“Bills’ Creations” are the Happiest YouTube Videos Evah!

I stumbled onto a real gem of a collection of YouTube videos last night and just had to share. The videos are shot by Bill, aged 60, a retired Vietnam war veteran and former Army Ranger from Richmond, Virginia. Simply put, the man plays with toys.

But oh, what toys! He has converted his basement into his own playland, and he builds models, K’Nex toys, Lego Villages, miniature roller coasters, electronics whiz kits and toy robots. His previous creations surround him as he films his newest toys, freshly assembled and ready for the camera.

He’s prolific too. As of today, there are already 560 movies of Bill playing with his toys uploaded to YouTube since October of 2006.

Bill’s videos are made very well, and always features several unique qualities. First, he plays great music in the background. If he is playing with an action/adventure toy set, the music is either from the action genre or from the movie itself. For instance, with pirate toys, the music is from Pirates of the Caribbean. For the Raiders of the Lost Ark toys, he plays the Raiders themes.

His camera-work is excellent too. He gets close zooms of his handiwork and takes his time showing all of the details. He will turn his models over so you can see the bottoms, and will pop the hoods on cars and boats to show you the engine compartments. He takes time to demonstrate the working parts of the models too. If it has an engine, he will run it. If there is a pitfall trap built into a Lego playset, he will operate it. If the model has snakes to drop on the hero, by God, he drops the snakes.

Then halfway through the video comes his happy HA-HA-HA’s, his deep joyous voice booming his welcome, and his explanation of what he built, and his exclamation of “Isn’t that neat??!” He goes over the box, the model number, the number of pieces, how long it took to build, the difficulty level, and details of the instruction booklet.

His sign-offs are unique too. He shows his waving robot and then a googly-eyed monitor toy, and always says, “And guys! Get a critter!” He then flash pans to a little Lego man holding a smiling face sign and admonishes his viewers to “Think! Happy thoughts!” Then he pans to a pool of blinking diodes, softens the focus and says, “See ya later alligators!”

I spent two hours watching his videos of his amazing toys, thinking happy thoughts, and I think I know what I want to do with my future retirement days now.