A New Series Looming?

by Crazy Ivan

In the time I've been with Myachi, I've watched 29 new series arrive.  It works out to about 3 new series each year, though that's just an average.  Back in the early days it was only one new series a year and nowadays they come with much greater frequency.

Generally, when you've been through something 29 times over a 10 year period, it starts to lose its luster.  Doesn't matter much what it is, once you've done it that many times, it's just not as exciting as it was.  I'm sure going to the moon is really awesome, but if you did it 29 times in a ten year period, at a certain point, I'd have to imagine it would seem routine.  Sure, it would still be fun, sure it would still be exciting, but as fun and as exciting as the first time?  I doubt it.

So one would think that eventually a new series coming out would just be more of the same.  New fabrics?  New color?  Been there.  Done that.  But strangely enough, that hasn't happened at all.  If anything, I get more excited about new series as we make more and more of them.

There's a couple of reasons, I suppose.  One is that when I was new to the game and the company, every Myachi was new to me.  Sure, a new series was cool, but it wasn't any cooler than looking over Kid Myach's collection and finding old gems like the Yellow Cat and the Silver Surfer.  All Myachis were new to me at that point, so the new series wasn't any newer than the old series.

Another factor that staves off the monotony is the life-cycle of a Myachi.  I can't tell you how many times we make a new series, I get excited about it, the excitement fades and then I see a really broken in sack from that series and I get excited about it all over again.  When I first started with the company and I saw a new Myachi it was just, "Hey, a new Myachi!  I wonder how good it will jam."  But now, I have so many different questions.  Sure, I still wonder how it will jam, but I also wonder how it will jam when it's broken in.  How will it jam once it's been broken in for a year?  How popular will it be with collectors?  Will it be one of those inexplicable sacks that everybody wants two years from now?  Will it be one of those inexplicable sacks that everybody seems to forget about?  Will it be the first in a long line of similar sacks or will it stand alone as a family of one?  Will it wind up being my favorite from the series?  Will it wind up being my least favorite?  Most of these questions will take months or years to truly answer, so every time I see a new Myachi I know that it's opening up a corridor of mystery that I'll be wandering through for quite some time.

And, of course, the biggest factor that contributes to my ever-increasing excitement is my personal involvement with the series.  When series 1.0 came out, I was brand new to the company and I didn't even see the sacks until they were on the shelf.  I just came into the booth one day and "BAM", there's series 1.0. With 1.1 it wasn't much different.  In 1.2 Myachi Man showed me the prototypes before the sacks were released, but it wasn't until series 2.0 that I had a hand in helping choose the fabrics.

Once you've got a personal stake in it, that changes everything.  I see a fabric and I fight for it to be included in the new series and then I've got to take ownership of it.  If that Myachi turns out to be a bad jammer or an unpopular design, that's my fault.  But then again, if it becomes a legend that everybody is clambering over each other to get, I can take a little pride in it, knowing I helped to make that Myachi a reality.

So as I eagerly anticipate the new series I can't help but wonder if that excitement will ever start to fade.  And who know?  Ten years from now it might be a ho-hum nonevent for me, but considering how stoked I am right now, I find that hard to believe.