"Claire Peterson is not your typical Transformers collector, most are male. But as the daughter of an engineer, she loved working with her hands, and she became enamored with Transformers when she was still a child. That was in the early 1990s, during what is called the Generation 2, or G2, Transformers era. Generation one started in the 1980s. Now, Claire collects everything from G one and G two to the B Wars, the Beast machines, and beyond. Claire also buys and sells Transformers at local and regional conventions as well as online. She has about 1,100 on display and a little more than 2000 in storage, each of them unique. Out of all the cartoon, TV shows, and movies that have come out of the franchise, the 1986 animated film “Transformers” is one of her favorites. She says she is devastated, though, that she still does not have the full Devastator combiner set. She and our expert, Ben Talmage, had already crossed paths, having met at a local Michigan toy convention."

"Mike Lefevre was five years old when his father brought his little sister home from the hospital, holding her in one hand and a plush Snoopy in the other. For Mike, it was love at first sight , for both his sibling and her stuffed toy. And from that moment on, America’s favorite anthropomorphic beagle became a fixture in Mike's life. By the time he was ten, he had acquired more than a dozen Snoopy collectibles. Today, his collection contains more than 15,000 Snoopy items. And they are on full display for all to see in a museum he has built at his waterfront restaurant in suburban Detroit. Our pop culture toy expert, Johnpaul Ragusa, has his own connection to the Peanuts character. His wife is an avid fan, and his home is filled with Snoopy paraphernalia."