The Blue Meanie: one of thousands of action figures in the ever-changing bedroom display.

Toy and Action Figure Museum

Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

"You may have grown up to be the biggest jerk in the word, but you had a favorite toy," said Kevin Stark, voicing the sunshine philosophy that guides the Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Kevin Stark and Metaluna mutant from "This Island Earth."

Kevin is the owner/ringmaster of the attraction, as well as a painter, illustrator, sculptor, toy designer, lifelong resident of Pauls Valley, and no stranger to the media. "A lot of news stations," he said, recalling the late 1990s, "would do stories on me and show my massive toy collection. And then total strangers would knock on my door and say, 'Can we come in and see the toys?'" Local officials at that time were trying to think of an idea for an attraction to draw people into town. "I was joking around," said Kevin. "I said, 'Well, I'm the city's unofficial tourist attraction; maybe we oughta make it official.'"

The Meat.

Three decades later, the Toy and Action Figure Museum -- which now fills an old downtown department store building -- has become Pauls Valley's plastic molded Valhalla for children and childlike adults. "A lot of people come in and say, 'This is just for my kid,'" said Kevin, "and then they'll see a toy and say, 'Whoa! I had that!' or 'I wanted that!' We've had people come in that were kind of grumpy but, boy, they left having a good time."

Kevin estimates that the museum collection now totals 25,000 toys, filling not only the museum, but three additional storage buildings.

Moveable-joint heroes, villains, monsters, and accessories predominate, but Kevin keeps the displays changing and varied. "We wanted to be able to do just about anything we wanted to," he said. The museum's bottomless well of playthings makes that possible, with themed exhibits of pop culture toy franchises (and occasional roadside attraction subjects) such as The Simpsons, The Munsters, The Transformers, Planet of the Apes, Barbie, Godzilla, My Little Pony, Star Trek, SpongeBob, Roy Rogers, Wonder Woman, Hot Wheels, PEZ dispensers, professional wrestlers, video game consoles, LEGOs, etc. The museum's original Bat Cave is now filled with Star Wars toys. G.I. Joes fight Nazis on an elaborate diorama of a World War II battlefield. One memorable wall display features nothing but superhero bikini briefs.

G.I. Joes battle moveable-joint Nazis in the World War II diorama.

A highlight of the museum, and the first thing that people see after they pay admission, is a full-size bedroom buried beneath thousands of action figures. It is, according to an accompanying sign, the bedroom of a grown man who still lives at home with his parents, since no child could afford so many toys.

Jane West: not all vintage action figures were male.

"That is my bedroom furniture," admitted Kevin. "It had been in my dad's garage forever, and the weekend I was gonna go get it for the museum, he had stuck it in a yard sale. I said, 'No, dad, you can't sell that! I need that!' I just barely caught him in time."

The Toy and Action Figure Museum has two natural adversaries: Oklahoma earthquakes and dust. Kevin said that only one big earthquake has shaken Pauls Valley since the museum opened in 2005 and, to his amazement, not a single action figure fell over. Dust is a perpetual foe, particularly in the bedroom display, which is given a thorough scrubbing at least once a year. "I don't let just anyone off the street come in and wipe down toys," said Kevin. "The volunteers we get are all action figure nuts; they know what's going on."

Kevin himself -- a frequent presence in the museum -- will periodically pull out and replace several tubs' worth of toys, clean the walls, mop the floor, and vacuum all of the furniture. Reports of a museum ghost are, said Kevin, probably just himself, coming in after hours to dust and rearrange figures in the displays.

The Toy and Action Figure Museum asks its visitors to resist temptation.

We asked Kevin to identify the most absurd, unheroic, unvillainous action figure ever made. He said it's "The Meat" from the first Rocky film: the beef carcass that Sylvester Stallone used as a slaughterhouse punching bag to train for his fight. "That's my favorite figure in the whole museum," Kevin said. "I gave it its own display case."

"I asked my wife," said Kevin of The Meat, "'Why would anybody make this? Why would anybody buy this?' And she said, 'Well, you bought it.'"