>>11468813
Isn’t it just the same as a hobby like collecting art prints? Even though I think a lot of /toy/, myself included, prioritise interacting with these figures, and enjoy posing, photographing, customising, hunting down their heart’s desire for a good price, trading, working with others to customise etc. if you’re curating a collection of little aesthetic things you love, it’s still not a totally consumptive hobby if you interact meaningfully, collect with some thought and is like most hobbies: a mixture of creative and consumptive.

I think when it becomes fully consumptive is when you start hoarding, or have a hundred unopened boxes you’re nowhere close to opening with new things arriving daily, when you buy things just to keep up trends or copy popular online creators or you’re dropping thousands on buying a full collection just to show off to others.
If you go on sites like plebbit there are a lot of younger collectors (not just figures, things like statues, books, manga, DVDs, consoles, games etc) who are going into debt to buy a massive collection all at once, which turns it into full on consoom.