You might have noticed that 62 West Wallaby Street has lacked in a few updates over the past week. Well I can now reveal that this has been because all available time has been put into a very special project...

Back in 2006, when I originally opened this website, I wanted to have a complete list of all Wallace and Gromit merchandise. Within a day of beginning that task, I realised it was an impossible mission for someone running the website just as a hobby.

Of course with our recent relaunch, and the fact that it is now operated around the clock by my Company, things have changed, so I am therefore delighted to open our new-look collectables and toys section!

To begin with, it holds complete reviews on all products that were listed in our old merchandising section (a selection of books, comics and games), but starting on Friday the 27th we will be expanding the section almost daily to cover reviews of, quite literally, hundreds of new products. To start with we will cover Wallace and Gromit products, with each featured company having a day or two in the limelight as their product reviews go up (though products from the Shaun, Timmy, Morph and other Aardman ranges are also in the works).

Because of the sheer volume of Wallace and Gromit items we have split them up into three sections – ‘1989-2006’, ‘Were-Rabbit’ and ‘2007 - 2010’. The ‘1989-2006’ and ‘Were-Rabbit’ sections will hold reviews on items from those periods and will be added to over time. They may, or may not, eventually become databases of every product from those periods of time. These areas are being developed with the help of a number of long-term collectors, and if you fall into that category and would also like to be involved then please get in touch!

The ‘2007 - 2010’ (which will become ‘2007-2010’ next year and so on) does, however, intend to be a complete database of products in those periods – with reviews of every piece wherever possible. These sections will further be split up into ‘books’, ‘toys’, ‘comics’ etc. Some ranges will have their own section, such as the Robert Harrop line of figurines.

To allow the databases to be added to even when reviews can’t be written, we have developed a ‘traffic light’ system. Under each section of products (e.g. ‘books’ etc.) you will find a list of the items with traffic lights next to them. A green traffic light means ‘a review is written’, an orange one means ‘a review is coming’ and a red one means ‘we can’t review it (can you? Get in touch!)’

There are also opportunities to add your own comments on different products and to rate them as well. This is a feature you can now use over the entire site.

We hope this will provide an invaluable checklist to collectors, as well as being a very useful resource for deciding what products to buy. All your feedback is really appreciated on this.

Aardman characters are great fun to have around your house – so why not start a collection today?...