[floatl][/floatl]Boston Globe NorthWest people
Josh Bernard of Dracut traces his interest in Japanese animation to his childhood, when he was a loyal viewer of "Speed Racer," "Force Five," and "Voltron." His collection of the "cool robots" he admired on television gradually became more sophisticated, leading him to travel twice to Tokyo in search of rare items. These trips inspired the book, "Tokyo Underground: Toy and Design Culture in Tokyo," which he cowrote last year with Brian Flynn of San Francisco. Bernard is also founder of CollectionDX.com, an online source of reviews, news, and collections of Japanese and American toys, robots, and action figures. The "show-and-tell" portion of his website features some of Bernard's thousands of toys, not all of which fit in the toy room he specified as a requirement when he and his wife [wife?] recently moved from Chelmsford. While he began building his collection through eBay in 1998, Bernard hopes his book will help others follow in his footsteps to "the motherland" where his favorite toys and robots originate...more...