The Toy Shack

The Transformers, all that's in the sky. Scotchula here with Philadelphia's own foremost Star Trek wedding band, The Roddenberry. Today we are in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. And we are going to the world's coolest toy store. You're watching Nerd News. MUSIC We are in sunny Las Vegas in the toy shack, made famous by the Pawn Stars. My boss, the owner of this place, Johnny Jimenez, is considered the toy expert. Whenever they need toys, they call him down there and he goes down into praises. This place right here, we've been here for about three years, but he has been a face in the community for about the last 10 years. What is the most valued item in the store? The most valued item in the store, besides myself, would possibly be maybe my atomic energy lab. The camera, I'm sure, will go back and see it instead. I haven't seen footage of it already. I got the footage. It's a toy that was made by Gilbert back in 1950. And it's considered one of the world's most dangerous toys. And there's very few of them out there. And the reason it's considered one of the world's most dangerous toys is it actually contains samples of urani I know. They made toys dangerous back then. So dangerous, in fact, they even came with a working geiger counter so you could hide the samples around and find them again later. Yeah, there's only a couple of them. I hear in the state. The other one is in the Atomic Energy Muse Now, it took us several years, I guess, Johnny, was looking for one before I walked into our store. And we've had it up there ever since. And I hear an auction. It can go upwards of $10,000 or more. My aperture. It must have been my dad. My father was a collector of stuff. He built models and stuff. He'd always built models. He built models of What was the other one that he would do Remember the Black Hole movie? The whole Disney movie? Yes, and I remember the Maximilian model and Vincent and all those. And I remember because Maximilian, his arms would turn and different arms would come up and he'd have a blade. It's just all kinds of different stuff. And my dad was always, well, you can't play with that. So it was always nice when he bought something for him, he'd usually buy something for me as well. And that's basically how I got into toys. One of my favorite toys from growing up have been the Transformers. I loved them since they came out. Gen 1, the old stuff I read the comic book as well. I just loved everything about the Transformers. I mean, it was a toy that did everything. It could be a car and the next minute a robot. It was that struggle that everybody always knows, the good and the evil. And it fit in. I don't know. It was great. I loved it. The Transformers. The reason people still love toys so much is because it takes you back to a simpler time. Everybody remembers their childhood as being a simpler and happier, carefree time of their life. So when you see a toy that you used to have when you were a child, it takes you back. And that nostalgia feeling is strong. And that's why toys do so well. Whether they're new toys, because people still like, And Yeah. And stuff And people love that stuff because they want to be connected and have that memory. I seen that movie. No, they actually want to hold a piece of it. It feels And I think that's why I think toys are still doing very well. And I don'think they're ever going to go out of style. What's the future for the toy shack? The future for the toy shack. We're hoping great things. We're hoping, I mean, we're doing really great here. But we're hoping one day to expand as well. We're kind of looking into that. But you never know. We're just hoping to spread good times. And What do you see? You people gazing at me. You see a doll on a music box. That's why I am here.