Museum of Dumb Guy Stuff (You've Got to See It!)

 

 

MUSEUM OF DUMB GUY STUFF

114 Mechanic Street

Portsmouth, NH

 

 

If you were walking down a street and saw this sign, would you stop and take a look? Of course, you would and so did we.   

 

Most museums take themselves very seriously. Not this one. It’s as advertised, a collection of guy-centric toys, treasures, and kitsch. Call it where tongue-in-cheek machoism meets the desire for perpetual boyhood. 

 

 

You’ll find it in Clay Emery’s basement. He convinced his wife Susan it would be a good idea by promising it would keep him out from underfoot, though Susan is often there to greet visitors as well. (Also two massive but gentle dogs.) Mostly, though, Emery gets artistic help–if that’s the right word–from his good friend Rod Hildebrand who helps him fashion and build dioramas.

 

 

 

There's a bit of everything in Emery’s basement. Some of it is pieces from “kit busting,” a term previously unfamiliar to me. It’s pretty much self-defining. Manufacturers sell action figures and dolls with all manner of official accessories they think you will like. Emery and Hildebrand aren’t afraid to snap the lines they’re given and play figures within other scenarios. Why not have cartoon figures meet the Man from U.N.C.L.E.? They also did plenty of building g of their own; for instance, a coffee filter became part of the dress for an Old West female doctor. (Susan was a doctor in real-life.) 

 

 

 

I especially enjoyed the nostalgia trip as evinced in dioramas featuring Peanuts characters, The Three Stooges, and Crusader Rabbit and his friend Rags the Tiger. (They were the prototypes for Rocky and Bullwinkle and you can sort of see that in them.) 

 

 

 

You will also see Lara Croft and action figures of real people in movie roles such as Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Hanks. Barbies and G.I. Joe dolls get cast in new roles. And, of course, every collection needs some army guys. Both World War II and the French and Indian War get a workout in the museum. And what guy collection would be complete without a dinosaur or two or three? 

 

 

 

The centerpiece is a recreation, complete with toy train set, of Dover, New Hampshire as it was in 1959. Hildebrand even built the rocks used in the set. The trip back to 1959 is appropriate, as the entire museum is one big nostalgia trip.

 

Women need not fear drowning in a sea of testosterone. Irony and self-deprecating humor perhaps, but not testosterone. The greatest thing about the Museum of Dumb Guy stuff is that it’s done with such non-seriousness that you simply can’t see it and leave without chuckling. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

 

Rob Weir