N.Y. Toy King Is Still a Child at Heart : Collector: His apartment-office is a fantasy land of toys and cartoons.

All the big kids want to play at Ira’s place.

Ira--that’s Ira Gallen, age 39-and-holding--collects old movies, cartoons and commercials for profit. His 2,000 toys are strictly for fun.

Visitors gape when they enter his 4 1/2-room apartment-office, a baby boomer’s fantasy land of toys and cartoon collectibles, mostly from the 1950s and ‘60s.

“I consider myself one of the greatest collectors of garbage in the country,” says Gallen, and his foyer alone holds dozens of cherished pieces of “garbage”: a Popeye dime bank, Howdy Doody hat and playing cards, porcelain Tom-and-Jerry figures.

“It’s memory flashes: of me and my neighbor, Ricky, playing in the back yard. Baby boomers are all middle-aged, now,” he says wistfully.

“It was an age of innocence. I grew up with a Donna Reed mother and a father who was a cross between ‘Father Knows Best’ and ‘Danny Thomas.’ ”

Gallen’s living-room walls are lined with shelves. But the hundreds of books--Charles Dickens volumes, television and movie history tomes--are hidden behind the Alvin, Bugs Bunny, Pebbles and Bozo bubble-bath bottles. . . .

Behind the Casper the Friendly Ghost jack-in-the-box, Superman thermos bottle, Davy Crockett lunch box and Chatty Cathy doll. . . .

Behind boxes of “Breakfast With Barbie” cereal and “Bing Crosby Ice Cream”; the Pez Wonder Woman, Sylvester, Bugs Bunny and Lucy.

“I had a lot of these as a kid; I broke them all,” says the Brooklyn native. “Now, I’m going after every toy I ever wanted as a kid. Now, I’m like Mr. Authority, giving lectures on prices.”

Not that the toys are for sale. “They’re mine,” he says, pouting.

When visitors spot their favorites, “It’s like I’m their father confessor; they want to talk about their past,” says Gallen.

Rona Gallen, Ira’s sister and general manager of his company, Video Resources, says she can accurately guess people’s ages by the toys they gravitate toward.

Ms. Gallen, who puts her own age at “Patty Play Pal,” says her brother “used to go with my kids to buy toys, but buy them for himself.”

“My brother just doesn’t want to grow up,” she says fondly.

“I just love collecting,” Gallen says with a shrug. “Without a new toy each month, I just panic.”

He’s been that way since he was 16; he collected 16mm films then. After college, he worked on the crews of such movies as “Death Wish,” “Harry and Tonto” and “Three Days of the Condor.”

The toys entered his life at age 20. He walked past a store that was going out of business and was full of antique toys. He “bought the place out” and has been picking up toys here and there ever since.

At age 30, he chucked show business and founded Video Resources, considered one of the industry’s top tracers and restorers of lost and damaged commercials, cartoons and programs from the Golden Age of Television. He has 10,000 commercials--most of them, mercifully, in a warehouse.

Gallen, who considers himself “a poor man’s Ted Turner,” also produces “Biograph Days, Biograph Nights,” a public-access cable program featuring old TV clips, lectures on collectibles, and media industry leaders--interviewed in his living room, surrounded by toys.

One of his program’s sponsors pays him in cash and toys.

The show has a cult following, and Gallen carries yo-yos to give to fans who approach him on the street.

He produces “Biograph” and other projects in his apartment. The video library and editing room is 25 feet long; a shelf stretches across two walls, lined with toy robots.

Gallen seems happiest there, watching the old commercials. Barefoot and in jeans, he sings along with a 1954 RCA Picture Tube commercial, then launches into a hearty, “He’s feeling his Cheerios!”

In the next room, his sister fields phone orders for videos of old TV clips. It looks like any office: desk, computer, copy machine . . . Popeye and Olive Oil puppets, framed Pinocchio picture. . . .

Betty Boop doll and clock. . . .

Steve Canyon jet helmet. . . .

“Have Gun-Will Travel” board game. . . .