TARDIS collector’s corner

(An ongoing writing project in which I catalog and quantify my extensive TARDIS collection.) 

There’s a well-worn joke in my household concerning my TARDIS collection.

Typically, upon discovering I’ve made a new TARDIS purchase, the wife will say something like “How many TARDISes do you need?”  I reply, “All of them.  And she groans and adds another tick to the column of “reasons I was correct to suspect my husband is a giant geek.”

The joke, however, is inaccurate.  While I do have around 49 TARDi in my collection, by no means am I interested in owning every version of every TARDIS toy/model/product that is or has been on the market.  Sure, there are a few more out there I am interested in acquiring, but I’m no completionist.  I would even say that I’m pretty picky when it comes to my choice in TARDIS purchases, hence the rating system I’ve adopted for this series of entries.

My criteria for wanting to own a given TARDIS are as follows:

1. It should look like the TARDIS in one of its versions from across the 50 + year history of the show (old school, new school, what have ya);

2. It should have most of the standard TARDIS detailing (proper number of levels to the roof, correct proportions, wood grain sculpting on most “wood” surfaces, no skimping on detail or cutting corners for sake of cheap manufacture (I’m lookin’ at you DAPOL!);

3. It should be properly TARDIS blue (though there are shades to even that, and exceptions to the rule in certain cases);

4. Exceptions can be made for artistic license provided the end result is fun;

5. Bonus points for functionality, such as the ability to make the TARDIS wheezing “vworp!!” sound, or lights that flash, doors that open inward, etc.;

6. Bonus points if it appears actual thought and care went into the recreation.

Usually I like to be able to get a good look at the TARDIS in question before buying, to make sure it falls into the above criteria.  I try not to buy them blindly for fear of winding up with a “shitfer” TARDIS that I’ll be embarrassed to have around.

But sometimes it happens anyway.

Case in point, the Doctor Who Light Up TARDIS Kit, which is one of the most inaccurately described products I’ve ever encountered in the wild.

When one orders a “kit” one expects, and possibly even desires, to have some degree of assembly required.  A “kit” is supposed to come in pieces which may be–fingers crossed–cut from a plastic frame, glued and/or snapped together, decals applied, and painting possibly required before the “kit” has been created.  Not so much for the Doctor Who Light Up TARDIS Kit.  This “kit” came fully assembled with its battery already in place.  The only requirement was to pull the plastic battery protector from the little slot in the screw-fastened battery compartment and then flip a switch to turn on the roof lamp.

yay.

whee.

that’s… awesome.

Left the “kit” TARDIS. Right an actual kit TARDIS with actual assembly required.

It did come with a booklet showcasing the various actors to have played the Doctor over the years.  In all other respects, though, it was aggressively disappointing.  And it violates or bends at least three of the above six criteria.

• The details are not quite what they should be.  While the “wood” surfaces of this TARDIS do have wood-grain sculpting, the grain-molding they used for it is not to scale with the actual object were the TARDIS two inches high.  It’s huge by comparison and would only be accurate for a much larger TARDIS, possibly even larger than the Flight Control model.

• And while they did go so far as to apply wood grain to the roof surfaces as well, they applied it in the wrong direction, the grain perpendicular to the edges of the roof instead of parallel to the edges, as if each triangular roof facet were its own separate board.

• And the roof lamp, while able to illuminate via LED, is oversized in proportion to the roof.  However the “glass” of the lamp itself is beveled, which is a nice detail to have included.

• A minor point, the POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX signs above the doors aren’t recessed.  This I’ll forgive, as detail is often lost in producing a miniature TARDIS (though the miniature TARDIS pictured on the right in the above photo didn’t seem to have much problem recreating the effect).

All in all, I’m not a big fan of the Doctor Who Light Up TARDIS “Kit.”  The company that manufactured it, Running Press, has offered a number of other “kits.”  In fact, they refer to them in their advertising as “Mega Kits,” including a Dalek, a Cyberman torso and head, a Matt Smith era Sonic Screwdriver, and K-9.  They further note that said kits are “Mega Fun!”  (They look fine.  I might eventually even purchase the K-9, since I seem to own him in many of his other forms already.)  However, I give their TARDIS “kit,” two TARDI.

In future, I’ll write about another TARDIS kit that will truly live up to the definition of the word.  I only have to assemble it first.

(An ongoing writing project in which I catalog and quantify my extensive TARDIS collection.) 

As I’ve written before, owning a TARDIS toy was something I had wanted since I was a wee lad in the 4th grade, but for many years the only TARDIS toys I ever saw were in my dreams.  They existed, of course, but primarily in the UK, from where Doctor Who originated.  And, in those pre-interweb days, were not on my radar at all.  In the early 1990s, however, that changed.

In 1988, a Welsh model railroad company called Dapol began producing a line of Doctor Who action figures.  While there had been action dolls and a TARDIS playset produced by Denys Fisher Toys in the late `70s, this was the first attempt to produce a line of action figures in a 3.75 inch G.I. Joe/Star Wars scale.  This was during the sunset years of the show’s original run, just as the Sylvester McCoy era ended the show seemingly for good. So the initial run of Doctor Who toys from Dapol featured Sylvester McCoy and his companion Mel.  Dapol released a number of individual Doctor Who figures as well as a variety of Daleks, which did well enough for the company.  Unfortunately, the creators at Dapol in conjunction with the licensing people at the BBC, were not always so good at capturing the details of the show in the toys.  For instance Dapol created and the BBC approved a figure of Davros, the power-chair-bound creator of the Daleks.  The figure they made, though, possessed two whole arms instead of just the right arm with his presumably non-functional left arm tucked down into his chair housing, as per every single Davros appearance on the television show to that point.  Their solution to this problem, according to an interview I read with Dapol’s president, David Boyle, from the Toys & Games special issue of Doctor Who Magazine, was to simply rip the left forearms from all produced figures in the second run and simply not make that piece in runs after.  Dapol also made a green K-9 figure.  Boyle says in his interview that the only reference  photo the BBC sent him was of K-9 on grass, which reflected greenly in his silver finish.  (The photo in question was used in Dapol’s publicity material and does indeed show a similarly green-tinted K-9, so this checks out for me.  Still, the BBC licensing department saw the green sample figures and approved them readily).  And, in the most glaring example of Dapol’s inattention to detail, their figure for Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor (you know, the one Doctor Who figure I had most desired to own since the age of 9) was missing a key costume element which the character on the show was renowned for possessing: his excessively long scarf.  Even though the package art features it, it was missing from the figure.  One might also argue they’d left off his hat, and one would be correct in this as well.  But the scarf, even to this day, is the most remembered feature of the character among non-fans other than the TARDIS.

“Doctor, why is K-9 green?” “Must’ve gone off his kibble, Mel.”

Oh, but then there was the Dapol TARDIS, which was actually part of the very first set they offered for sale, which was originally part of a limited edition 25th anniversary set, featuring the 7th Doctor, Mel, the green K-9, and a TARDIS complete with control room playset.  Conceptually this was something of a dream as the TARDIS toy worked both as the TARDIS prop, with functioning doors and a blue LED that would light up and flash with the flip of a switch, but could also come apart to be reassembled into a TARDIS control room diorama complete with a central control console.  The interiors of the TARDIS side panels were painted gray with sculpted white TARDIS roundels, allowing the walls to be linked together to form the interior control room walls.  And the console, which both lit up and had a clear time rotor in the center that would rise and fall was a handy addition for play.  Unlike the control console on TV, though, Dapol’s had five sides instead of six.  Boyle says this was again down to the production stills from the show, which didn’t clearly show the number of sides.  He even called the show’s producer, John Nathan Turner, to ask and, Boyle says, JNT asked him which number was easier for Dapol to produce, to which Boyle said “Five” so JNT told him to roll with that. Later, JNT was apparently angry about the inaccurate console and that Boyle hadn’t “pestered more to get the correct information.”  It was then agreed that after the company had sold it’s first 10,000 units of the toy, they would have to revise it for six sides.  Boyle says Dapol only ever sold 1200.

Dalek fails

Dapol Dalek Sampler Pack

(It should be noted that Dapol was hardly the only company guilty of cheap design and construction when it came to Doctor Who toys.  For instance, it took decades before ANY company was able to produce a Dalek toy that came close to matching the detail, or even the basic shape of the Daleks on the show.  For every Character Options Dalek that gets the recipe right, there are dozens and dozens of processed cheese level Dalek toys that look like they were designed by someone who not only didn’t have actual photographs of the props but had been working entirely from a verbal description of a Dalek given by a person who had once seen one on TV, from across a smoky room, while on LSD.  To their credit, Dapol’s Daleks, while not my favorite, got the look right.)

While initially offered in the 25th anniversary set, the Dapol TARDIS went on to be released in a number of different play sets, often with accompanying figures.  However, in 1994, while the company was moving its production to a new facility, a fire at the original Dapol factory destroyed the original molds for the control console, along with much of their existing production line of Doctor Who toys.  Because they’d allowed the insurance on the old building to lapse as they moved to a new building, the company was suddenly massively in debt.  Rather than retool a new one, incurring more costs, Dapol just began producing TARDIS sets minus the console and downplayed the whole coming apart to form the control room feature.

My introduction to the Dapol line came from an issue of Previews in the early 1990s.  (Previews is the magazine for Diamond Comic Distributiors, Inc. which was then and remains one of the major direct sales distributors for comic book shops.  Comic nerds like myself would pick up Previews each month so we could see what sort of product would be on sale in our local shop in three months and be able to order accordingly.)  Some of the Dapol figures, including the TARDIS, were offered for sale there and their grainy little black and white pictures were enticing to my Doctor Who starved brain.  Unfortunately, they were not cheap.  The 25th anniversary set retailed for 49.99 pounds, which at 1990 exchange rates was around $95.  And it wasn’t like they were offered through Diamond every month.  Anything beyond initial orders of new product would come with markup for import costs from the UK.  So if you were able to find the toys in the US at all they were usually far pricier than your average college student can pay–especially considering the often slapdash nature of Dapol’s quality.

My local shop, the late and lamented Gun Dog Comics, did have a few of the individual figures, but I didn’t have a lot of scratch in the `90s.  I think I did manage to cobble together enough to buy a K-9 from them (of the non-green variety) at some point, but a TARDIS was a few years off, when I finally found a reasonably-priced one on the previously mentioned WHONA.com.  I ordered it at the same time as the resin model kit, making it my second first(ish) TARDIS.

My Dapol TARDIS is, of course, of the non-console-inclusive later day variety.  As far as functionality goes, it’s pretty bare bones, with the whole opening doors and blinking silent roof lamp.  However, as you can see from the pictures, Dapol didn’t go out of their way to actually sculpt a proper lamp housing from any of the various ones used on the show.  Instead, it’s a bare blue LED bulb inside a clear plastic cylinder.  And while the TARDIS does still come apart for assembly into the control room walls, the lack of console gave them the added incentive to stop painting the interior walls, save for the roundels.  So instead of the soothing gray/white walls, they’re just TARDIS blue.  As far as sculpts go, it’s one of the least impressive and minimalist of designs, probably owing to ease of production.  The doors are only slightly recessed from the corner columns, the roof isn’t beveled, the windows are painted into their barely inset panes, and there is no real base to speak of other than a 1/16 inch thick plastic floor.  And, much like the TARDIS props have occasionally appeared on the show, the whole thing is kind of rickety in construction.  It’s four walls are held together by friction-based notch and tab hinges on the edge of each wall. The bases of the walls have fins that slide beneath other extremely thin plastic fins molded into the nearly as thin base (which I can’t imagine would hold up to actual play), and then the whole assembly is pinned by the roof, which has its own wide tabs that fit into slots in the upper edges of the doors.  This means that in order to play with it as a representation of the TARDIS exterior you must hold it firmly around its walls so that the inward pressure keeps them in place, and you must never ever try to lift it by its roof light or turn it upside down, lest the roof fall off.

However, for all its many faults, it’s still a toy I would have loved to have owned in 1981 during the height of my infatuation with the PBS reruns of the show, and I would have played with it gladly as a prized possession.  Unfortunately, its many faults and inattention to detail, especially when compared with other TARDISes in my collection (not to mention its lack of even an inaccurate console) lead me to give this one a solid two TARDi.  It’s probably two and a half, really.

“Oh, look…. rocks.”

(An ongoing writing project in which I catalog and quantify my extensive TARDIS collection.) 

With the success of Doctor Who line of toys, particularly its Electronic Flight Control TARDIS, Character Options decided to expand its figure line beyond the 9th and 10th Doctors and the other companions and characters from the 21st century incarnation of the show.  Naturally, since Tom Baker is still my favorite Doctor, I had to have that one and ordered it as fast as my ebay ordering fingers could move.  It’s a pretty brilliant figure, capturing the likeness and manic glee of Baker’s Doctor, along with a rubber recreation of Baker’s famous scarf (an accessory that had been infamously missing from the previous attempt at a Tom Baker action figure, the one issued by Dapol in the late 80s–though not the original Denys Fisher doll).  They went on to release figures for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctors as well as a 11 Doctors set timed with Matt Smith’s start as the 11th Doctor, and which included the previously unproduced Paul McGann 8th Doctor.

With a 4th Doctor in hand, I began taking photographs in the mossier sections of our yard, along with my recently purchased David Tennant TARDIS.  While it did make my inner 4th grader leap for joy even he had to admit that it wasn’t as satisfying as if it was a genuine 4th Doctor TARDIS.  But such a thing did not exist.  A large part of me hoped that one day it would, but it seemed as distant a dream as the TARDIS toys I’d dreamed of as a kid.  Even better, I dreamed on, wouldn’t it be cool if Character Options produced TARDIS toys for each of the Doctors?  After all, there were several different TARDIS props over the course of the original series.

7th Doctor

4th Doctor

1st Doctor

Then, in 2011, Character Options partnered with company Underground Toys to make my dream a reality–sorta.  They announced that they were producing a handful of the classic TARDIS models to be packaged with the action figures for their corresponding Doctor.  Except they were only going to do three of them.  Included in their run would be the 1st Doctor’s TARDIS with accompanying William Hartnell figure (a new sculpt based on his first appearance as the character); a 4th Doctor’s TARDIS, complete with a Tom Baker figure (same one I already had); and the 7th Doctor’s TARDIS complete with a Sylvester McCoy 7th Doctor figure.  Compared with the 21st

From left to right, the modern day TARDIS and the Sylvester McCoy TARDIS

century TARDIS, the original series props were smaller, narrower, and very often ricketier.  (Just watch Spearhead from Space to see the TARDIS practically shake apart as Jon Pertwee falls through its doors in his first appearance–watch from the 2:07 time code.)  The toys matched that scale, being a bit smaller than the modern toys.  The sculpts on these were basically the same barring a couple of details.  The 1st Doctor TARDIS was differentiated by the St. John’s Ambulance badge on the right door–a detail that had been painted over and abandoned until Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor TARDIS would restore it in 2011.  The 4th Doctor’s TARDIS was shorter due to having a flat roof instead of a tiered and pitched one.  It was painted a dingier shade of blue.  It’s door sign was also white letters on a black background instead of black on white.  And Sylvester McCoy’s was basically the 4th Doctor’s TARDIS with the 1st Doctor’s roof, painted a lighter shade of blue.  (In reality, a new and taller TARDIS prop was brought in during the later years of Baker’s run and was kept as the main prop for the next three–getting a repaint or two along the way.)

While I felt it was a lost opportunity to do a different TARDIS for each Doctor, these three were pretty representational of the classic run.  Unfortunately, they were also pretty expensive.  If they were available for sale in this country it was usually as imports or on ebay, where prices soared, rising up to the $80 range.  I didn’t feel like I could justify buying even Baker’s, let alone all three.  And the longer I sat on the decision the more expensive they became–especially Baker’s.

Finally, in 2012 or so, I stumbled on a GoHastings listing for the 7th Doctor’s TARDIS for an admirably reasonable price and grabbed it while I could.  Sure, it wasn’t Baker’s flat roofed version, but truth be told I really hate the flat roof.  I never noticed the roof was flat when I originally watched the series.  It was only after becoming accustomed to the pitched roof of later years that caused me to be bumped by the toy’s flat roof.  It’s jarring and un-TARDIS-like to me, yet ironically it is the TARDIS that I first fell in love with.  In truth, the McCoy TARDIS was more in line with later day Baker, except for the lighter paint job.  Out of the box and on my shelf, though, it doesn’t look nearly as bright as the image above.

The McCoy TARDIS is definitely a different creature compared to the Flight Control 10th Doctor TARDIS, mostly for the worse.  I expect it’s not cheap to produce such a fine item as the Flight Control TARDIS with all its bells and whistles.  The McCoy TARDIS basically just has a bell and no whistles.  Now some of this is due in large part to the fact that the original TARDIS props did not have much in the way of lights.  It basically had the lantern on the roof, if they were lucky.  So the toy’s sole light is the lanter.  Gone are the interior lights (not to mention the backdrop of the TARDIS interior).  Gone is the lighting behind the Police Public Call Box signs.  The toy still has TARDIS takeoff and landing sounds, but there is no spin function and no other flight sounds nor interior sounds.  It’s pretty bare bones.  The toy also loses some functionality in that while there is a telephone within the door cabinet beneath the left front window, the box in which it sits takes up so much space behind the door that you cannot open that door even half way.  (I took mine apart and removed the phone, but then it looks odd when you open the cabinet, so I put it all back.)  And I don’t know if this is universal to all copies of this toy or just mine, but while the Flight Control TARDIS features a right hand door that can be propped open and releases on a spring via a button on the interior floor, this one’s button doesn’t so much work and the right hand door is difficult to close flush with the housing.  (I basically have to smack the face of it into my hand to let gravity and force to do the work of closing it.)

The McCoy figure that came with it is actually my favorite version of the character’s costume, with the dark jacket, the panama hat and question mark umbrella.  I have traded it in place of the McCoy that came with the 11 Doctor’s set, who had a white jacket and no hat.

As a toy, the 7th Doctor’s TARDIS is not so functional for play, but that’s not what I have it for to begin with.  As a piece of shelf art, it’s great.  So despite its functional issues, I’m still giving it four TARDISes.

PS – A few weeks back, some amazingly huge mushrooms grew in my yard.  I thought it was a good opportunity for some photography, so I took a couple of sizes of modern day TARDISes out there to put next to it.  I posted the resulting image to Facebook.  A bit later, my buddy Joe commented “Not legit until you take one in a rock quarry.”  This comment was due, of course, to Baker-era Doctor Who’s frequent use of quarries as stand-ins for alien worlds.  I replied “Gimme three hours.”   Not only did I know where a ostensible rock quarry was, it was not far from my house and I had a period correct TARDIS model on hand for the photo shoot.  I found plenty of locales for the photos, including the one at the top of this page and the second one here.  (I had to edit out some power lines in the one above, but I left the giant dumptruck in the distance to the right side of the photo, figuring Daleks probably had them too.) 

Worst. Cyberman. Ever.

In the summer of 1980, I returned from an out-of-town weekend Saturday/Sunday summer camp to my home in Starkville, MS.  I pulled the power knob of our 9 inch Zenith television to the on position, flipped between the three channels we could pick up with the rabbit ears, found myself on channel 2, and began staring at Mississippi ETV.  What I found myself watching was episode 2 or 3 of the Doctor Who story Revenge of the Cybermen, originally broadcast a mere five years earlier in the UK.  This moment was a pivotal one in my life, for it was my very first exposure to the BBC show Doctor Who.  From that moment on I have been a fan and still count Tom Baker as my favorite actor to have played the Doctor to this day.  I, of course, was back for the next installment the following day at 6 p.m. and as much as possible I tried not to ever miss an episode of my new favorite show.  (By the way, I’m now astounded I was so taken with the show based on Revenge of the Cybermen of all stories, because it’s not especially great and contains maybe the laziest Cybermen designs ever.  I honestly prefer the cloth-faced original Mondasian Cybermen designs to the ones from Revenge… with their lazy-assed plumbing flex-hose head-handles.  The worst.)

As a child in 1980, going into the 4th grade, though, this show was magic, with dark tales of science fiction and horror given illumination by the contrastingly light performances of Baker and his onscreen traveling companion Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elizabeth Sladen.  I loved their relationship, which was clearly one of great fondness for each other. I loved the Doctor’s long coats and immediately set about trying to find one of my own (it would be a few years before I managed it).  And, of course, I loved his scarf, but it would be another 20 years before I was finally given a replica of the Doctor’s first one, as knitted by my mother-in-law; instead, I had to make do with wearing my dad’s girlfriend’s cream-colored muffler for the first few years instead, which only looked like Baker’s scarf after being filtered through my imagination).  I loved the Doctor’s grinning manner, his gadgets and I loved his habit of offering everybody Jelly Babies (which, in lieu of, I had to make do with Gummy Bears).  And I especially loved his mode of transportation, the TARDIS.

Standing for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space (though some sources vary), the TARDIS was a blue police public call box that was, though dimensional shifting, bigger on the inside.  (Had to get my dad to explain that one to me.)  The Doctor would step through the doors of this glorified, over-sized phone booth, into apparent darkness, and then the camera would cut to the TARDIS interior set and we’d see the Doctor entering through two giant blocky doors faced with pizza-sized circular roundels, into the bright white control room, the central feature of which was a five-sided control console with a bobbing clear cylinder filled with lights and gizmos.  The Doctor would hit a switch, close the doors behind him, and with the manipulation of more dials and switches would cause the TARDIS exterior to fade from view, accompanied by its famous wheezing mechanical groan of a sound effect.  Magic, I tell you!  My wee mind was captivated by it all.  I shortly began trying to craft my own Time Lord adventures by playing Doctor Who in the back yard, using the patio as my control room, a dog house as my control console and the chain-link side gate as my relatively smaller TARDIS door, leading me and my muffler to whatever monster was menacing the front yard.

Princess Sally

Dr. Mum

Since there were no Doctor Who action figures available in the U.S. (and they were pretty thin on the ground in the U.K. at that time) I also tried to create my own action figure adventures.  Having no Doctor replica on hand, I substituted the most curly-headed, side-burn-bearing action figure I owned, a green-suited diver from the Fisher Price Adventure People scuba diver playset.  And for a companion, I used the armless and legless red-headed princess from Fisher Price’s medieval castle playset. (Cause I’d somehow misplaced the lady diver who came in the scuba diver set.)  These might seem like poor substitutions, but they were all I had.  My TARDIS was even sadder, though.  I had nothing approximating one, so rather than get my dad to build one out of cardboard (which I’m sure he would have done) I just used a mason jar.

My Doctor Who toys were so low rent that I eventually gave up pretending they were even related to Doctor Who at all and just made up my own analog characters.  I called my Doctor, Dr. Mum, named after the 1970s/80s cream deodorant, a small round container of which I used as my logo in imagined recreations of the theme song.  (My theme was hauntingly similar to that of Doctor Who, I assure you.)  I called the companion Princess Sally (since she a crown she had to be a princess), and I called their Mason jar spaceship the Blue Crystal (which was in no way blue, though the Mason jar itself lent something of a crystalline quality).

Denys Fisher Doctor Who toys

The idea of owning an honest to goodness TARDIS toy, however, was something beyond the realm of possibility for me.  I didn’t even wonder at the time if such a thing existed.  I did not yet know about the Denys Fisher TARDIS toy of the late 1970s, recycled out of the Star Trek Enterprise toy set Fisher also made (a set that I actually had owned since age 5 or so).  I did not yet know about the corresponding Tom Baker Doctor Who doll Fisher made, with real removable scarf.  And I didn’t know anything about the Leela companion doll and would have found her confusing since PBS weren’t showing any of those episodes yet.  Instead, I had my dreams.  (The first TARDIS toys I ever saw were ones I imagined in actual dreams.  And they were awesome.)  It would be years yet before I got wind of even a TARDIS model, or set actual eyes on the TARDIS tin bank with the grinning image of Tom Baker beaming from its open door, let alone a TARDIS toy and action figures.  In fact, by the time I saw such things I was well out of the typical action figure purchasing age range–not that I’ve let that stop me much, hence why I’m typing this.

Not quite all of my TARDi

As my wife can tell you, I now own an excessive number of TARDISes.  Most of them are in my office, taking up the space across the tops of two full book cases and, technically, spilling down the side of said case in the form of TARDIS string lights.  Others live elsewhere, from my bathroom to my car, to my living room, to, occasionally, my bed.  While it’s an impressive collection, by no means does it encompass the number of model/toy TARDISes that have been manufactured over the past 50 years.  It’s actually pretty small comparatively (which is what I keep telling my wife).  I have, as of this writing, around 49 of them (a nice number, though there is always the chance I’m forgetting one or two somewhere).  We’re talking three dimensional TARDISes, too, not just pictures of them–of which I have more than a couple.  I tracked down my first two back in 2002 or so.  And since the show came back in 2005 and proved itself popular, new TARDIS products have hit the market each year.

Why do I have so many?  Why do I love them?  Wellllll, there are many factors to the answer, but, if you distill it down to a base, I collect TARDISes because I feel like I owe it to that 4th grade boy back in 1980 who didn’t have even one TARDIS and who had to make do with a Mason jar.

I really dig my TARDIS collection.  As an ongoing exercise,  and in an effort to produce more content for this blog, I’ve decided to write about each of them here, in no particular order, and with no real time table for doing them all.

And you can keep up with them all with this LINK.