Am I weird?...

[PanPaniscus]

I'm 17 and basically an adult, but today I went to argos and bought a toy? :-O
There was this furreal friends thing I wanted because it's cute and special interest related and it would look good on my shelf (I like to buy and collect things obsession related, I used to be into fairies and got loads of them on my shelves.) So after weeks of pondering about it, I went out today and bought it.
Is this weird? Is it weird for a young adult to go out and buy an electronic cuddly toy?

 

[Shiroi Tora]

Actually there is a man at work who has been collecting toys for decades. He has amassed over $100,000.00 in toys...collector quality. He has a room dedicated to them...he likes to just go in there and look at them....he especially likes anything Star Wars. He also collects soft cuddlies.

Another man at work collects trains. He has over $50,000.00 in trains.

I, however, am not a collector of anything other than good memories.

 

[Kempy]

I am an 18 year old boy, and if I saw a soft snoopy toy at a boot market then I would definitely get it. Whether its trains, stamps or soft toys, the point of a collection is the fact that you have so many unique items. It has much less to do with what the object is.

Your other option would have been to say to yourself "I'm too old for this game". Quite sadly, once you have said this to yourself you can be pretty sure your childhood is over. I would much rather continue to do the things I love than give it all up for the sake of 'being normal'!

 

[PanPaniscus]

Your other option would have been to say to yourself "I'm too old for this game". Quite sadly, once you have said this to yourself you can be pretty sure your childhood is over. I would much rather continue to do the things I love than give it all up for the sake of 'being normal'!

Yes, this is true. I do want to continue the things I like doing. I'm kind of embarrassed, I'm at my nana's right now so no one at home has seen this big toy chimp that I have bought, I am sure my mum would role her eyes at me or something similar, causing me shaaaame.
Oh well.

 

[Droopy]

I thought all people on the spectrum were weird in one way or another. From some people's point-of-view that would be seen as weird, but from others it would be seen as normal behaviour (going back to the collector example).

I used to be mega-obsessed with construction vehicles and had a bedroom full of them. From matchbox cars to proper die-cast collectors models and everything in between. This obsession was my first and lasted all through my childhood and into my early teenage years. While others in my peer group were interested in trying alcohol, causing fights and chasing girls, I was happy with just my construction vehicles. It was much simpler. :lol2:

In fact, if I'm honest, I was nearly tempted to start that obsession up again earlier this year but have now moved on to something else.

 

[PanPaniscus]

Apparently my mum was already looking at them on ebay because she thought I'd want one. :wtf:
She thought it looked kind of creepy at first because it's realistic but has just been carrying it round the living room like a baby and talking to it. :lol:

 

[superboyian]

I wouldn't say your weird, you'd find alot of people tend to collect alot of things.
After all we all got our weird sides, even myself.

I still have toys and still kinda of occasionally play for the fun of it really. :lol2: (That's probably even worse).

 

[142857]

Isn't asking "am I weird" on an aspies forum a rhetorical question?

At one stage I had about 200 cuddly toys (won them on the "claw machines"). I was in my 30s at the time. When I was living in England I used to go to Southend on the weekends and win bags full of stuffed toys. It was an obsession, one I was very good at, and it did used to freak people out to see me pulling toys out of those machines so regularly.

I have an excuse for buying toys now, since I can pretend to be buying them for my kids.

 

[Kempy]

Hey, I live a couple of miles away from Southend! Most of those toys come from a company called PMS in Basildon. Their factory burned down a few years ago. It's quite worrying the short length of time it took for a few thousand cuddly toys to turn into a huge fireball!
I still have my snoopy toys. I'll post a picture at some point.

 

[Droopy]

Isn't asking "am I weird" on an aspies forum a rhetorical question?

I suppose it would be.

At one stage I had about 200 cuddly toys (won them on the "claw machines"). I was in my 30s at the time. When I was living in England I used to go to Southend on the weekends and win bags full of stuffed toys. It was an obsession, one I was very good at, and it did used to freak people out to see me pulling toys out of those machines so regularly.

I never won anything on those machines. In fact I'm almost certain that they are "fixed". So how did you manage to win so much?

 

[whale_bone]

Apparently my mum was already looking at them on ebay because she thought I'd want one. :wtf:
She thought it looked kind of creepy at first because it's realistic but has just been carrying it round the living room like a baby and talking to it. :lol:

Ahaha so awesome!

 

[CJinherPJs]

I don't think it's weird. Heck, I'm coming up 17 and I collect rubber ducks.

She thought it looked kind of creepy at first because it's realistic but has just been carrying it round the living room like a baby and talking to it. :lol:

My mum was the same with Furbies. She had loads. She would go to boot sales to look for Furbies and she would also get them from eBay. It was like an obsession for her. Now, when she says,
"You and your bloody ducks!", I respond with,
"You and your bloody Furbies!", and all she can do is roll her eyes. :lol2:

 

[PanPaniscus]

I don't think it's weird. Heck, I'm coming up 17 and I collect rubber ducks.



My mum was the same with Furbies. She had loads. She would go to boot sales to look for Furbies and she would also get them from eBay. It was like an obsession for her. Now, when she says,
"You and your bloody ducks!", I respond with,
"You and your bloody Furbies!", and all she can do is roll her eyes. :lol2:

I love furbies! I used to have 2 when I was a kid, a green one and a red and blue spotty furby baby. But unlike you my mum didn't like them and the furbies got taken away some years ago without me knowing.

 

[142857]

I never won anything on those machines. In fact I'm almost certain that they are "fixed". So how did you manage to win so much?

They are fixed, but some machines are a lot more fixed than others.

The important thing is not to focus on winning a particular toy. This is the mistake that most people make. If you want to win toys the idea is to have a couple of goes on a machine, work out if you are likely to win anything, and move on if you think the machine is so fixed that you won't win anything.

Even if the claw is extremely weak you can win toys that are stacked level with or higher than the exit chute - you can use the claw to drag or roll them to the exit chute.

If you look at the machines you can often see that some machines have big "vacant" patches where toys have been won. These are often good machines to try. You should also try to look for toys that are not pinned down by other toys, toys that are sitting on their own a little or on top of other toys., You should also look at the size and shape of the toys in relation to the claw. Lining up the claw and getting it to come down at the right spot - you want to have something for the claw to grab onto and you also want the centre of gravity to be positioned about right so that the toy doesn't simply slide right out.

What you find in a place like Southend is that they fix the machines, but not too much. They know that if everybody knows they have no chance of winning then nobody will spend much money, so they make it so that with a bit of luck or a bit if skill you can win a toy or two. If you go to Southend you will usually see a few people walking around with stuffed toys. I was the guy walking around with my arms full.

If you go to a fun park and there are numerous people walking around with oversized cuddly toys that they have won then you are far more likely to spend a heap of money trying to win one yourself. I used to win a toy on the hammer/strength game every time I went to Dreamworld in Bangkok. This is on account of being approximately twice as big as the people that the machine is designed for. I used to also win a very big toy on the basketball game every time - the one where you need to shoot a certain number of baskets within the time limit to win. The trick there is not to "shoot" the ball - the fix is that they put the roof of the machine so low that if you shoot the ball it ricochets off the roof. I developed a technique years ago in the arcades in Sydney where I straighten my arm and roll the ball off my fingers into the hoop (it helps being 6'6" tall).

 

[142857]

Forgot to mention - the machines are on a "cycle" where the claw strength varies. This makes it a bit trickier.

I never realized how obsessive I was about this stuff...

 

[Pinky]

there is nothing wrong with you, even some NTs collect cuddly toys so i wouldnt worry

mind you, i am a bit of a hypocrite because i worry that some of my obsessions are a bit childish sometimes :L

 

[Droopy]

Forgot to mention - the machines are on a "cycle" where the claw strength varies. This makes it a bit trickier.

I never realized how obsessive I was about this stuff...

You sure know your stuff! I'm sure whoever owns the machines has a look of disappointment when they see you coming along.

 

[LittleTigger]

I love my toys, I got alot of toy kittypusses
on my bed and I sleep next to them and
my real kittypuss just came in to muff me,
so I have to kiss his little kittinose.

 

[PanPaniscus]

I love my toys, I got alot of toy kittypusses
on my bed and I sleep next to them and
my real kittypuss just came in to muff me,
so I have to kiss his little kittinose.

Kittypusses, kitty pusses *lols at how rude that sounds*

 

[Nolan1971]

I still had Gizmo & Spike from Gremlins at 17 so I say quite normal.layfull: