I miss Toyfare magazines


To quote Egon Spengler, "Print is dead!". Ol' Egon had anticipated the demise of the print media many years ago much to the amusement of the audience at the time. Today, we're horrified by the death of so many print publications of yore, even those that we've never imagine would even go out of business (re: Playboy magazine will also soon end its print editions to favor more on its digital copies). The focus of today's argument is how one of my favorite magazine ever...Toyfare magazine ended its publications in 2011.

A little bit of backstory for those who doesn't have a clue about Toyfare.....

Toyfare magazine was the sister magazine to the Wizard magazine, the magazine that lets you know about all of the comic titles before they came out and of course the good old comic price guides at the end of the magazine. Those who collect comics in the 90s would definitely know about Wizard and must've purchased the magazine at least once or twice in its heyday. Inside Wizard magazine there were sporadic reviews on action figures and it was a matter of time till a separate full-fledged magazine broke off from Wizard magazine. It was inevitable some would say. So it did in the early 90s. That's how Toyfare magazine happened.

I used to spend endless hours reading and browsing through the pages of each Toyfare magazine that ended up in my hands. There were, of course, many comic stores at the time (now they're extinct like the Dodo bird and I've actually talked about this in one of my earlier post this year so you might wanna check that one out if you're interested) and I bought all the Toyfares I could find, both the current issue and back issues. That's how profound Toyfare magazine was to this geek.

Inside there were colorful pictures of upcoming toys and action figures as well those unproduced toy rumors. There were discussions by leading toy companies i.e. Hasbro, Mattel etc on future toy projects and many more. During the height of the Toybiz era of Marvel Legends, I often turn to Toyfare magazines to find out what Toybiz was up to and what was the latest wave was gonna consist of. And not to forget Twisted Toyfare Theatres! This was THE magazine skit that eventually gave birth to Robot Chicken fergawdssakes!

Toyfare could also be viewed as a satirical magazine, often poking fun at current political situations for its humor materials. Who could forget the endless parody aimed at other popular magazine segments like The Sun's Page 3, Seventeen's cover girls segment and other.

Even when the internet was slowly taking over the conventional print medium in the 2000s, Toyfare magazine thrived because most people then still buys physical print media more than subscribing to online digital magazines. Sadly this trend slowly reversed in the early 2010s when most collectors turn to online contents which arguably provides better timely updates on action figure news as opposed to monthly print publications that you could only get at newstands at specified intervals.

Today, I only have a handful of Toyfare magazines left with me. I seriously cannot remember what happened to the rest but I suspect the many change of hands in the 90s might've contributed to the mysterious misplacement of the ones not in my hands right now.

I seriously miss having physical magazines in my hands. I do appreciate the speedy sharing of information through the internet but the nostalgia of having an actual magazine in hand whenever you feel like to when you have that cup of Joe is my kind of thing.

Toyfare finally met its demise in 2011 together with its sister publication, Wizard magazine, with its publishing company citing the internet as their main reason for ceasing operations. It truly was an end of an era. Collectors had no magazines to turn to for their monthly toy news fix. I wish that some other publisher would pick up where Toyfare left off but that's just not gonna happen in today's conditions.

Just like the late (and great) Stan Lee once said, comics are like b**bs....they look great on a computer but I'd like to hold one in my hands. Nuff said.

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