How I Tried to Buy Myself a Title

For years, I've wanted to be The Guy.

You know--that person who is known for having or doing something interesting, even if it's just within my circle of friends. The Guy With the Antique Books. The Guy Who Plays Slide Guitar. The Guy Who Spent a Month Writing a Novel in a Cabin.

The problem is, I don't have the attention span, money, or talent to be The Guy in any truly fascinating capacity. But I also don't have the self-awareness to really convince myself that I can't ever be The Guy, so I keep creating new, often convoluted scenarios in which I could become The Guy. These goals, like Gamerscore, are pretty meaningless overall. They really only exist so I can have some sort of clout, as if I'm not worth knowing if I don't have a gimmick.

I'm sure I'll get into a number of these attempted goals, but today we're going to talk about the time I decided to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

For anyone who isn't aware, Disney Infinity is a video game franchise that started in 2013 and makes use of real-life figures of various Disney personalities. When scanned into the game, these figures allow you to play as their respective characters, which means that the game expands in playability as your collection of toys increases. The gameplay itself is roughly broken down into two modes: mission-based adventure worlds focusing on specific franchises, and a free-roam creative zone called Toy Box mode, where all characters can interact and build or destroy the world as they see fit.

Despite coming from a variety of franchises--Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Phineas and Ferb--the figures sport a universal art style that makes it reasonable for, say, the Lone Ranger to get into a paintball fight with Elsa.

Now, as with most things Disney, this wasn't an entirely new idea. The "toys-to-life" genre was first tested out in 2007 with Mattel's U.B. Funkey, which is that Neopet-looking thing at the bottom of every garage sale toy box:

While it started there, the toys-to-life concept exploded with 2011's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which featured 32 figures of mostly brand-new characters to collect and play as, but was able to capitalize on the name of a beloved purple dragon to get its footing. By the time Disney Infinity came on the scene, the Skylanders franchise was two games deep, with a third just around the corner. 

While Skylanders captivated millions of kids, I remained distant. The technology was fascinating, but I had no connection to any of these new faces. Plus, I wasn't a fan of the figures' artistic direction. I accidentally won this goober from a bag of Doritos, though:

But then Disney Infinity was revealed, and everything clicked. It was the novelty of the toys-to-life genre infused with the personality of characters almost everyone already knows and loves. How could that bomb goblin up there compare with Rapunzel, or Jack Skellington, or Buzz Lightyear? In short, it seemed a surefire success. And, at least initially, it was. With all that Mickey money powering the new franchise, Disney Infinity quickly gained an enormous foothold in every store's video game department.

It's worth mentioning at this point that, although the figures are delightful, Disney Infinity isn't a particularly great game. The creative Toy Box mode is severely hampered by a strict complexity limit, but even worlds that don't hit that cap tend to lag severely. The story modes were varying degrees of "alright". I still have fond memories of the Pirates of the Caribbean world, if only because there historically haven't been many decent pirate games to compete. On the other hand, my most vivid memory of the Monsters University world is just that I had MS MR's Secondhand Rapture album on repeat during the time I was playing it.

But, weirdly enough, the game has little to do with this story--at least, for now.

When Disney Infinity launched, I was attending college with my cousin (not the one I go camping with), and she has been a lifelong Disney fanatic. So when Disney Infinity came along and perfectly intersected her love for the House of Mouse with my longstanding collector's mentality (more on that later), I saw an in. An in on being The Guy, even if my sphere of influence was only this one person.

I don't blame her for what happened next, but I will attest that she was the catalyst behind my declaration:

"I'm gonna collect them all."

I didn't know it at the time, but this was a threat. To myself.

So, I'd decided to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content. But what exactly did that entail? How many figures were there? How much did they cost? What about other merchandise, like posters and controllers and carrying cases?

My solution to many of these questions was to make a spreadsheet.

The figures for the first Disney Infinity game were released in two waves: seventeen characters across five franchises available at launch in August 2013, with an additional twelve characters arriving between October 2013 and April 2014. Figures were priced at $12.99 each, with a few exceptions. Certain characters were available in three-packs for $30, while others were only found in "playset" packs, which paired two characters and their own campaign world together for $35.

Let's do some math.

After factoring in the $75 starter kit, determining which combo packs I would have purchased, and assuming I didn't take advantage of any sales at places like Toys "R" Us or Target (which I definitely did, and that helped a lot), I can say with relative confidence that the total cost of obtaining all 29 figures for the first game was approximately:

That's not a good number.

Now, it's important to note that I did take advantage of several sales, so I would estimate my real investment to be a bit les. Let's call it $400.

But I left out a few things.

First off is Jack Skellington's "special edition" packaging, which provided a custom display case and retailed for slightly more than the standalone figure. Let's call him $20 total (or, $7 extra for the case), because I don't remember the exact price point and it's currently one of the only Disney Infinity items that has increased in value.

Next are the Crystal figures--Toys "R" Us exclusive transparent variants of seven figures that are marginally more powerful than their regular counterparts, but mostly exist purely as collector bait. They were the same price as regular figures, but sometimes a bit harder to track down--especially since I only visited Toys "R" Us for Disney Infinity merch, and only had one store in my area.

Then we have the Power Discs, the other major part of the game's marketing. These plastic tokens could stack on the game's base to provide extra content--powers and costumes from the round discs, and new items and textures from the hexagonal ones. They were sold in blind bags of two discs each, and they were massively over-produced--which, as it eventually turned out, was a recurring problem with the franchise. It wasn't uncommon to see huge sales on racks and racks of blind bags.

A quick thing about blind bag products: they are inherently more desirable to collectors if they are labeled in a way that acknowledges the possibility of completing a set. When I walk past the displays by the checkout stand, even a product I wouldn't normally care about becomes more interesting if it's marked "Collect all 12!" At that point, the product becomes somewhat irrelevant, because they're selling you on the idea of a checklist that you can complete in order to give yourself a sense of accomplishment--even if the accomplishment is having a dozen squishy plastic animals cluttering up your desk. The sentiment is doubly true if something is marked as "Series 1", because not only does it imply a set pool of items to collect, it also acknowledges the possibility for future sets that will have their own checklists, allowing for more potential worthless accomplishments.

I'm not trying to make it seem like I'm a genius for figuring out their marketing strategy. But it's important to note that even though I'm very aware of how it works, they still get me with it all the time. Heck, they even got me with baseball cards once, and baseball literally puts me to sleep.

And, let's face it: when you're twenty-something and feel like you'll never achieve any real sense of social, financial, or professional success because previous generations have shut the doors to stable careers and white picket fences behind them, and your peers have all spent years cultivating social media profiles that project lifestyles inherently more interesting than your own will ever be, marketing tricks like ""Buy this and feel something!" are very effective.

Anyways.

A total of 67 Power Discs were released during that first year, spread out across three series. Of those discs, a handful were Toys "R" Us exclusives, which came in their own specially-marked packs.

Now, I've been collecting trading cards off and on for over twenty years, so I know just how frustrating it can be to try and complete a collection when you can't see what you're buying. Thankfully, Power Discs had a few workarounds. First, you could feel the shape of the discs through the packaging. If you knew you were only missing a couple of round discs, you could filter out anything with a detectable corner. Second, although there were seven "rare" discs that were printed at a lower rate than the others, they featured lenticular labels that could be felt through the packaging as well.

So, yes, I would spend 15-30 minutes standing in Toys "R" Us, fondling pack after pack while I tried to find the most likely candidates to complete my collection. Thank you for asking.

A third workaround, which I don't believe I ever did personally, was that the game's base could detect the discs through the packaging. Therefore, you could buy them, scan them, and return them if they were duplicates (or, if you were just interested in unlocking them once for their in-game badges, you could effectively complete your digital collection for free).

I'm sure that after a while I got sick of dealing with the blind bags and switched to buying single Power Discs off eBay, but for simplicity's sake we're going to assume that I bought exactly as many packs as I needed to get every Power Disc--34 packs at $5 each.

Oh, there's one last figure I forgot to mention.

This is Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey:

And this is the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey variant figure, only available as a giveaway at Disney's D23 Expo in August 2013:

The only difference? The stars on his hat are silver instead of blue.

Only 5,000 of these suckers were made, and they are almost identical to the standard figure released a few months later. But technically, technically, it's a different figure. So I had to have it. My eBay history doesn't go back that far, but I believe I paid $135 for it.

The last item that unlocked in-game content for the first Disney Infinity game--but wasn't actually a Disney Infinity product itself--was the Magic Band, a type of digital pass/wallet for use in the Disney theme parks. I ordered one for... let's say $10. I mean, at this point it's obvious I had no respect for my own money.

And that's how I spent $713 on one video game.

Now, I will freely admit there were a few Disney Infinity products that I made no attempt to collect. These were mostly accessories, though--carrying cases for Power Discs, branded third-party console controllers, and other merchandise that did not qualify as actual game content. I ignored these the same way a Foo Fighters super-fan would collect all their music, but maybe not every t-shirt and poster they've ever printed. They don't really count towards completion.

So, there you have it: one complete Disney Infinity collection. Sure, I was over $700 deep into a game that I'd played for maybe thirty hours, and I didn't really have the space to display all the figures, but I'd done it. I was, at least in my small circle of myself and my cousin, The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

I really, really wish the story stopped here.

On September 23, 2014, a second game released: Disney Infinity 2.0 Edition. And instead of being all over the place with like the first base set, this one had a focus:

You guys, I love Marvel. I'm still working on my familiarity with the comics, but I have a huge place in my heart for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To this day, Avengers: Endgame is one of only three films that has made me shed a tear. So you best believe I was all over this new wave of Disney Infinity content (which also featured a healthy mix of Disney original characters). Plus, referring to it as "2.0 Edition" meant they were using a similar naming convention to the blind bag products I mentioned earlier, so you know I was hooked.

A total of 32 new figures were released over the next year, including two variant figures: a Crystal version of Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey (really getting some mileage out of that mold), and a Black Suit Spider-Man, which for many months was exclusive to the PlayStation Vita starter set (or, in my case, purchased for $34 off eBay). Additionally, four of the new figures had special display cases similar to Jack Skellington's, and I know I accidently doubled up on figures at least once because of that.

Besides the figures, 84 new Power Discs were released. Two of these were only available in a bundle with Aladdin and Jasmine figures, while another two were released as a "Rare Power Disc" pack. Instead of dealing with the blind bags again, I made two bulk purchases to obtain every disc except the two featured in the "Rare" pack. I also had to snag the two special mini-game discs which were included in the alternate starter set:

And, just for the heck of it, I snagged a Frost Giant statue/display stand that originally came with the PlayStation Collector's Edition when I saw it on clearance at a used game store:

After doing some more sticky-note math, I believe I actually spent a little less on the 2.0 releases than the 1.0 collection. Not much less, mind you--we're still talking probably $600-650. But it was an improvement! I'd gotten everything for both installments, with the exception of the two "Rare" discs, which I would just keep an eye out for when I--

Okay, here's the thing.

I don't even like Star Wars.

I've never cared about it. I think some of the characters look cool, and I've seen parts of several of the movies, but as a whole the franchise does nothing for me. So I wasn't exactly stoked about this new iteration of Disney Infinity.

But I said I was gonna be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

And that meant collecting all--*gulp*--fifty-three new figures.

Seven of these were "Light FX" variants, which allowed the glow from the base to feed through the characters and into their lightsabers. They had no in-game differences from their standard counterparts, but they were technically--technically--different figures.

Thanks to the ridiculous number of figures, we're already over $700 before we even get to the Power Discs for this round (which, thankfully, were now sold in guaranteed sets instead of blind bags). Not only was this collection taking a huge toll on my wallet, but I'd long ago run out of space for my collection. Instead of earning a spot on my media shelf, new figures tended to be scanned into my game and then immediately dumped into a large cardboard box where my other figures lived. The process of collecting everything Disney Infinity had been fun for the first year or so, but now it was just a chore--a chore where the only consequences for stopping were good ones. But I plugged on.

As with the previous games, the figures for 3.0 were released steadily over the next several months, beginning with the starter set in August 2015. The holiday sales let me make significant progress on my collection at a reduced cost, but the figures were becoming more difficult to shop for since I was unfamiliar with many of the new characters. But by May 2016, releases were slowing to a trickle, and it was about time to start the hype train for 4.0 Edition. Where would they go next? Would they continue with one of their previous themes, or move into a new realm, like their ABC Studios content? Would we get a Pretty Little Liars playset?

I'm not sure you can imagine how much of a relief this was.

Apparently, all that Mickey Money was being spent on producing far more figures and discs than were being purchased, all in an effort to overrun the competition instead of cultivating a smaller, more stable market share. The cancellation came as a shock to many, from the general public who saw the Disney Infinity logo in every video game department to the hardcore fans who were already drooling over mock-ups of upcoming figures like Peter Pan and Doctor Strange.

Nemo and Dory from Finding Dory were released that June, marking the end of Disney Infinity's release cycle. Despite this, leaks continued to trickle in for what could have been, including a line of deluxe 12-inch figures including Darth Vader, Hulk, and Jack Skellington.

By the time the franchise was cancelled, my collection was almost complete. I was still missing those two Power Discs from 2.0, as well as figures of Nemo and Mickey Mouse (in his standard outfit) from 3.0. I'd even snagged up another D23 exclusive: a costume Power Disc that unlocked a Kingdom Hearts costume for Mickey. At only $82, it was a steal! (This is sarcasm and I'm numb to my own self-loathing.) I was so close, but I needed a break. So, for the time being, I turned my attention to the one last completion task. 

You see, all three Disney Infinity iterations were available on Xbox consoles, as well as Windows 8/10. And that meant there were achievements.

None of the games are particularly challenging, and having a collection of over 100 figures made several achievements very easy to obtain. Some of them took a while, but rarely was skill a factor.

But then in March 2017, the online servers for the entire Disney Infinity series were shut down. This meant that players could no longer join each others' games or share their creations, and any online-based achievements were made permanently unobtainable. Thankfully, we had some warning that the servers would be closing, which was a blessing. The only thing more frustrating than having a game with achievements that you don't want to get is having a game with achievements that are physically impossible to get. Because of this, I made sure to not only get all the Xbox online achievements out of the way before the shutdown, but I even started the Windows 10 version of 3.0 Edition in February 2017 solely to pop the one online achievement present in that game. That way, I would someday be able to not only have a complete physical Disney Infinity collection, but I could also say I obtained every achievement in the franchise.

March 3 arrived, and the servers closed. It was a bummer that they couldn't even allow for players to connect directly, which many games can do without a dedicated server, but ultimately I had little interest in that part of the game. I played it almost entirely solo, and losing connection to the broader web of players was of little importance so long as I'd already gotten the online achievements, the only ones that would be inaccessible later.

This is the profile for the Windows 10 version of 3.0 Edition. Do you see how the number of "discontinued achievements" matches up perfectly with the total number of achievements? And do you see how my achievement total does not?

This is because, for whatever reason, even the single player achievements in the Windows 10 version of the game are tied to the online servers. So when they shut down in March 2017, the entire game was bricked as far as achievements were concerned. Meaning my one achievement on February 22--an attempt to make sure I'd be able to someday get every Disney Infinity achievement--actually condemned me to a game where I am eternally stuck at only 1 of 15 achievements. I will never be able to improve this score. There is no workaround, no cheat, nothing sneaky I can do. It's just...there. A permanent stain.

The complete shutdown of the Windows 10 game turned out to be the last straw for me. I haven't booted up any of the games, even the ones I'm still capable of completing, in over three years.

I still have all my Disney Infinity stuff, tucked away in a large box at my parents' house. I've yet to get those final two figures and discs, and I still can't decide if I ever will.

Part of me loves the idea of someday creating a display of the entire franchise's legacy, a way to commemorate its brief life and my foolish attempt to be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content. I imagine a three-tiered shelf with perfectly-shaped slots for the figures' bases, with LEDs installed under the Light FX and Crystal figures to showcase their designs. The collection would take up more room than it deserves considering how quickly it switched from hobby to obligation, but it's a nice idea.

There's another part of me that just wants to get rid of it all--save the space, recoup a tiny fraction of the two thousand dollars I spent over three years, and acknowledge that it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. The sunk cost fallacy suggests this would be a waste, but we all know it's the healthiest choice. Well, all of us except that little voice in my head telling me I need to be The Guy somehow, but I think we know by now how crazy he is. 

And then there's one last, tiny part of me that wants to go even further.

You see, some of those unreleased figures--Peter Pan, Doctor Strange, the oversized characters--actually made it into early production. There aren't a lot out there--maybe a few hundred Peter Pans, and probably only a handful of the rest--but they exist. That last part of me wants to take this project to its illogical conclusion and track down every last figure, whether they saw a retail release or not. Then I'd truly be The Guy Who Owns All the Disney Infinity Content.

Of course, the prices for those figures are absolutely insane.

But let's be honest, we can all see that I clicked on them.