We all need hobbies. They give our time on Earth — the time that we don't spend doing what we must do in order to survive and ensure the survival of those we love — a direction, a focus, a point. Hobbies are passion, hobbies are identity, hobbies are expression. Collecting action figures is a hobby — a not uncommon hobby, either. But to those of us who collect the things, they carry a great deal of emotional heft for being 3.75" to 6" of sculpted, articulated plastic. A shelf of a complete wave of Marvel Legends figures can represent a mission accomplished. A bin of old Star Wars figures can hold as many stories as a teenage diary. There's a reason why we like what we like, we collect what we collect, and we keep what we keep — and that's what toy collecting is all about.
There's no one that I know — or, rather, no one who I follow on Instagram — who embodies this toy-collecting ethos quite like Steve Evans. Through his active, vibrant, and all-around positive social media presence, Evans has made thinking about toys almost as rewarding as the feeling of swinging a bunch of peg-warmers out of the way and finding a grail. And through his work at Hasbro as the Senior Design Director for Fan Product at Hasbro for Disney, Evans puts this meaningful, fan-forward attitude to work creating the very products that he loved as a kid.
When I launched Pop Heist, I made it a goal to cover toys with the same reverent irreverence and irreverent reverence that I find so inspiring in Steve Evans' online presence. Of course talking to the man himself was top priority. I was my own Ben Kenobi, telling myself to go to the Zoom and seek out the toy master for training. Here's what Steve Evans had to say about new rollouts from Marvel Legends and the Star Wars Retro Collection, as well as plenty of bon mots about the hows and whys of toy collecting.
Brett White: I mostly know you as Mr. Stevie from Hasbro, host of Tall Toy Tales. What is your actual job title?
Steve Evans: What's my Peter Parker role? I'm Senior Design Director for Fan Product at Hasbro for Disney. So it's Marvel, Star Wars — I look after design for those fan product lines, so Black Series, Vintage Collection and Marvel Legends.
I recall you saying recently that instead of grouping your work by brands, you're now grouped more by tier of consumer. What was that switch?
So previously, years ago, I looked after Star Wars Kid and Fan [products], and then I went away and did some other bits and pieces. I came back on for Marvel, looking after Preschool with Spidey and Friends for Kids and then Fan. We saw that the growth of fandom and adult collectors was just getting more and more and more — and we are a very nuanced bunch. It was felt that they needed more eyes on them, so we decided to split our business by, as you say, consumer. So instead of me just doing Marvel, sort of vertical down all the demographics, they said, "Steve, why don't you and the team look after Marvel and Star Wars, all our Disney Fan stuff, horizontally across that consumer demographic, so that you can spend more time thinking about them and working with them?" As I said, we were kids, we grew up, we collect, we reminisce, and — fingers crossed — as long as we're able to wriggle on this mortal coil, we stay with it forever.
I remember the first couple weeks I was in this new role — when I was on Marvel previously, I'm tapping over here doing stuff for Kids. And then I go, "Oh, okay, I've got to think about Fan and then I've got to think about Preschool, and I got to change hats." [Now] I was doing some Fan stuff, and I was like, "Oh, I must remember to think about Kid —" and I turned and I was like, "Oh, I don't have to do that anymore." I was like, "Well, there's nothing for me to do." I was twiddling my thumbs a bit and I rang up my boss and was like, "I've got all this time to do and think about stuff." And he's like, "Yes, exactly. Don't feel bad about that. Now you can go off and cause trouble — sorry, give solutions to things."
Like the sticker on the Retro [Star Wars] card doesn't come off easily, and it's introduced me to this new mantra which I've been living for the past sort of eight months or so: Small things can make big differences. And I think that that sums up the collector. We want the product, but then we also want the story behind the product. We want to know why the product. We want to know what's happening next with the product. We want to be involved in understanding and, in some ways, making decisions about what that should be. So having us focus on purely that demographic, that collector community, we have a better ability at connecting with them. They pay me to do that. I mean, that's amazing.
That's definitely me. I'm tuning into every Fanstream. The most recent one revealed the new mini comic wave and the new Marvel Legends Maximum line. When the Marvel Legends team announces that stuff, I always wonder what role you play in developing those new initiatives.
What do I do? I basically do nothing. [Laughs] No, I liken my role as a conductor of an orchestra. I make sure everyone's playing their instrument at the right times as best as I can to create a tune that people will enjoy listening to — but I don't play an instrument. I'm not industrially design trained, like the stuff that the team do and the engineering people do. I'm actually trained in graphic design. So the packaging side and the branding side, I can do that, but the other stuff, I can't.
I'm more interested in trying to help set the vision and the tone for a line or a story. I like telling stories, so it's more about that. So it's the old adage that the boss doesn't do anything. What I try to do is give you thought-starters and clear the way for people to do different things. The fact that we're thinking about consumers fully allows us to take time to think about, "Oh, mini comics. What does that mean? Or Maximum — what does true value mean? Is it always cheaper? Because value is what you get, not what you pay for." it allows us to think broadly and more deeply, which I think can only be a good thing.
You seem like someone that stays busy by being creative. How do you find time to do your entire social media presence? When I watch you do little toy reveals by snapping your fingers on your Instagram — how do you make the time for that?
It's a good question. You have to ask my wife on that one because she's like, "Why are you doing this? You've just come back from work. Why are you now spending two hours down in the basement doing all this filming stuff?" And it's a couple of things. I think it's my creative outlet. As I just said, if I'm a conductor and I don't play an instrument, how am I keeping my hands busy? So I like to come down here and film and do little Stevie pics and artwork stuff. The graphic design stuff is quick for me. I've been on Photoshop for years now, and it's not super in-depth. There's probably a load of new filters and new techniques that the younger generation probably saying, look at that Boomer. He doesn't know what he's doing on Photoshop.
You're Gen X, don't — !
[Laughs] I know, I know, but you tell my daughters that, they don't know the difference. but I can move through Photoshop pretty quick.
First and foremost, I really enjoy the creative process and I enjoy the communication process. I enjoy social media. I enjoy the community and connecting and getting feedback, good, bad, and ugly. Another phrase I always use: I never ask anyone to apologize for passion. Ever. I hope you'll never, ever catch me getting cross with people because they care about something, especially the brands I work on. As soon as they stop caring, then I'm done. We're done. It doesn't matter anymore. But I go to work and I do a little bit there, and then I come back and I do some more, and it's just my little outlet. It's therapeutic to me.
It also speaks to how your target demographic actually interacts with toys. I just turned 40, which explains my rekindled obsession with G.I. Joes and building the collection I always wanted as a child — because midlife crisis and tragedy and whatnot take you back to toys. But that's what we do: We collect these things, we track them down, and we display them in our DETOLFs. And by you doing all of that too, you're kind of proving you're one of us. You interact with toys in the same way as your consumer is going to interact with toys. I imagine there's actually a lot of synergy between play time and work time.
Yeah, it's research. "It's research, darling." "What are you doing?" "I'm researching!" I've got a great job. I do what I love and I'm forever grateful and fortunate. Who knows when that will end? It could end in two seconds. Who knows? I don't know. So in that way I'm privileged and I'm lucky, but in the other way, I'm not different from anyone else.
We're all unfortunately kind of the same. We sort of a certain age, from a certain generation that had really good toys, it was pioneering in terms of the way toys were made in the '70s and '80s and into the '90s. It was very, very different. The movies and all this kind of stuff create this perfect storm of nostalgia. I'm sure the generations to come will create their own nostalgia as well, but I think we're the sort of pioneers.
I know there were toys before the '70s and '80s. I'm sure there are lots of Dinky Toy collectors that are like, "Hey, what do you mean? I've been collecting dinky toys for 40, 50, 60 years!" But I think the '70s and '80s and into the '90s were a very specific, special time of toy creation and innovation. You can assign that to whoever you want to, whether it's Kenner, whether it's Mego, whether it's Teenage Mutant Turtles, any of it and all of it. A lot of us that found that very, very special, very exciting.
As we hit our 40s and 50s, you know ... life's hard. Life's difficult. And it's a little bit scary sometimes. And we take pleasure in remembering those sort of more innocent times, those exciting times. I think that is just human. It's just normal. And so I'm just doing what everyone else is doing. We're all humans at the end of the day, no matter what race, religion, sex, creed, whatever. It's just fundamental.
Everyone has hobbies. You watch old TV shows, like, Gomez Addams has toy trains that he blows up. I've taken to repainting and creating my own figures in the 3.75" Marvel Legends Retro line. Colossus, Nightcrawler, Hawkeye. And my husband's looking at me like, "What are you doing?" And part of me is like, "Yeah, this is crazy." But people have always painted miniatures and built ships in bottles. We now live at a time where there are X-Men instead.
Yeah, exactly. It's always been that way. Adults and kids do the same thing. We're just a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more skilled. It's the same feeling of creating something and making stories up in your mind as you customize your Nightcrawler. He's coming to life, and that's okay. Just because you're 40, it doesn't matter. It's all right.
The Star Wars Retro collection is going back to its roots with figures from the classic trilogy era, focusing on figures that didn't make it in the original '70s and '80s run. What has been behind that pivot?
With any line, you've got to know who it's for — especially with those lines that are sort of more niche, like the Retro series. Then make sure you tailor it for them. And I think sometimes lines tend to sort of drift a little bit. Sometimes that's quite normal. Everything in life just sort of drifts and meanders a bit, and it's just got to snap back. With regards to the Retro line, that looks like returning to its original roots of original classic characters that Kenner either made or never did make. I believe quite strongly that's who collects that. That's meeting the need of the people who are buying it, which is all you can ever do. It's tricky, because you want to give people what they want and what they need, what they expect — but you also want to want expand it. You want to build, bring in new people, so you have to do things slightly differently just to maybe hook some other people in. Everyone's different, and that's that's a tricky one to do.
Where do you see the interaction between social media and action figures going?
I think it's a great place for discussion. It's a great place to reveal stuff. It's a great place to get insights back. A lot of fan sites run their own polls and their own leagues, like, "Who should Hasbro make next?" And we watch those. We listen to those, we look at them, and we evaluate. It helps us form our potential choices going forward. I think it's essentially a kind of a free research tool, which is great.
I see a lot more going on with art and craft and toy photography. Toy photography has been around since I was on Star Wars years ago. It was just kicking off with people like Jason Yang, Plastic Action. [Photographers] are now doing stop motion stuff. I think bringing artistry to toy collecting is interesting. I'm also seeing a lot of trends on how you display them. It's not just a matter of taking a photograph of toys from a scene in the movie. It's now, how do I display them and how do I arrange and curate my own museum? There's some people out there who have incredible collections that display them in a very specific way, and they take you on tours. It really is the sort of collector culture. It's about communication, culture and craft. The three C's — look at that! [Laughs]
You're full of those! I love that. Lastly — it doesn't even have to be a Hasbro thing but, what as a toy collector are you super excited about in 2025?
I like that there are lots of smaller collections out there. I'm a retro collector, so I collect stuff where there's a finite number of things. I want to collect The Black Hole? Well, there's that many [figures]. Or Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. There's eight figures. I want to get those. The big, sprawling lines — which I look after — intimidate me, personally. I like that I'm seeing a lot of unusual mini collections of odd films or odd cartoons or cereal mascots. These little cottage industries popping up and going, "Here's a different brand you never thought of for the last 30-40 years. We're going to do five or six figures. Boom."
I think they're really interesting and it can only diversify and spread the collecting community and help us remember those characters. I'll see something and I'll go, "I haven't thought of that character since I was 12. Wow! I'm gonna get that." I'm excited by people just trying new things out, as we will too I hope. That's why we're doing things like the mini comics and the Maximum [line] and other stuff that we're working on. It's something new, a different sounding instrument in the orchestra of our passion. [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
