The Friday Five

Andrew Farago has the enviable job of head curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California. He shares with us the mission of the Museum and what he hopes people take away from a Museum visit.

The Toy Association supports businesses that design, manufacture, and deliver entertainment products and advocates for the rights of factory workers and the health of children. Steve Pasierb explains the role of the Association in the $26 billion toy industry.

Have you always wanted your very own set of Spider-Man web shooters? Odin Abbott to the rescue! Odin re-creates some of pop culture’s most beloved fantasy props on his YouTube channel. Read Odin’s secrets to prop-master success.

Zac Womack takes battered Hot Wheels and makes them sing again. His love for restoring turned into a successful YouTube channel, baremetalHW, where he shows other collectors how to reinvigorate their die-cast toy cars. Zac talks with us about his collection and how he got started on YouTube.

Like many teens in the 1980s, Tony Temple spent his free time and allowance in video arcades. Today, Tony is an arcade video game restorer, collector, and writer at The Arcade Blogger. Tony explains his history with arcade games and why they continue to fascinate.

Chris Weston loves visiting toy museums so much that he decided to open one of his own. The Hamilton Toy Museum is a gathering place for the community he grew up in. Adults can step back in time to remember the toys they played with as children, while today’s children can learn, play, and build. Chris shares what it’s like to open a museum.

As one of only about 17 LEGO Certified Professionals in the world, Duncan Titmarsch is the envy of many LEGO aficionados. Duncan tells us about his journey from hobbyist to professional and about some of his favourite builds.

Video games are easy to take for granted. As new technology reaches the market, people often abandon a long-time favourite for the new and shiny game that holds untold promise. Frank Cifaldi and the team at The Video Game History Foundation are working to ensure those beloved video games of yesterday don’t get permanently lost and forgotten.

As editor-in-chief of Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston has a comic fan’s dream career. His day job is to sift through the myriad of comics and graphic novels being published and identify the stand-outs to review for bleedingcool.com, a top internet news source focused on comics, television, film, cosplay, and games.

CompleteSet is the brainchild of Gary Darna. A collector himself, Gary seized the opportunity to turn his hobby into a career by filling a gap he saw in the marketplace. In doing so, he created a must-have resource for collectors.

As the go-to guy for late-night luminaries such as David Letterman and Jay Leno, Ira Gallen created a name for himself by preserving the classic television shows and commercials. In this edition of The Friday Five, Ira talks about his collection, television history, and the one piece of film that continues to elude him.

The bumpy road of toy development is littered with toys that consumers never had a chance to see. Journalist Blake Wright is changing that. Blake is producing Toys That Time Forgot, an art book showcasing toys that never were.

Super Sugar Crisps in Mad Men. Eggos in Stranger Things. Big League Chew in The Goldbergs. Jason Liebig’s collection of packaging through the decades has Hollywood art directors looking to him for essential props.

Scott Barber and Adam Sweeney spent many of their childhood days watching Nickelodeon. Their love of the network never faded and they’ve set out to produce The Orange Years, a documentary celebrating the groundbreaking kid-oriented network.

Biomedical engineering and art make an interesting business union for partners Adrian and Britta, co-founders of Low Poly Crafts in Ottawa, Canada. Their low-poly paper sculptures fall somewhere between art and science – stunning objects that add a bit of the unexpected to any space.

Discoloured Stormtroopers getting you down? Toy-restoration enthusiast Dave, founder of Toy Polloi, shares his experience and has wise advice for toy-restoration newbies.

Dane Christianson’s X-Cube is a twistable 3D puzzle that adds 32 additional pieces and four extra layers to the original Rubik’s Cube. Here, Dane talks with us about crowdfunding, preconceptions about ability, and why 3D puzzles continue to capture our interests.

For many students, thesis projects are happily left behind after the dissertation. Not so for Toby Whelan. Toby is turning his thesis project into a bonafide success story that has a positive impact on the people’s lives. We talk with Toby about the role MAKA plays in bettering the lives of people living with autism.