That's a good question! Toy Polloi started in January 2014 after I had a chat with friend and fellow Youtuber James from Xrobots.co.uk. He persuaded me that what I did as a hobby would be of interest to other people and that I should start to show off my vintage toy collection and how I fix them.

It was not something I had thought of doing before, although in the past I had run the Battlestar Galactica Memorabilia website. But this was a very specific site covering only one part of my collection, and I have not updated that website in a very long time.

So I had a good think about how I would present my videos and what I would show. In the early days I only had a very basic camera that and I didn't really want to be seen on screen. I wanted it to be all about the toys.

First thing I needed was a name. Something that was simple and fun. Mrs TP (as she is now known) and I brainstormed a few ideas when she came up with Toy Polloi and it just sounded perfect.  Hoi Polloi means 'the many', and I have many toys from many toy lines.

So I now had a name, and soon had a logo to go with it. I filmed a few reviews of figures I liked and a few simple fixes that I used regularly just to see how it would look. And they seemed to work ok, so the first videos were uploaded and the channel started on Jan 14th 2014.

Watch my first ever Youtube video.

It took a while for people to start finding my videos, but within a few weeks I had 100 or so subscribers and was starting to get feedback on what people like and disliked. This spurred me on to make more videos and try and do more complicated fixes and repairs. You soon learn what videos people want to see most, Star Wars vehicle restorations being the most popular. But I also like to do videos covering toy lines that I remember from my childhood, not ones that are necessarily that popular, but ones that had a big influence on me.

And that's really what Toy Polloi is about, Fixing and reviewing toys from the 70's/80's/90's and occasionally newer toys, but not that often. I don't like to see a broken toy thrown away, so I try whatever I can to save them and give them a new lease of life. Most of my fixes don't involve expensive equipment of spending huge amounts of money, I try to fix them with items most people will have in and around their homes. That way anyone can have a go at fixing toys.

I will continue to do this for as long as I can, and for as long as people are interested.

Toy Polloi