City officials respond to announcement
Pauls Valley’s Toy and Action Figure Museum is closing its doors.
The attraction, which has made its home in Pauls Valley for 20 years, will close permanently Aug. 30, according to the museum’s Executive Director and Curator Kevin Stark.
Stark made the announcement Tuesday morning during a press conference at the museum, attended by local media, museum supporters and museum board members.
Reading from a prepared statement, Stark said the museum’s closure is in response to a lack of support from the city of Pauls Valley, specifically and most recently for billboard advertising.
“The reason the museum is closing is the Pauls Valley Tourism Board and the Pauls Valley City Council have pulled the Toy Museum’s billboard advertising and have decided that budgeting for one-day events is worth more to Pauls Valley than a year-round attraction,” Stark said. “Their budget this year only benefits events and each of those events are run by the city. No outside nonprofit organizations are getting any significant funding help from Pauls Valley Tourism.”
According to Pauls Valley officials, the museum was one of a handful of local organizations to miss a March 1 deadline to get event funding requests to the tourism board for the 2026-2027 budget year. The deadline is a new requirement, implemented last year along with other guidelines for tourism funding requests.
Stark acknowledged during Tuesday’s press conference that the museum had not made its annual request before the March deadline, as they were unaware of the new requirement, but said the non-profit museum was not asking for event funding, stating that for the last several years the museum has only received tourism funding for billboard advertising.
“The Toy Museum relies heavily on billboard advertising to bring travelers to the downtown area and at least 80% of our visitors name the billboards as to why they got off I-35 and came into the downtown area to see the Toy Museum. Without the billboards the museum and the whole downtown area lose a vital part of advertising,” Stark said. “Any business that loses 80%—or even 50%—of its customer base is going to find it hard to stay open. So, in losing the billboards, it is the death knell of the museum.”
Toy and Action Figure Museum Board President Ryan Mayberry spoke to the city council during the July 14 regular council meeting regarding the billboard funding. The museum requested $18,000 to pay for annual billboard rental and new vinyl for two billboards located on I-35, one south of Pauls Valley in the Springer area and another north between Pauls Valley and Norman.
During that meeting council members told Mayberry the $18,000 was a “big ask,” and was more than half of tourism’s budget for FY2026-2027.
“We all agree it’s a wonderful spot and a unique addition to Pauls Valley,” Councilmember Bonnie Meisel said, but pointed to the missed funding request deadline.
The council agreed during the discussion that funding the request would be unfair to other organizations that had also missed the tourism board’s deadline. Pauls Valley Tourism Director Tawni Huggans added that tourism board guidelines require tourism- funded advertising to be outside a 60-mile radius of Pauls Valley and questioned whether the billboards met that requirement.
During the meeting, Councilmember Jonathan Grimmett offered to consider options for at least partially funding the billboards with non-city funds, asking Mayberry to bring information about the billboard rental to him at his place of business.
The city issued a statement on social media Tuesday afternoon that read in part: “The City of Pauls Valley is saddened by the announcement that the Pauls Valley Toy and Action Figure Museum will be closing its doors. For many years, the museum has been an important attraction for our community, welcoming visitors from across the country and contributing to the unique identity of Pauls Valley as a tourism destination. We recognize and appreciate the dedication and passion that have gone into the museum over the years.”
The Pauls Valley Tourism Board pushed back against some of Stark’s assertions with their own statement, sent to local media outlets including the News Star, Wednesday morning.
“The Pauls Valley Tourism Board recognizes the Toy and Action Figure Museum as a unique attraction that has brought visitors to our community for more than twenty years. However, the recent statement issued by museum founder Kevin Stark does not present the complete picture of the relationship between the museum, the Tourism Board, and the City of Pauls Valley.
The claim that Pauls Valley has failed to support the museum is not supported by the facts. Over the years, more than $270,000 in tourism funding has been provided for the Toy and Action Figure Museum. That represents a substantial and long-standing commitment from this community,” the statement read.
“It is also important to understand how tourism funding works. The money available to the Tourism Board does not come from the city’s general sales tax revenue. It comes specifically from a lodging tax collected on overnight hotel stays within Pauls Valley. Revenue from restaurant meals, retail purchases, and fuel sales benefits the city through sales tax, but it does not replenish the lodging tax account used for tourism funding.
“As lodging tax collections have declined, the amount available to support attractions and events has become increasingly limited. Clearer guidelines, firm deadlines and greater accountability are necessary so the tourism director and tourism board can prepare a responsible annual budget and evaluate requests consistently,” the statement read.
“The museum’s billboard request was not left out because the board considered the museum unworthy of support or preferred one day events over a yearround attraction. It was not included because it was not submitted by the March 31 deadline established for recurring annual funding requests. Making an exception after the deadline would be unfair to every organization required to follow the same process.
“During the meeting in which the museum’s billboard was discussed, a private donor offered to pay for it. Community members, City Council members, and representatives of other organizations have also offered to help museum leadership identify grants and pursue funding outside the limited lodging tax account. Those offers demonstrate that support for the museum continues to exist throughout Pauls Valley.”
During Tuesday’s press conference, Stark gave a short summary of the museum’s history, which began in 2000 when a large group of Pauls Valley citizens and the Pauls Valley City Council held a series of meetings to guide the future growth of the community.
“The idea was to come up with a plan to improve the town over a ten-year period. That plan was called VISION 2010 and many people volunteered to be a part of the process. People from all walks of life were a part of the planning and several good ideas came out of those meetings. An Arts Council, a Theater Group, an Arts and Cultural Center were all concepts that became a reality over time,” Stark said.
Another component was a desire for unique tourist attractions that would bring people off the interstate to the downtown area.
“I joked with someone on the committee that my studio, with all its toys and action figures had garnered a lot of press over the years, due to the fact that I was designing toys in Los Angeles for major toy companies. As these stories aired people would see my large toy collection and would later seek out my studio and ask if they could come in and see the toys. I had joked that my place was an ‘unofficial’ tourist attraction and maybe we ought to make it ‘official,’” Stark said.
Despite the comment being made in jest, the inspiration for the museum was born and formation of a 501c3 non-profit, a board of directors and eventually a building to house the museum followed. The museum opened to visitors in October of 2005.
Stark’s personal collection still accounts for the majority of the museum’s exhibits, according to museum staff. The remainder of the exhibits include pieces from the private collections of some of the museum’s board members, as well as items that have been donated to the museum by private collectors over the years.
Stark said Tuesday while the museum itself will close at the end of August, no decisions have been made yet regarding future display of the collections currently housed at the museum. The pieces could eventually be incorporated into a virtual or traveling museum. He said it could also be relocated if another community is interested in supporting it and it was the right fit.
“I would like to thank the past and present Toy Museum Board members for their years of dedication to the museum, all the past and present employees, sponsors, volunteers and supporters,” Stark said Tuesday. “But most of all I want to thank all of the visitors from all over the world that have come through the museum over the last 20 years, many of whom have become very close and dear friends. And, though it saddens myself and the board greatly to close the museum, I feel saddest for the thousands of people that have come here over the years to relive the happiest time of their lives, their childhood. And, of course, I’m sorry for the people that will now not get the chance to discover the Toy and Action Figure Museum.”
Lenny Brumley, who is one of the museum’s original board members and a toy collector himself, said following Tuesday’s announcement seeing the museum close is hard.
“I was telling someone earlier, I don’t know if it’s harder to look forward 25 years, or to look back 25 years. When you look forward you have all these big hopes and dreams. We envisioned this sort of magical downtown area with our brick streets and all this ‘wild and crazy’ stuff going on, to borrow from Steve Martin,” Brumley said with a chuckle, before growing thoughtful again. “I really thought Pauls Valley was on the cusp of something big – a growth spurt for our downtown area. When I look back, I think of a lot of positive things the museum brought our town, great events and great visitors. I also look at lots of lost opportunity. Things that just never came to be. I’m disappointed that a lot of that positive energy isn’t here anymore, in the community.”
Brumley said he would like to thank all the volunteers, all the people from the community that have poured into the museum over the last 25 years to make Pauls Valley a special place to be.
“For nearly a quarter of a century, we had a really special thing. Twenty-one years is a good run,” he said. “But, yeah, it is a sad day for me.”
Links to:
Video from Tuesday’s press conference
