AUSTIN, Texas – Every once in a while, you just want to feel like a kid again and over in Austin there’s a museum dedicated to the toys some of us had back in the day. So we headed to our capital to get knocked over by nostalgia.
Caleb Zammit is the mid 30’s mastermind who simply kept on collecting figures and hard to find fortresses since the fantastic 80’s.
“I think at my 30th birthday I was like, ‘I think I’ll open a toy museum,” said Zammitt.
The former teacher decided to open this museum to reminisce and he needed a place to put all his toys. Convincing his mom not to get rid of his toys was the trick to making this toy museum a reality.
“She was very understanding with my collection passion, and my wife, too, luckily. But she’s happy to have it all out of the house now. She actually has her house back.”
Now Caleb gets to share his huge collection of He-Man, what seems like thousands of Thundercats, too many transformers to count, a ginormous group of G.I. Joe’s, and a sizeable selection of Star Wars.
“Our catch phrase is, ‘I had that,’ so we hear a lot of people come through and, ‘I had that. I had that. I had that.’”
You’ll even find a collection of old school arcade games that are all on free play. While the younger generations are able to pick up how to play on these tactile treasures, other versions of home electronics are harder to figure out.
Despite having this amazing g collection that’ll take you through the years, Caleb does have one thing to work on, other than the games.
“We’ve gotten complaints that we don’t have enough girl toys. We need to work on that.”
10 year old Rylan seemed to be having just as much as me at the museum.
“I’ve never seen a museum with toys in it before,” Rylan said. “Best museum.”
There’s no doubt about it, the Austin Toy Museum is well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List for the young at heart form around the country.
“For me I just get joy out of it.,” Gerold McCoy, a kid at heart from Chicago, said. “You know, I remember stuff that I did as a kid going over to my cousin Chuck’s house to play Co-Leak-Oh Vision. You know there’s just good memories from it. You’ve got to remember what you were like when you were a kid. Life’s too short.”