By Lisa Hix — When Metallica lead guitarist Kirk “The Ripper” Hammett was 5 years old, he sprained his arm, and to calm him down, his parents plopped him down in front of the TV. You'd think something like a marathon of Bugs Bunny cartoons would have been the perfect distraction. But young Hammett only forgot about his aching arm when the movie “The Day of the Triffids” came on the screen—with its oversize carnivorous space plants terrorizing humans—and he discovered the thrill of being scared. “My...

Toys That Were Made to Be Broken

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — Remember the shoddy toys you begged your parents to buy while waiting in the supermarket checkout line, then promptly lost interest in before the day's end? Those cheap plastic knock-offs have mostly been ignored by collectors, too, consigned to the dustbins of history almost immediately after purchase. "I had things like 'Annie' curlers hanging on the wall—just crazy, weird toys all over the place." But Brian Heiler represents the exception to this rule: For Heiler, this childhood fun...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...