Dragonball Toys member Colirio

colirio hey! Good to see you!!

dippergames420 Here's a brief history, since I'm feeling nostalgic:

dragonballtoys.com was super popular. There wasn't Facebook or anything that competed with forums back in the early 2000s. DBZ was superrrrrr hot too. In 2002, DBT probably had a new reply every 15 minutes on average. The majority of the posts weren't necessarily super important though; lots of arguments, for example, because we were definitely a "community" where you made friends and there was a major difference between an "oldie" and a "newbie". The biggest difference is that the oldies actually knew each other quite a bit, so when someone new joined, it was obvious, because there'd be a name we didn't recognize. We still have some of that alive on DBF, but with how infrequently most people post... just being an old member doesn't mean as much as it did back when nearly everybody was posting at least once a day. There were absolutely no competing interests (no social media, reddit, discord, etc.) at all and cell phones didn't do anything but make calls and text for $0.30 a text or whatever.

The positive nostalgia is that it was popular, and there was at least 30 minutes to an hour of new stuff to read every single day and lots of online friends to "talk" to. It was very easy to trade figures with people or find somebody willing to sell something you're interested in buying. The negative stuff (that nostalgia makes people forget) is the fact that most members were between 11 and 20, and the arguments were frequent, and most threads went off-topic quickly. People had to be suspended and/or banned often. It's been years since we've had an issue like that on DBF... and that stuff was every week on DBT back then. Another cool thing is that Despotes was "in the loop" with Irwin and Jakks, and so he'd get news and photos before any other websites. I have a relationship with someone in Bandai America, but I don't get news early or photos sent to me. I just get to tell them what sort of things people are talking about wanting to buy or complaining about. I don't really get too much info from my contact... I usually find out about stuff from other people instead. Bandai America (even in the 2000s) never provided images or news to DBT, so nothing has really changed in that regard. Tamashii Japan and Bluefin used to check DBF daily in 2013, but I don't know if they still do. I kind of doubt it, now that their Instagram and Facebook pages are successful. But they haven't ever volunteered info or pics to me. I think the Bandai-owned companies just don't really do that...

Anyway, DBT was bought by Action Online, they pissed people off, the database that made the forum work got messed up, nobody ever fixed it, and a guy named Mike made the new DBT, which was dragonballtoys.proboards.com. Mike did a good thing for everybody, but eventually he lost his passion or got too busy, and he wouldn't assign any moderators or anybody to do any "housework" on the forum. Spambots were posting stuff... threads were off-topic... etc. Lots of people wanted to help (like me), and he just wouldn't let them. So Capsulexnike and I decided to start DBF. I paid for the site and programmed and designed the appearance, while Cap worked on checklists and other things. We abandoned the DBT.proboards ship, because, well, we needed to. The site was frustrating.

In some ways, I wish DBF was as active as the Facebook groups now are, but in most ways, I'm glad it isn't. It costs me the same amount whether we have 50 frequent members or 5000 frequent members. It's more work when there are more people here. Back in 2013-2015, the moderators and I were all pretty busy on here! Now... it's pretty chill. But... I do plan on paying for DBF forever, because I want the information to survive on the internet as long as possible. So many good websites have vanished without a trace, and I don't want that to happen to DBF.

Anyway... I'm tired. I didn't proof-read this. But hopefully it was entertaining.