My Shelf Comes to Life

How my hobby grew into something that entertains hundreds of people worldwide daily

I collect Mego 8" action figures, and have for many years. I’d always wanted to set up silly scenes with the figures and post them onthe internet, but for some reason I never did — until September 27th, 2020 came around, that is. On that day, I began a project that would not only bring joy and fun to myself and my family but also to hundreds of people worldwide…and growing!

King vs King is a chess match for the ages

Mego is a company that was created in the 1950s and went out of business in the early 80s. The company, however, was revived in 2018, and so I began collecting the new figures. My 19-year-old son helped come up with the idea to take photos on the shelf of my new desk, and thus OurShelfLife.com was born.

Frankenstein’s Monster reading my newest novel, Leap Year

Together, we plan out the scenes and present them Monday through Saturday, while taking Sunday off. In our world, Elvis is married to Jeannie (from I Dream of Jeannie) and together they have a son, Ralphie from A Christmas Story. (While Elvis and Jeannie are made by Mego, Ralphie is an older figure made by Neca.) Their live-in maid is Alice, from The Brady Bunch, and their friends range from “Weird” Al Yankovic to Batman to Frankenstein’s Monster to Wonder Woman. Not only are we having fun entertaining hundreds of viewers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it’s a nice bonding experience as well.

Ralphie attempts to get that damned cat out of the tree

It’s tough to find appropriately-sized accessories for the figures, however, because of their size. Almost everything is either made for traditional dollhouses (1/48, 1/24, or 1/12 scale) or Barbies, which are 1/6th scale. Megos are roughly 1/9 scale, so finding accessories and furniture for them isn’t easy. We’ve managed to do it, however, as is evidenced by these photos, and sometimes with a little finesse 1/12 and 1/6 can work as well.