View slideshow: The Adult Collector's Bedroom Diorama

Being Batman is easy, Josh Kraft says. Anybody can be Batman.

“The two things you have to know is you have to be rich, and you have to know a little karate and stuff like that,” Kraft, the manager of The Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, Okla., tells me.

We are standing in the “Back Cave,” (named after the Bat Cave, with a slight change for “licensing reasons”), which is a room filled with Batman memorabilia, from McDonald’s posters promoting 1992’s “Batman Returns” to an action figure-sized Wayne manor that turns into the Bat Cave.

“It’s not even a quarter of the [Batman] stuff that’s out there,” Kraft says.

Kraft shows me an exhibit that displays Kyle Windrix’s figures. Windrix, a Purcell, Okla., native, is a sculptor for NECA, a collectible toy and action figure company. Windrix’s work includes figures from the “Lord of the Rings” films. He’s also sculpted for Jason and Freddy Krueger figures, which are absolutely incredible.

“One of the main things we like to focus on here at the museum is the art of the action figure,” Kraft says. “Because really it’s a bona fide work of art.”

The museum sees more than 200 visitors a day in tour season, and over 40,000 since they opened. People from 30 different countries have come to see the more than 11,000 toys and action figures on display, Kraft says. There’s an area devoted to 12-inch G.I. Joes (a room for the 3 ¾ inch figures is currently under construction; when it is finished it will hold over 400 Joes). A“Watchmen” exhibit displays all 12 original issues of the acclaimed graphic novel. “Star Wars” figurines cover a wall. A children’s area allows kids to play with action figures and dress up in superhero costumes. There is a wall dedicated to Oklahoma cartoonists. Despite the enormity of the museum’s collection, Kraft says it needs a bigger space. The place could be “five times bigger” and still full of toys.

Rick Masson and Ed Baxter approach me when they hear Josh and I talking about the Power Rangers. They are from Tulsa, in their late twenties, and know more about toys, action figures and comic books than anyone I have ever talked to. Masson and Baxter tell me they have been in the museum for three hours. This is their third trip to the museum, and they have three more planned for this year.

“The first time we came here we went through and we looked at everything,” Masson says. “As we went through we went ‘yeah I know that, that, that, that’ – there was one piece in here that we did not know.”

We return to the subject of Power Rangers. Masson gives me a brief rundown of the original Rangers’ current lives.

We start by talking about the death of the actress (Thuy Trang) who played the original Yellow Ranger, who died in a car accident in 2001. He tells me the Pink Ranger (Amy Jo Johnson) was in a movie in which she “took off her top.” The Black Ranger (Walter Jones) “hasn’t done anything.” The Blue Ranger (David Yost) is now a producer. The Red Ranger (Austin St. John) has been in “a few shows here and there” – and Masson once saw him at a car show.

We wander over to the “Adult Collector’s Bedroom Diorama,” which is a mock-up of a bedroom that is entirely covered with action figures – over 6,000 of them, Kraft says. They hang from the wall in their original boxes. They blanket the floor, freestanding and easily toppled. I spot Darkwing Duck, the Ghostbusters car and a Street Shark. A Terminator figure is inside the Star Trek Enterprise. Magneto sits in Chairy the chair, Pee Wee Herman’s favorite piece of personified furniture. Spiderman holds Tigger as though the bouncing tiger were a baby. Underneath the bed, Gonzo is attacked by some sort of wolf creature.

“It’s kind of like a game with this whole thing,” Masson says. “You gotta see how many of these you actually know. I can name probably 90 percent of these toys that I had, or that I played with, as a child.”

Masson and Baxter point out an enormous picture spanning nearly an entire wall of the museum. It depicts the Oklahoma City skyline as it is attacked by action figures.

I ask Masson about his favorite figure in the museum. He points to a particular figurine in the jumble of the bedroom diorama. It’s Soundwave, a Transformer robot that transforms into a microcassette recorder. The figure still has its original tapes.

“We’re both big Soundwave guys,” Baxter says.

Masson pulls up his pants leg to reveal a “Transformers” logo tattoo. Baxter also has a tattoo. It’s the “Thundercats” logo.

They show me two cases which are full of Marvel and DC Comics’ superheroes. They ask if I can name them all. I tell them there is no way in hell. They can – and rattle off a few just to show me.

They tell me about Lobo, a DC character who is “like Wolverine and Superman combined,” Masson says.

“There’s no beating him, because hell nor heaven will take him,” Baxter says.

They tell me about the fight between Aquaman and Namor the Sub-Mariner in the “DC vs. Marvel Comics” four-issue comic series. Aquaman won. He caused a whale to fall on Namor.

But there’s one aspect of the Toy and Action Figure Museum that eclipses everything else, according to Masson and Baxter: There are no Barbies.

“When you get action figures and toys and stuff like that and it’s in a museum, 99 percent of it is Barbie,” Masson says.

Baxter rolls his eyes.

This is a common misconception, according to Kraft. He has to disappoint Barbie people on a regular basis.

“I get a lot of people in here that go ‘where the Barbie’s at?’” he says. “[If you] look at our name it says the Toy and Action Figure Museum. There are a lot of doll museums, and a lot of toy museums, but there’s nothing in the world devoted to action figures.”

Masson and Baxter love the museum, they say. It’s pure nostalgia – and they’re right; it’s almost dizzying, like the results of my first 12 Christmases and birthdays combined into one spectacular building. They could – and do – stay here for hours, just looking, reliving childhood and talking about fictional characters. Both are action figure collectors, and plan to donate their stuff – at least some of it – to the museum.

“I have like a huge toy collection,” Baxter says. “I mean I have boxes and boxes of G.I. Joes and Transformers and all that. And yeah, I could sit there and sell it on eBay, but tell you the truth I’d rather come here and donate it here and have a chance for people who’ve never seen it or remember it to see it again. Something about that makes it so much more.”