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Yes, I'm Michael Crawford.  No, I can't sing, and I have never had anything to do with the Phantom of the Opera.  I've never even seen the Broadway show.

I am a toy collector.  I have been for about 15 years now, starting in the mid-80's with kid's meal toys.  I still have tons of them, and break down once in awhile and end up buying a bunch more.

In the late 80's and early 90's, I was also reading comics again, and started buying action figures as an addition to this hobby.  At some point, I stopped having the time to read all the comics I wanted to each week, and that hobby came to an end.  But the action figure collecting really took hold, and today I have an entire room of my home devoted to displaying part of my collection.

I'm also a computer geek, and have been involved first in bulletin boards, and then the net, for many years. I was part of the early newsgroups, including rec.toys.misc, and still enjoy reading and posting to the news groups.

I also run the largest archive of western themed figures, called the Western Action Figure Archive.  There are hundreds of pictures of over 70 different lines there, and my background in western figure collecting has resulted in my involvement in a recent project.  I wrote a section of the informational encyclopedia The Mythical West.  This non-fiction book covers the relationship between the Old West and our current pop culture, and I provided information and images on various action figures.

And yes, I have a life outside toys.  I'm one of those pointy-haired boss types now, but I'm still an engineer at heart.  I'm married to a wonderfully understanding woman, and we have four great kids, a cat and a dog.

And on a side note, MROTW was mentioned on the big promotional sign at the Playmates booth at Toy Fair this year.  Click here for the photo.  They mentioned that they won the People's Choice Award for best overall line.  Cool!

Interesting Note!  My reviews are now being translated into Korean.  Yep, I'm bi-lingual!  Okay, not me, but my reviews are at least.  Check out Plastic Gothic, a Korean action figure site, and you'll see some of my more recent reviews linked on the left.  Thanks to Jay!

If you have any questions, or just want to talk toys, please drop me an email!

This page copyright 2001, Michael Crawford.  All rights reserved.