Site Logic: How Thousands of Action Figure Accessories Are Organized For Collectors

This guide explains how thousands of action figure accessories are organized into a system designed for easy navigation, discovery, and long-term growth.

How does one organize 1,000s (maybe millions!) of action figure accessories into a (relatively) easy-to-navigate interface? I don’t have a single clue, but I hope I’ve accomplished that as best as possible. This system is more organic than technical. It was built from nothing and designed to evolve.

How to Navigate This Site (Quick Guide)

• Looking for a specific brand → Search By Franchise (Vintage-Dominant)
• Looking to explore by interests → Search By Theme (Vintage-Modern)
• Looking for a specific toyline → Search By Collection (Vintage-Dominant)
• Looking for an item type (guns, armor) → Search By Gear (Modern-Dominant)
• Looking for parts by figure size → Search By Scale (Modern-Dominant)
• Looking to browse everything → Search All Products (Vintage-Modern)

Several factors determine which action figure lines create the skeleton of the system, a collection within a collection framework:

• Popularity - Longstanding franchises like GI Joe, Star Wars and Marvel Legends deserve their spotlight as the foundation. This was a non-negotiable starting point.
• Inventory On Hand - Enough inventory of a specific toyline can justify its own collection, depending on its popularity.
• Future-Proofing - You’ll encounter redundancies and empty collections. These are purposefully built with the intent of supporting future growth. As this site evolves, collections will be created or phased out.
• Casting A Wide Net - Closely tied to future-proofing, miscellaneous generic and franchise-specific collections are created to capture everything on the edges. This is to prevent too much clutter, reducing a potential 20+ collection of various Star Wars toylines into 5 of the most important.

Ok, some personal bias here. Knockoffs, Darkwing Duck and Earthworm Jim are collections I created out of self-indulgence. But, hey, I serve the people. And I am one of the people.

Serving Two Audiences

This site is built for two types of collectors. While we specialize in vintage accessories, the love for collecting extends to all toylines and eras. This passion was built on toylines from most of our childhoods - the 80s and 90s. While those decades will receive the majority of the spotlight, modern collectors are not an afterthought.

Since modern and vintage collectors don’t always overlap, we have created different paths to search this library.

• Search By Franchise - This is the top search criteria and is vintage dominant. All the franchises listed are rooted in the pre-2000s era. Original toylines within a Franchise collection take priority, everything else is ranked by popularity.
  
  
• Search By Theme - This was a fun and experimental way to give a secondary option to search. It eliminates the heaviness of collections being dominated by the most popular franchises and allows the more obscure toylines to breathe. This does away with the barriers of separating vintage from modern and becomes all encompassing for second tier franchises.
  
  It also allows the edges of collecting to have residence. Collections that aren’t necessarily action figures: LEGO, Mega Bloks, game board parts, toy parts, dolls, etc. Themes is a great place to go off the beaten path and find oddities.
  
  
• Search By Collection - Now we’re allowing individual toylines to shine, with over 110 collections to search through. A popular toyline like Beast Wars is no longer hidden in the Transformers franchise behind the G1/G2 collection.
  
  Search by Collection ranks the top 54 individual toylines, themes and misc categories. Collections will rise and fall out of rankings over time based on visitor behavior, popularity and inventory.
  
  
• Search By Gear - This focuses on modern collectors with search categories geared towards finding specific items for action figures, whether by scale or franchise. These accessories are selected for their detail and complexity and don't necessarily overlap with other eras. This eliminates a vintage TMNT Leonardo sword showing up next to a GI Joe Classified Series Snake Eyes sword, allowing modern collectors to discover similar items during their search.
  
  To prevent Gear from being overtaken by collections like Marvel Legends or GI Joe Classified, only select accessories from these collections are included in Gear. Top recommendations for modern toyline collections are included below Gear collections to explore further.
  
  
• Search By Scale - This search criteria is basically a reorganizing of the Gear collections. It allows Guns, Bladed Weapons, Effects, etc. to be discoverable by the most common scales; 1/6, 1/12 and 3.75 inch.
  
  
• Search All Products - For the daredevils who want to dive bomb into everything.

Media Weight Vs Action Figure Line

Media weight balances a franchise’s popularity as a TV show, video game, comic book or movie against the popularity of its toyline. As an example, TMNT is as popular a cartoon as a toyline, but because it already has a dominant status on this site, is excluded from any collection but its own to prevent clutter. Less dominant toylines exist in multiple collections for better discoverability; i.e., Robocop by Kenner appearing in both the Misc 80s & 90s and TV & Movie collections.

Discovery Through Multiple Paths

This is where the Themes and Collections sections work as one. Obscure action figure accessories without their own dedicated collections are discoverable through multiple ways. This is usually as a Misc collection supporting a Theme collection, i.e., a McFarlane Metal Gear Solid Snake rifle is discoverable in both the Misc McFarlane and Video Game collections.

To further thwart chaos, very few parts are allowed more than two collections and none are allowed more than three.

A Few Edge Cases Of Note

Spawn Universe - While it doesn't seem to be widely used across the internet (even on the McFarlane website), it's been adopted here to differentiate vintage from modern Spawn (2020s).

TV & Movie - While Anime, Cartoons, Sci Fi and Horror "spiritually exist" under TV & Movie, this is a miscellaneous collection capturing everything beyond those four said collections, while occasionally overlapping.

Card & Table Top Games - This collection is for action figure accessories related to card and table top games. Actual card and table top game pieces can be found in the Board Games collection.

Imaginext & Toys - Because they're not true action figures, toy-related accessories and parts are not listed under their franchise, i.e., Imaginext DC Super Heroes and Marvel Super Hero Squad are not discoverable in the DC Comics and Marvel Comics collections.

This site is created as an archive for collectors as much as a store, so I hope you find some joy in searching through this museum of sorts. It’s an all-encompassing system designed for maximum discoverability and navigation.

No matter how you think, you’ll find it.

Check back for updates as the system continues to evolve.