My Collection

It was about 3 years ago that Jackson discovered Ben 10.  What is Ben 10 you ask?  It's an animated series about a 10 year old boy who finds a special watch (a.k.a. The Omnitrix) while on a road trip with his Grandpa Max and cousin Gwen in Grandpa's RV, known as The Rustbucket.  The watch gives him power to turn into 10 different superhero aliens.  The next question of how and why I know details of Ben 10 deserves an answer.  See when Jackson started watching Ben 10, he also started collecting the action figures of the super heroes that Ben turned into. 

Once the collection started to grow, so did my obsession.  I realized that I had never really collected anything in my life, so living out that dream through my son would be next best thing.  I soon found myself walking into Wal-Mart for some milk and coming out with the latest 4 inch alien figure.  I scoured shelves at stores and online trying to stay on top the latest hero to hit the market.  On a recent trip to the toy aisle, I met another parent who was thumbing through the freshly stocked Ben 10 packages.  I asked him what alien he was looking for.  He told me he was looking for the newest Spider Monkey.  He then proceeded to tell me that he and his son had collected just about every Ben 10.  "Really?" I said more doubtful than surprised. (With our current collection count at 192, I found this hard to believe). "Do you have the Ben 10 plane?" I asked.  "Or the Kevin 11 Charger?" He answered no to both questions.  "Have you seen the 8 inch Vilgax that just came out?" Again.  No.  "Well, good luck" I said and walked away. I called his bluff.  The man lied.  He didn't have even close to a reasonable Ben 10 collection.  And I didn't appreciate him trying to tell me otherwise.  The problem now with the collection is that there's no end in sight.  Ben is no longer 10 years old.  He's a teenager and he can now turn into 40 plus aliens.  He morphs into a new one every episode.  What does that mean for us?  A new alien to look for at the store and another parent to call a liar in the toy aisle.

Jackson has created his own aliens and sketched them freehand. 

Here's a Ben 10 he drew. 

The next scheduled release for a new alien is this September and you can bet I'll be ready.