October Toys Forum Shutting Down!

In what I feel is pretty terrible news, October Toys announced on their latest episode of Toy Break last Wednesday that they will be shutting down their forum as of October 1st 2015.

Let me first specify, this closing is only happening to their forum, nothing else.  I know a lot of people will have selective hearing with this stuff and leap to many conclusions when companies and closings are mentioned in the same sentence, but let me be double, triple, mega-quadruple clear, only the forum is going away.  October Toys is still in business.  Toy Break is still in business.  Everything is still okay.  October Toys just specified that there are some behind the scenes stuff that doesn't look all that salvageable, and the only real remedy would be a completely new forum, if that possibility ever rises.  Think you got it?

This is a particular bummer to me, because I owe these guys a lot of credit for getting me back into collecting keshi minifigures, maybe eighteen months ago now.   When transitioning between moves, I spend an afternoon reminiscing about old Monster In My Pocket and MUSCLE figures.  Being twenty-plus year old toy franchises, stuff to find on them was a little hard, if you didn't know where to look, but what popped up was October Toys and OMFG.    Discovering this unknown community of collectors and this renaissance of keshi toy making, I fell back into the hobby like it was a bottomless pit and I haven't seen the light of day since.

I cut my teeth on the October Toys forum.  I started small, learning this and that, piece by piece, and soon found I could handle the everything the worldwide web could offer in keshi.  My first experiences with trading and buying keshi from other forum members was done here, even my first mule.

Overall experiences and opinions will vary from mine, but I feel regardless, it's never good to see something like this go in what is already a small niche community.  Sure, in this age of social media people are more connected and can get their information virtually instantaneously, I don't feel forums are completely obsolete.  Years and years of backlogged information, discussion, drama, and expression will eventually be lost, and that's something you can't discover through a tweet.

The OT Forum will always be remembered as that awesome launching pad for this crazy obsession, and really, without it, this blog may never have come to exist.  That's so crazy, when I think about it like that, but such is the way of things.  Here's hoping the stars align and see we see a new OT Forum very soon.