Studio Note #35: The Product is New. The Feeling isn’t.

The nostalgia is real with these little guys.

---

I collect toys.

Not casually.

Designer vinyl, Hot Toys, Funko and plenty of other stuff that has slowly consumed more space in my house than I'm willing to admit.

So naturally, I pay attention to the collector spot at Target.

And lately, it's changing.

Funko and NECA, which once dominated that part of the store, are getting squeezed. In their place are more trading cards, blind boxes and vinyl toys that feel much closer to the designer toy world than what you'd traditionally expect to find at a big-box retailer.

The blind-box part is a particularly interesting inclusion.

If you’re unfamiliar, instead of walking into a store and picking the exact character you want, you buy a sealed box and find out what you got when you open it. There are usually common figures, harder-to-find ones and the occasional chase or secret. If you don't get the one you wanted, well, there's always another box.

It's collecting with a little gambling mechanic built into it, and apparently it's working because the amount of shelf space devoted to it seems to grow every time I walk into Target.

That's how I recently ended up with a few Meltz figures from CultureFly.

The idea is remarkably simple. They take a familiar character and turn it into one of those character ice cream bars you used to get from the ice cream truck.

If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

Pink Panther was peak!

They were vaguely shaped like a cartoon character, usually had gumballs for eyes and almost never looked like the picture on the wrapper. By the time you got one on a hot summer day, there was a decent chance one eye was sliding down its face.

Meltz takes that memory and turns it into a collectible.

The ones pictured above are from the Stranger Things set, which I scored the Demogorgan and Eleven from. On its own, that's already an IP with a ton of nostalgia attached to it. But making more Stranger Things figures isn't particularly interesting.

Making them look like a classic ice cream truck treat is.

Because now there are two completely different memories working at the same time.

There's the character you remember, but there's also the ice cream truck. The sound of it coming down the street. Running inside for money. Standing there trying to decide what to get before it drove away. Opening the wrapper and discovering that whatever was inside looked absolutely nothing like the character it was supposed to be.

It's nostalgia stacked on top of nostalgia.

Then put that inside a blind box and there's another layer to the experience. You don't even know which piece you're getting until you open it.

In a weird way, that uncertainty fits the source material perfectly. You didn't really know what that ice cream bar was going to look like when you tore open the wrapper either. Honestly, I wish these renditions were a little closer to the source material, but I digress.

Nostalgia gets used constantly in products and marketing because it's an easy emotional shortcut. Bring back the old logo. Reissue the old packaging. Put a character from someone's childhood on something and wait for people my age to reach for their wallets.

I'm clearly susceptible.

When they reissued this flavor in this packaging, immediate add to cart.

But Meltz does something more interesting than simply reproducing something that already existed.

It combines two things you remember, packages them inside a collecting experience that makes opening the thing part of the fun and creates something that never existed at all.

The product is new.

The feeling isn't.

And apparently that's enough to get me to bring another toy home.