They don’t make toys like they used to. Maybe it’s because toys these days are aimed at children and I’m a grown man, but I feel like the toys that were beamed into my eyeballs via TV advertising back in the day were simply better. Maybe it was plain old nostalgia, but toys just seemed to be more exciting, more robust, and morefunwhen I was a kid. Funny that.
Despite my allergic reaction to modern merchandise – I went to thePokemonCentre in Tokyo a few years ago and didn’t buyanything!– I still like to collect things that I love. Whether that’s getting a tattoo of a chubby Pikachu (so much more adorable than the lithe modern mascot) or digging around in the attic for a toy, there are clever ways to get your fix without paying premium prices for subpar standards. And yes, I’ve done both of these things.
It’s charity shopping – or, as you Americans like to call it, thrifting vomit emoji – that has got me back in the saddle. As well as grabbing aPalkia to convert into a messed-up mech for PokeMek28, I found an old school Pikachu money box that’s been sitting on my daughter’s shelf for about a year at this point. She’s too young to carry cash and was given a fancier money box by an auntie when she was born anyway, so I decided to take a knife to the Pokemon mascot and turn it into something cool.
Hobby knife in hand and hot glue gun holstered, I took to Pikachu’s base and carved a rough, rectangular butthole. There is a point to this, I promise. Into the aforementioned hole I threaded an LED light on a USB cable. I gather you can see the point now. It turned out that I didn’t need the glue gun, as the light bulb came with a little double-sided sticky button which made more sense to use. However, the wire did need to run through Pikachu’s back in order for him to sit flush, so I grabbed my hobby saw and set to work.
With Pikachu’s second butthole (buttslice? Buttcrack? This is going too far) in place, the cable could be threaded neatly through and the Pikachu nightlight was born. And it works perfectly. Better than I ever could have imagined. The light I ordered has three tones of light: a harsh, dentist’s office white light; a softer yellowish light; and a lovely, warm orange tone. I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know it came with this feature, I just ordered it off some lightbulb website for a tenner, I just knew the bulb could be dimmed, perfect for a sleeping toddler.
Now I’ve switched it on, the white light is obviously still too clinical, despite being shone through Pikachu’s yellow plastic body. The softer yellow is lovely, exactly what I saw in my mind’s eye. But the orange light, the unexpected bonus of this randomly chosen bulb, makes this nightlight look like ashinyPikachu, which amused me greatly and meant absolutely nothing to the two year old who will display this in her room. Not yet at least…
I don’t know if there’s a point to this. I just wanted to document the fun I had chopping up an old Pokemon toy, really, and prove you can make cool things without spending too much money. This glowy fella cost me about 15 quid all in. No, he has no toes. Yes, I had to cut two buttholes for wires. But a Pikachu night light would easily cost twice as much these days, and, in my humble opinion, would look half as good. I mean, just look at this crap I found with a quick Google.
I guess my point is to try new things. Don’t be afraid to chop up an old money box because it’s old or rare. Plug a light in it to make something new and cute. Dig through your local thrift store for cool stuff. Don’t degrade yourself by buying subpar merch that you know is crap. Make something cool. Do it yourself. It’s the only way I’ve found to recapture that nostalgia of my childhood toys, and you get the added satisfaction of having created it yourself. You (hopefully) enjoyed the process of making it, and you have something unique to keep forever, or at least until you get bored and make it into something else again. That’s my usual creative process anyway.
