So I had a semi-famous YouTube group show up at my work, the Attic Invaders, and they did a video that they posted the next week, and as of now it has 6.5K views. I never thought it would explode in views like that,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET9Y0L0IbI0&t=410s

Then the next week another even more famous YouTuber PixelDan visited in secret and made a video too, and people are watching the heck out of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhawD3RkBQ

(I was there for the first one but not the second one, and haven't watched all of the second video yet)

I just wanted to ask when toy hunting like this had gone from a niche to such a massive entertainment? That second video has 11k views in 2 days.

These guys come in, ignore the big full displays, and zero in straight to the stuff we don't have a lot of, or some obscure figures. It's really strange how these guys choose such odd things and it's also pretty funny what they end up choosing.

I don't know when this became a hobby that wasn't just for nerds and losers but I'm glad people find such enjoyment. I used to have days off where I'd drive around to 20+ stores looking through stuff but that was mostly big-box stores like TRU or V-Stock or Walmart or Target, and now there are 10+ small toy shops in the area that I could spend my time hunting at if I had days off anymore.

In my own toy hunting I finally found the Dicelings Displacer Beast, and he doesn't have a jaw, making the 3rd Hasbro product of 2023 that was broken or incomplete before even opening the packaging.

On Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 7:33:07 AM UTC-7, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET9Y0L0IbI0&t=410s

Man, this show is really awful and terribly long. That shaky cam is killing me. Between this and Pixel Dan these guys did the worse job of giving the viewer a feel for what it's like to actually be in the store. I wish they would have slowed down. And I wonder why so many shots are of the guy holding the fuzzy microphone. It was like watching a behind the scenes making of documentary except they weren't making anything or documenting anything. I almost learned something about that figure of the duck riding the horse except even the guy enthralled by it didn't know what it was. Just a bunch of guys saying the same thing they would have said if it was the toy aisle at K-Mart. The interview with the owner was good. They should have just run footage of the store while he was talking.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhawD3RkBQ

Is it just me or do both videos pretty much gloss over the Transformers display. The attic Dwellers kind of speed ran through it and moved on. Pixel Dan does a slow pan but cuts off before you can really see the G1 shelf. But everyone dedicates a chunk of time to Gumby?

> I just wanted to ask when toy hunting like this had gone from a niche to such a massive entertainment? That second video has 11k views in 2 days.

I think Toy Hunter on Discovery Channel back in the day opened the floodgates for exactly this kind of content. Ever since then toy run and convention dealer room videos have become more and more common on YouTube.

> These guys come in, ignore the big full displays, and zero in straight to the stuff we don't have a lot of, or some obscure figures. It's really strange how these guys choose such odd things and it's also pretty funny what they end up choosing.

It is interesting how mesmerized they were by Gumby and Dino Riders. Pixel Dan at least had a good story about the He-Man in the display by the door. Did that one sell soon afterwards? Did you notice any sort of bump in sales from people who saw the videos?

> I don't know when this became a hobby that wasn't just for nerds and losers but I'm glad people find such enjoyment.

It's still for nerds and losers but it turns out there's only about 11,000 of us. The popularity of YouTube toy run videos hasn't got me convinced that toy nerds are anything more than a niche audience. If your store did weekly videos you could leverage some of this new found YouTube fame and attention you are getting.