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Spider-Man is poised for action and Clark Kent is ripping open his shirt to reveal his Superman costume. Behind them are more superheroes, Star Wars characters, Matchbox cars and Smurfs in all their blazing blue glory.
It’s a collection worthy of an exhibition but this is no shop or museum. It’s the Boksburg home of Cyril Theunissen, an avid collector and dealer who regards toys as more of a passion than just playthings.
To Cyril (48), who grew up the youngest of six kids in Joburg’s Bezuidenhout Valley, being surrounded by toys and models is nothing short of magical.
“My siblings were much older than me so I escaped into a fantasy world with my ThunderCats figures, Panthro and Lion-O.” He didn’t have a lot of toys as a child, Cyril says. “There wasn’t any excess growing up and I had to work for what I had.”
His very first job saw him being paid in toys when he was about 10, he recalls.
“There was a place in Jules Street in Johannesburg called The Old Car Shop. One of the guys who worked there, Gordon Strauss, was a gem of a man. He said I could work in the shop for payment in toy cars. Sometimes a box of a car had a small tear and he’d let me buy it for half price."
“Gordon was shot dead in front of the shop for a stupid cellphone. I couldn’t go back. I sold all the cars I got from that shop – it was too sad to hold onto them.”
Since then, he’s been furiously collecting toys and movie memorabilia, amassing a stash far too big to count.
“It would take me too long to count them all, but I can tell you exactly where I got each one of my toys and when I got it.”
Much of Cyril’s collection is on display in his designated toy room but there are boxes and boxes of toys stacked in his storeroom and garage. He admits none of this would’ve been possible without the support of Maryke, his wife of 27 years.
“Maryke loves my collection but I’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years, like using the grocery money to buy toys. She’d ask me, ‘What are you doing?’ but she hung in there. “It sounds like a cliché, but I don’t think I’d be anywhere without my wife.”
Cyril’s collection helps him cope with his addictive personality which, he says, “can make you do all kinds of stupid stuff”.
“I have a compulsion that I must feed and I need to feed it in a positive way. If I’d been a drinker, I would’ve been an alcoholic. I started gambling and soon I was gambling too much although I haven’t gambled in 12 or 13 years.
“But I can say that if I didn’t have my collectibles, I would’ve been doing something dumb. My love for my toys is what keeps me on the straight and narrow.”
His toys are his sanctuary and a sanctuary of sorts for visitors too. Cyril recounts a recent visit by a brain surgeon for whom he’d been sourcing collectibles.
“He got here shortly after he’d completed a surgery. He just sat here and got lost in the toys – he was like a child again. Toys are like sweets – they make you feel good.”
Cyril has toys dating back decades, such as a rare Herbie VW Beetle and a Batmobile, both still in their boxes. He owns more than 4 000 Smurf figures and thousands more Matchbox cars.
“If there’s a new series of toys, I have to have them all. BP and McDonald’s released a series of Smurfs and I went for it – I got them all. When CNA started selling a line of Marvel superhero figurines, I bought them all.”
Cyril’s movie memorabilia includes an autographed copy of the Jaws script, an autographed poster of Al Pacino and Funko Pop figures of Michael J Fox, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Will Smith, which have also been autographed by the stars.
“Every item I have from a famous person has a certificate of authenticity,” he explains.
Cyril is often asked what his collection is worth but that’s not the point of being a collector, he says. “It’s not about the money. If you start collecting for the wrong reasons, you’ll get greedy. But if you’re truly a custodian of history, you’ll put the item first and you’ll find the most beautiful things on earth.”
Cyril bought his eldest son, Brandon (26), his first collectible toy car, a red Ferrari, when he was three, followed by a yellow Lamborghini.
“There are some amazing stories behind toys. Something like a colour variation can be the difference between a toy car costing R10 and the other being worth millions,” he says.
He would often store toys in the bedrooms of his two younger kids, Juan (23) and Maryna (17).
“But you can’t be too concerned about looking after toys, because it takes the fun out of playing with them,” he says. “I never scolded them for taking a collectible out of a box.”
Cyril’s passion led to him opening a toy shop in Boksburg at one stage but he was forced to close it 10 years ago because of the “bad economy” and now sources and sells toys online. “I don’t really have to search for them,” he says. “It’s as if the toys find me. Over the past few years people have also asked me to source collectibles for them.”
The pandemic has made it harder financially for Cyril to buy as many toys as he’d like to.
Some retailers, like Sideshow Collectibles in the US, allow buyers to pay for their high-end statues and figurines in instalments – handy when you’re forking out as much as R25 000 for an 80cm tall statue of Robert Pattinson’s Batman.
Cyril has his sights set on acquiring a statue of Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom seated on his throne. “The figure, which is quite large, costs R60 000,” Cyril says.
His collection will one day be inherited by his children and grandchildren. As for his future, Cyril’s dream is to open a toy museum “somewhere by the ocean”.
“That’s my goal. All I want is just to look out at the sea.”
