deep) and you are able to see the backs of the figures that way.

At first glance, they absolutely do NOT look as nice as Billy's do, but they offer (me) more versatility than Ikea shelving does. Especially since I mix figures on my shelves, one of them is my "Batman movie shelf" so along the back you'll find the 1/4 NECA Batman along with Catwoman & Penguin, and below them are a couple Batmobiles, various versions of the movie costumes, etc. My collection spaces tend to look like movie posters, as in you'll have large things that grab your eye and smaller things that accentuate. I don't separate scales on purpose, and every single figure is set up in a pose (except for Hot Toys, which don't pose worth a shit). No class picture day or museum poses in my collection, so the shelves need to be completely adjustable and the lighting needs to be variable as well.
 
scottg10 said:
Looks like he is on Facebook now: https://www.facebook.com/p/MarvelLegendsNet-100064697076605/
Click to expand...
Oh wow, good catch! I thought I remember him selling the marvellegends.net domain name many, many years ago. For a minute it seemed like the new owners were trying to run it as a news source for all things Legends, but that didn't seem to last. This definitely seems to be the OG Waiting, though - that's the mansion! At first glance I thought they were old pics since he has so many of the old Toy Biz/early Hasbro figures on display, but he's got a bunch of recent figures in the mix. What a blast from the past, thanks for sharing!
 
TheRealSmallville said:
I don't label the bags unless it's a character I'm completely unfamiliar with, but that doesn't happen often because I'm not usually buying properties that don't mean anything to me. When it comes time to find the bag without figures in it, I can usually spot what I need right away because "there's Bebop's hand."
Click to expand...

I started labeling the bag when the accessories didn't include an alt head or Mjolnir or something obvious. One smoke plume and one gun burst is the same as any of the rest to me after these things start to pile up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top