Tommy Tallarico interview part 2
RC: One of the largest life size mannequins if you want to call it that is that large beast in your backyard, the dinosaur
TT: And of course there’s the Dinosaur I almost forgot, yes shouldn’t everyone have a 12 ft velociraptor in their back yard?...
RC: Of course I’m picking mine up next week…you have that Jurassic park look going on did you design that look?
TT: Yes, I planted every tree, I did that about two years ago I wanted to create kind –of- like a Raiders of the Lost Ark type vibe…that’s why I got the big stone arches and put in all this stuff…I got tropical trees and plants from all over the world from Hawaii from Australia from Africa from South America and imported them all in to make it like the jungle of Raiders of the Lost Arc. There’s even my dining room, I modeled it after Tomb Raider, its like an Egyptian dining room…I did all the work myself I hand gilded all of the wood gold I painted the walls…again for me it’s a hobby, I like creating stuff whether its interior design or outdoor decorating or even just sculptures or resin kits…
RC: How many rooms do you dedicate to your collection because it seems like the whole house is overflowing?
TT: I would say 1…2…3…Spider-Man 4… the jungle bedroom 5… 6 is the arcade… 7 I have a huge movie theatre which has sideshow collectibles, they’re one of my favorite companies, so I have all the big ¼ scale James Bond stuff and the Planet of the Apes stuff and the Lord of the Rings stuff in my movie room and then I have full arcade in my garage which I painted like a big space ship and of course there’s outside…I’d say about 12 rooms total in the house…
RC: Now you know when people read this they’re either going to hate you or want to move in with you.
TT: Hopefully the wont hate me…(laughs)
RC: I hear all this and I wonder, are you single?
TT: I am and that’s the only reason that I’m able to have 12 rooms dedicate to my hobby (laughs)
RC: So what are you gonna do when you find that woman who’s gonna want to move in with you?
TT: Well, that’s why I’m still single (laughs), my toys are more important…you know I think the trick there is to find the girl who thinks that all of this stuff is just as cool as I think it is…
RC: Well, good luck there…(laughs)
TT: (laughs)…and that’s the answer to the reason why I’m single and I’ve never been married…
RC: Or the other option would be to buy another house…
TT: That’s a possibility
RC: You collect toys, life size figures, resin kits, comics, animation cells, video games, it seems like you just about collect everything.
TT: Everything that I’ve ever loved and wanted to collect I pretty much own at this point so for me its more about what’s the newest thing coming out like I’m a Tron freak, and when I heard the announcement of Kubrik over in Japan was gonna make the Tron stuff I flipped out…I was like “oh my God, I got to get my hands on them” and I go on Ebay and I order them from Japan and I go crazy, you know the same thing with the Sideshow Collectibles and that’s why I love Sideshow so much…the Green Goblin that they’ve created in ¼ scale is just un-freakin-believable I’m just waiting for the delivery of it and the Darth Vader, I ordered that stuff right away as soon as it came out directly from Sideshow so I got the Luke and the Han and the Darth Vader and I got all the Planet of the Apes stuff, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, so to me that’s the fun part about going to Toy Fair because they’re always going to be creating the new Spider-Man statue or the new James Bond stuff, the stuff that I’m really into, that stuff is gonna be around I think for a long time so that’s the thing, do I have everything that I’ve always wanted? Pretty much yeah…
RC: There are so many of us that wish we could say that, which one is your favorite room?
TT: I’d have to go with the Spider-Man room cause my days are always so hectic that its just awesome sometimes to just take a break and go in the Spider-Man room and read a comic from the 60’s or early 70’s, my second favorite one would definitely be the movie room, I built the movie theatre last summer in my place, it comes complete with the curtains and the electric reclining chairs and 721 audio, 850watts on the sub woofer and 200 watts per channel I mean it literally is better than going to the movies with a 12 ft. widescreen…and playing video games on that sucker is just unbelievable as well…
RC: You play video games on that movie screen?
TT: Yeah…(laughs)
RC: Do you charge admission?...(laughs)
TT: I know, I should , I got a pop corn machine I make people pop corn sometimes.
RC: If there were a fire, God forbid, and you had a chance to save one item what would it be?
TT: That’s a great question, first of all if I had a fire I’d end up shooting myself in the head…cause I couldn’t deal with losing all this…
RC: Before you answer that question is your collection insured?
TT: Yes, and its very expensive to insure this stuff, mostly the comic book collection…you know, I would have to say and this is the God honest truth…that the one thing I would go for, I have a box of comic books that were the ones that I collected and I read growing up as a kid and it was the early Spider-Man stuff from like the early to mid 70’s, they’re beat to shit cause I read them so many times so they’re not part of my normal collection where I have them near mint…I would grab those because those to me are irreplaceable, all this other stuff I could buy again, but those would be the first thing I would go for because they mean so much to me, just by looking in the box and picking them up and remembering the wrinkles in the page and sometimes I would write on them, it brings me back to when I was eight years old again and that’s a great feeling.
RC: I can only imagine what it would be like to live in your shoes, but do you ever walk into your house look at your stuff and say “My God, I can’t believe that I have all this stuff and that I’m fortunate enough to own it all”
TT: absolutely, I can honestly say for anyone out there who is hating me right now because I have all this stuff just know that its getting used its providing complete happiness, it is, and that’s why I’ve kind of created the phrase I have, it is that constant reminder, “Its all about having fun” its all about that feeling you had when you were a kid and who says you have to grow up…sure you can be mature, I’m a business man and I can go into hard negotiation meetings with the best of them but that doesn’t mean that I still cant hold on to those things I loved as a kid, I have a teddy bear collection cause I dig teddy bears and I’m not afraid to admit it damn it!…so there’s no reason why people have to let go of that just because they feel like society tells them they have to grow up and stuff but I enjoy it every single day…
RC: I don’t think you’re going to have anyone hating you from our site in fact you might be their new hero
TT: (Laughs)…excellent
RC: What’s going to happen to your collection when you are gone?
TT: Ahh, I have no idea, you know I’ve never thought of that I…haven’t thought of that, that’s a great question who knows maybe it’ll all go in some kind of freaking museum or something (laughs)…I have no idea, I guess its gonna go up in auction I would imagine it would probably go up on eBay
RC: Where would you hope your collection ends up?
TT: We’ll see, that’s the thing…that’s why its such a tough question because I don’t have kids of my own you know I don’t have…who am I gonna give it to my dad? What the hell is he gonna do with a Han in Carbonite? Right now in my life there’s no one to leave this legacy to so you know maybe I’ll leave it to you and Frank how bout that?...
RC: God, that would be so beautiful, we would be so happy… (laughs)… unless we go first you never know. Now have you ever purchased anything that you believed to be authentic and it turned out to be a dud?
TT: That’s a good question, I wouldn’t say that that’s ever happened but I have bought some comic books off eBay that I thought looked a lot better in the picture (laughs) then when they actually showed up I had to bring a couple back but I never got really ripped off but no I’ve had pretty good luck with that overall…the other thing I collect which I didn’t touch on at all and it’s a whole room dedicated in my house as well is New York Yankee stuff, the baseball stuff I’m a huge, huge, huge Yankee fan and anyone who watches the show probably can pick up on that, so I collect signed baseballs I have like a Babe Ruth and a Mickey Mantle on the same ball which I bought at a Southerby’s auction, I have Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn dodgers hat so even though he wasn’t a Yankee, still he’s Brooklyn he’ll slide he can slide, but I have Mickey Mantle stuff, and Joe DiMaggio stuff, Jeter, Ty Cobb…that kind of stuff. Houdini is also another one I forgot about my magic collection, very much into magic and Houdini is like my man so I dedicated an entire room in my house just to Houdini and I have black velvet walls, an infinity mirror, Houdini sculptures and statues and posters and even some of the things that Houdini owned, he had a key collection a hand cuff collection, I have some original stuff of that, of course his signature as well so yeah Houdini is another big one I forgot about.
RC: What is the general reaction when people see your collection?
TT: (laughs)…YOUR INSANE MAN!!!
RC: Do many people get a chance to see your collection or do you keep it private?
TT: No, no, I enjoy sharing the experience of what has become my house I love it, its hard to throw parties over here with people I don’t know, if I ever do something, they stay outside because that’s the thing there’s so much stuff here…I would say, I love showing people and again its not something that’s going to impress the ladies but they usually come in and roll their eyes…but that’s ok you know I do this for me not to impress other people its all for me.
RC: What tips or advice would you give a collector?
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TT: I would say go back…if your mom threw out all your stuff or it was lost over the years… to me I think the most fun is collecting stuff that I remember when I was a kid and I would say start there and if you’re starting to think about what should I get. So getting all those old things for me that’s the fun part remembering the stuff I had growing up I’m fortunate enough to have them cause I always held on to them and the other one… statues, aren’t for everybody but to me statues are a real piece of art and even the girls when they come in my house and see Gandolf, that big freakin statue and the detail, girls will stop and go, Wow. My mom will look at that sculpture and go that’s really nice…perhaps you have a wife or a situation where toys or stuffed animals ain’t gonna play, I would recommend people going into the statue stuff because they’re just brilliant works of art and the stuff that companies like sideshow are doing is pretty amazing. Another tip I would give is that if your going to buy something retro and buy something old whether it’s a comic book or an action figure I would always say go for the highest quality possible because then at that point it becomes an investment so instead of trying to get the Amazing Fantasy with the cover ripped off and seven pages missing for 500 bucks instead go get issue 121 in mint condition the death of Gwen Stacey in mint condition and the value of that is gonna rise a lot more than buying a bunch of crap.
RC: one last question, which is your favorite show to do Judgment Day or The Electric Playground?
TT: Judgment Day for sure only because even though we’ve been doing The Electric Playground for a lot longer Judgment Day is more of me getting to bust Victors balls and kind of having fun , we get really opinionated and throwing stuff around or whatever, its funny but people on the internet, people who see my show think that that’s who I am just some really kind of negative guy who always didn’t like some video game that they liked and so people get on the internet and they say like a bunch of stupid hateful stuff about somebody who they’ve never met, somebody who they see on tv and because of this thing I’m playing they feel like they know me and that’s the sad part of it all but of course all of the amazing fans, amazing support that people show me at Tallarico.com on the message boards its just unbelievable I couldn’t believe it, initially I wasn’t even going to put a up a message board but I’m like, let me put up some forums maybe some people have some questions for me I can ask questions, we put that up about six months ago and we have like 80,000 hosts on this thing I’m getting 3million hits a month on my website its so overwhelming, its really incredible but its just too bad that some people just because they disagree with a score I did feel the need to call me nasty names over the internet but I guess that’s just the nature of being in the position I’m in.
RC: Well, Eternal Collector loves you people who read this interview will love you and you probably just made a few more fans, thank you so much for your time. You are definitely an Eternal Collector.
TT: Awesome, if anyone ever wants to come by and say hi I’m at www.tallarico.com feel free to post on the message boards and I usually try to respond as quickly as I can.
RC: Well thanks again for you time.
TT: alright man.
