Prime-Video - A toy store near you Season 2: Let's talk with Brian Volk-Weiss

By Mulder, Burbank, 11 december 2020

This Christmas, take a little time to appreciate the toy stores that made your childhood dreams come true with season two of The Nacelle Company’s pandemic-produced docuseries A Toy Store Near You, available on Amazon Prime. Created by Brian Volk-Weiss (Founder and CEO of The Nacelle Company), the series takes a deep dive into one of the wackiest-yet-tight-knit communities in pop culture - independent toy stores - as well as the treasures you can find in them, and the unique personalities behind them.

Brian Volk-Weiss is an American film and television producer and director. He is the founder and current CEO of The Nacelle Company and Comedy Dynamics (a subsidiary of Nacelle). He is also the creator, producer and director of the current Netflix series, The Toys That Made Us and The Movies That Made Us, as well as television specials, Kevin Hart's Guide to Black History (also Netflix) and Discontinued. As part of Comedy Dynamics, he has produced and directed numerous stand-up specials and comedy albums for actors such as Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan, Ali Wong, Tiffany Haddish, Ilana Glazer. Brian Volk-Weiss has also produced several television shows including Join or Die with Craig Ferguson, Stevie TV and Animal Nation with Anthony Anderson. He is also executive producer for the revival of the 1992 television series Mad About You.

Q: I'm very pleased to speak with the founder and CEO of Nacelle, the creator of the incredible documentary series The Toys That Made Us, The Movies That Made Us and recently A toy Store near you. I'm a huge fan of your series because I've been a movie fan and toy collector since I was a kid (Kenner Star Wars, Hot Toys, Neca, Hasbro Marvel Legends, Masters of the Universe...). If we go back to the past to begint, can you tell us about your career and how you came to be today at the head of Comedy Dynamics and The Nacelle Company ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : I just want to make sur you're aware that they booked me for half an hour so I want to make sure I get to all the important questions. If i'm understanding the accent correctly, i've just like you, i've been a toy collector my whole life and i was very lucky i was doing a lot of stand-up comedy specials for Netflix and one thing led to another and they knew that i was a toy collector so they allowed me to make a show about toys and i guess it did okay and they've let me make more. That's how it works

Q: Season 2 at the Toy store near you is coming up on December 25th, it's a perfect program for a great Christmas and we'd like to know what are your main inspirations for creating this new and amazing series ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : When the covid crisis began, i was talking to a friend of mine who owns a toy store in Burbank and i said to him I go what happens if there's a quarantine and he said well our income will go to zero but our costs won't change and as soon as i heard that i was like we should do a show to help raise money for the stores but also give exposure to the stores because that could help them during coronavirus and that the inspiration was that Conversation.

Q: Can we say that The Toys That Made Us, The Movies That Made Us and A toy Store near you series are based on the power of nostalgia ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : yes, i mean absolutely like you know everybody uses the word nostalgia now like it's a popular word to use but i just have a real appreciation for the craftsmanship that went into the toys in the 70s 80s and 90s and that's really and the movies as well with The movies that made us and we're just really trying to celebrate that story.

Q: Can you tell us about the transition from comedy specials to documentaries ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : you know we had to build a lot of infrastructure to do the stand-up comedy and that same infrastructure from the editing bays to the cameras like it was the same and i've always loved documentaries so it was just this kind of thing where it was like we already are doing all of these things for stand-up comedy well why don't we just do them for documentaries and there was no reason not to so we just did it.I mean it's really that simple.

Q: Season 2 of The Toys That Made Us, A toy Store near you shows the importance of beautiful toys from our childhood like Kenner Star Wars, Mattel Masters of the universe, Hasbro Transformers. What was that toy you always wanted to have and why ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : When i was little, my parents were very supportive of my Star Wars toys but they were not supportive of anything else toy wise so my friend Tyson had all these GI Joe vehicles and i always wanted a hovercraft which i have now, i always wanted a hydrofoil which i have now. So those were the toys i really always wanted that i didn't have they were really usually GI Joe related when i was a child.

Q: In this season 2 A Toy Store Near You, we're going to discover five new toy stores: Kokomo Toys, Farpoint Toys, Bric-A-Brac Records and Collectibles, Batcave Comics and Toys . How do you choose these stores? Which is the ideal toy store for you ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : When The toys that made us season three came out, we had partnered with about 50 toy stores to celebrate season three so when we decided to do a toy store near you we sent an email out to that group and of that of those 50 stores i think about 30 signed up to do a toy store near you. Then we put out a press release that we
were doing this to the whole world and we got 20 more stores to come on board from that press release.

Q: What can you tell us about the Super7 episode ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : i mean super 7 is like i say it in the episode but like the last time i went there which was about a year ago like i went in buy stuff from super 7 all the time online on Ebay or directly from their store so when i went into the store first of all i was hoping to see Brian but also i you know i was like oh i'm in San Francisco i have an hour to kill i'm just gonna go in, i'm not gonna buy anything because I always buy i bought like 20 figures like i can't not buy his stuff because it's just they make the best stuff but also unlike every other toy store we're covering they're the only toy store sort of that makes their own product so it was very cool to have the show be about the store but also the process in which they make their own toys.

Q: I read a lot in preparation for this interview and I recently discovered that you have seven identical black Volcom polo shirts and jeans that you wash once a week so you don't think about his work clothes. Can you tell us how this great idea came about ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : i don't know where this came from it's so funny that is not true. I never said that where did you hear that like it like i all i said i in one interview i was like i wear the same black shirt every day not the same shirt. I have like 10 copies of that shirt but i never said that about my pants like that is not true at all like i have lots of pants they don't all look to say oh no i'm not mad it's just so funny to me. This is like the third interview this week where they're like why do you wear the same i'm like no so you you heard it here i do have more than one pair of jeans i have a lot of pants that are not jeans so but the black ironically i'm not wearing it right now but it is true i have one type of black collared shirt and i do wear those uh every day during the week.

Q: Can you tell us how the shooting of season 2 of A toy store near you went ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : we actually did not shoot season any of the shows. Every episode was shot by the owners and the employees of the stores so we would send them a list of what we needed and they would film everything then they would send us the footage we would edit it together and do the graphics and everything and the music and whatever and then we distributed it. But the stores shot all their own footage.

Q: As a toy collector, I'm really interested to know how you built your collection of over 2000 vintage toys ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : It's true that I have two thousand toys.

Q: The creation of your episodes is always very inspired and successful. Where do you get the inspiration to create these episodes?

Brian Volk-Weiss : thank you for saying that. Our inspiration really is we're trying to put people that watch the show in the store. So everything that we're doing is to try and raise money and give exposure to the stores. So, by transporting the viewers to the store You know hopefully they'll of course enjoy the episode but if we're lucky after the episode they'll go online and buy something from the store.

Q: What have been your main challenges this season ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : You know. I’ll be honest with you we really i know this sounds fake and a lie but it's not. We really haven't had any problems all the stores shot their footage perfectly we're always asking for more because as we're editing we start to realize what we're missing and we've asked i mean one store we asked them to shoot like 14 times more things and they never complain, they're always happy to do it and we're so grateful for that.

Q: I'm curious as to why you are going to choose President Ulysses S. Grant if you choose to sit down and talk with him ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : he's my favorite american president and you know what i love about him is you know the first part of his life was pretty much all failure you know when the civil war started, he was practically homeless and he was broke and then three years later he's the head of the whole army. Seven years later, he's president of the United States and i always find that very inspirational because my job is 99% failure so it's sometimes when you have so much failure it's easy to get sad and you know looking up to people that were successful despite staggering failure i always find that to be something that inspires me.

Q: Being on lifelong diabetes treatment myself, I'd like to know how your Apple Watch has helped you to manage your diabetes and get you into the best shape of your life ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : what the watch does that's so brilliant is and it's funny nobody talks about this, like Apple doesn't market this but i got one as a gift i didn't even want it and what the watch does is it takes advantage of your natural competitive nature so it when you get the watch it asks you a bunch of questions how much do you weigh, what do you want to weigh, and you put that all in how tall are you and then every day you have a goal but so you have to make the goal and if you're competitive at all, you don't want to lose, but the other thing that it does and this is really how you loose the weight it gives you a monthly challenge and they're hard like they're really hard so like my current challenge this month is, I have to do, I have to burn 32000 calories in december but it literally says to you on december 1st hey brian in November great job you burnt 25 000 calories your goal this month is 32 000. i was like what but i'm so competitive every day i'm like fighting to burn i got to do like 3500 calories a day to hit that number so that's that math is screwy but trust me, that's what i got to do.

Q: I'd like to know what it's like working with Zac Efron (Netflix's Down to Earth with Zac Efron), The Rock (Disney +'s Behind the Attraction), Leo DiCaprio (History Channel's Grant) and others ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : Zac Efron is the nicest, i mean, he's just so wonderful, he's so thoughtful he's so funny. One of the first times i ever met him, i was telling him my daughter was a huge fan of high school musical and he was like oh that's great then we had like a three-hour meeting at the end of the meeting as we're leaving, he turns to me and says hey do you want to take a picture with me to give to your daughter, like who does that. Dwayne Johnson, you're going to find this hard to believe Dwayne is funnier, i hope he doesn't mind me saying this, funnier in private than he is in public like he had me like i laughed so hard and you know it's funny the first time I ever met him i was interviewing him and before the interview while they're putting on the makeup i said to him i go hey i just want to tell you i love the episode of voyager that you did and like i even said to my friend when I saw that episode, this guy's the next Schwarzenegger, like i knew it. So we do the interview it's like an hour later he gets up he's like thanks everybody and then he like just he's like Bria,n let me tell you some more about that voyager episode you may not know some things and here he is he's the biggest movie star in the world so busy he's got a his finger in a million pots and then he just sat there talking to me for 20 minutes about a Star Trek thing he did 25 years ago so it's just wonderful. We're very blessed we get to work with the best people.

Q: Can we look forward to a new season of The Toys That Made Us, The Movies That Made Us A toy store near you ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : so for The toys that made us all i can say about that is stay tuned and then for movies that made us we just had two new ones come out last week the holiday movies that made us and we have 10 more episodes we're making for 2021.

Q: What can you tell us about your best memories of the San Diego Comic-con ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : my best memory from comic-con that's easy, i was in a green room once with a lot of very famous people and one of those famous people was Samuel L Jackson and i was in a conversation and across the room i see Samuel L Jackson getting heading towards leaving the room and as he's leaving the room he puts on a Mace Windu mask and walked out and what i found out later when i was talking to his publicist, he's a big geek like us and he likes to see comic-con but he doesn't want people mobbing him for autographs so he literally puts on a Mace Windu mask and just walks around and nobody even knows it's him.

Q: What can you tell us about Behind the Attraction for Disney Plus ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : all I can tell you is we're making it with Dwayne Johnson it is a deep, deep dive into the rides or attractions at the park and it it i hopefully if we did our job right everybody's gonna have fun but also learn a lot about some of their favorite attractions.

Q: What are your current projects ?

Brian Volk-Weiss : like i said we're doing you know The Movies that made us for 2021. we got 10 more episodes. We're finishing up behind the attraction, we're doing a big series about the 55th anniversary of Star Trek i can't say with who or anything but we're doing that right now. We do a show for Bet+ called all the way black and we have more see we have at least two more seasons of a toy store near you coming out in 2021. We're doing some other stuff but i can't talk about that yet.

The first season included episodes from stores all across the world, including Bill Galaxy Toys and Collectibles in Portland, Oregon, Spiral Toys in Shibuya City, Japan, Leicester Vintage and Old Toy Shop, in Leicester, England, 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Lawrence, Kansas, and Cherry Bomb Toys in Victoria, British Columbia. A majority of the proceeds from the show will go back to each store that is featured. The complete first season of A Toy Store Near You is available to watch now on Amazon Prime Video, Youtube Vimeo and other select platforms. A Toy Store Near You is sponsored by eBay, Death Wish Coffee, Super7 and Tribeca Film Festival.

We would like to thank Brian Volk-Weiss for this incredible interview as well as Samantha LaPare.