Meet the man who built world’s largest collection of Spice Girls dolls: ‘I’ll never be finished!’
Adam Weatherly with some of his Spice Girls dolls. (Supplied)
Adam Weatherly has a unique claim to fame – he owns what is most likely the world’s largest collection of Spice Girls dolls.
His home in West Virginia in the United States is full of Scary, Posh, Ginger, Baby and Sporty figurines. It’s become his life’s work – and it all started in the late ’90s when the Spice Girls were at the height of their fame.
“I was 11 when the Spice Girls came to America and were getting popular, so the moment I heard on the news that they were releasing dolls, I was like, ‘I have to have them all,'” Adam tells PinkNews.
“Little did I know where that would lead.”
Adam can still remember getting his first Spice Girls doll. It was 14 July, 1998, and his dream came true thanks to a heartwarming act of parental dedication.
“As most of my stories go, we were always dirt poor,” Adam recalls. “[My father] took me to Kmart and there were no dolls, and I just remember I could hardly keep from crying in the store.”
An employee told them to drive 45 minutes to the next Kmart store – but they were out of luck again. The Spice Girls dolls were out of stock there too.
And then came a stroke of luck.
“We had to get oil for the car and I remember as we were leaving the car section I looked down at the bottom of the aisle and there’s Victoria. She was my first one.
“That one always means a lot to me just because it shows me how much my parents loved me. It always makes me slightly emotional.”
Spice Girls made Adam feel like it was ‘OK to be different’
Cut to today and Adam has more than 600 Spice Girls dolls – they fill an entire room in his house. The project has been so important to him because of how monumental the Spice Girls have been in his life. They made him feel like he could be himself.
“I think it’s the same for all Spice Girls fans – they made us all feel like it was OK to be different,” he says.
It was that adoration that prompted Adam to start collecting dolls early on.
I just hope one day the Spice Girls get a permanent museum like Abba and I can donate all of the dolls to it.
“It may sound nuts, I just always knew that I had to collect these dolls,” Adam explains.
Once he got on eBay, he started collecting in earnest, at which point he learned just how many variations there were. He has since started collecting prototypes.
“It’s just what I wanted to do – someone needed to preserve all this stuff. I just hope one day the Spice Girls get a permanent museum like Abba and I can donate all of the dolls to it. That may be ambitious, but I feel like they deserve one.”
He’s driven to keep going, out of his love for collecting, but also out of his love for the Spice Girls. He’s sick and tired of the tropes and stereotypes that abound about doll collectors – people like to view them as “weird or creepy”, which detracts from the artistry behind the dolls, Adam explains.
“I am weird, but not because I collect dolls – it’s completely normal,” he says. “Adult men and women work on these – they are art. I don’t see it being any different than baseball cards or car collectors. It’s something that makes me incredibly happy.”
That’s not to say being a collector is all fun and games – Adam admits it can be challenging when he’s stuck in a bidding war on eBay. It’s also not easy to find space in his house – he doesn’t have quite as much room as he’d like to store the dolls, but he makes it work.
“Sometimes I get stressed,” he laughs. “But ultimately they make me happier than almost anything. It’s just fun to hunt for them. I’ll never complete it, I’ll never be finished. Every time I think I’m close, I discover something else that I didn’t even know existed.”
I’m lucky because no one has ever made me feel bad about collecting – ever.
Adam knows his hobby is unique, but he hasn’t faced any negativity from loved ones. He’s grateful for that – he often hears from male collectors who tell him their parents refused to buy them dolls as children, repeating the old adage that dolls are for girls.
“I just think that’s so sad. My parents wish they had the money to buy us everything we wanted – I don’t know why all parents can’t be like that. Just love your kids and support them. If it’s not physically harmful then why not?
“I’m lucky because no one has ever made me feel bad about collecting – ever. And growing up in West Virginia, people have this idea in their heads that it’s [West Virginia] really close minded and that kind of stuff isn’t supported. I know it’s there, it’s everywhere, but I’ve never had to deal with that thankfully.”
Dolls are an art form too – and they should be celebrated
Now that his doll collection is 600 strong, Adam wants to show the world the dolls are an art form of their own – and they deserve to be celebrated.
He’s eager to honour the creators who made the dolls, including those who have since died.
I just want to see those people recognised so much because I know how hard they worked.
“I’ve got to know the people who worked on them and I just want to see them acknowledged for how much hard work they put into them,” he says.
“Sadly one of the ladies who had worked on sculpting their faces, and she sculpted the Britney doll faces too, she passed away at the beginning of the year and that broke my heart. I just want to see those people recognised so much because I know how hard they worked.”
The dolls’ creators faced their fair share of challenges along the way, including racism and sexism. Adam wants their struggles, as well as their artistry, to be remembered.
“There were a lot of terrible things – [retailers] thought they were oversexed, they didn’t want them for kids. There were retailers that told them they didn’t want ‘the Black girl’ – just the four of them, not [Scary Spice], and [the creators] were like, ‘no, we’re not doing that’.”
Despite those hurdles, the Spice Girls dolls remain the biggest selling celebrity dolls of all time.
“I just want to see those people acknowledged and not forgotten,” Adam says.
Collecting the dolls also allows Adam to pay tribute to the Spice Girls themselves. All these years on, the group still means so much to him.
“The fact that they weren’t afraid to be themselves – I just think they represent everything the world should be.”
