TeXt Marks The Spot

When Jure Gavran first got in touch with me about this toy, I liked it straight away. When I heard the story about it, I liked it even more. I now own both colorways of Scapegoat Billy. Of course I had to interview him. This feature also contained some original toy photography by me.

Jure Gavran has got your goat. Your Scapegoat, that is. The Bay Area-based graphic designer created this toy to communicate his stance against the social ill known as scapegoating, a problem which he refers to as “a silly make-believe caricature of the truth.” Until recently, the act of blaming others for one’s mistakes has been faceless and anonymous, but to everyone’s surprise this very act has decided to take form and come out to show his ugly face. He goes by the name of Scapegoat Billy and his sole purpose is to inflict discriminatory blame on the innocent.

Read the rest here.

Last year, I began a segment of stories on ToyCyte called Playing With Politics. I was very interested in the unprecedented outpouring of art inspired by Barack Obama. And then on Inauguration Day, I took the above picture and wrote the following post.

Goodbye retarded cowboy, hello change! It’s hard to describe, but even tedious little details (like watching movers carry furniture out of the White House on CNN) infuse me with a newfound joy. Maybe that’s the thing. Whether its small, sweet news (like Sasha Obama’s Uglydoll) or big, bad news (finally, global warming  is taken seriously), we’re actually interested. President Barack Obama transcends Gen-X cynicism and the short-attention spans of the millenials. His message resonates so deeply within our culture that it inspires political art from the streets to the toy shelves. Shepard Fairey (”Progress Sells Out“) and Ron English (”Abraham Obama Posters“) were just two of the artists who played a big part (officially and unofficially) in the Obama campaign. Their activism generated mass motivation and made for an unprecedented year of playing with politics.

2008 was a dream year for a toy journalist. A handful of really awesome action figures and art pieces joined otherwise apolitical armies of Dunnys and Qees in homes across the world. Jailbreak Toys, already known for their short, but smart Oddfellows figures, unleashed a battalion of 6-inch Barack Obama action figures onto the scene. The “action figure we can believe in” inspired its own art show and an almost sold-out 3D tribute to Shepard Fairey. MINDstyle partnered with Ron English to create a series of vinyl busts based on Ron’s Abraham Obama imagery. The picture below is the never-before-seen, hand-painted, sold-out Presidential version of Abraham Obama, and it’s my personal favorite of the colorways.  GAMA-GO, (whose wooden Deathbot bore an uncanny resemblance to John McCain), released three sell-out runs of their popular Yeti-bama T-shirts. This is all just a fraction of the great art and terrific toys we saw in 2008.

Today is a day of historical significance, and hopefully also one that ushers in positive changes. As the pundits are fond of saying, today is a day of celebration, and the real work begins tomorrow. For now, enjoy a bunch of my favorite photos from the year in Obama toys. We’ll be posting news of toy sales and toy-related inauguration events all week long.

See all the toys here.

When I look back on my writing from the past year, it’s clear I wrote a lot about Bay Area rising art star Alex Pardee. Whether the prolific artist was doing shirts, books, film, prints or group and solo shows, I was there. On that last note, everything lead up to Letters From Digested Children. And Alex is a nice, generous, intelligent, talented and quirky guy: truly the best combination.

Last night, Alex Pardee opened his Letters From Digested Children solo show at San Francisco’s FIFTY24SF. The central theme of the exhibition is missing children who have been eaten by monsters. Since monsters have slow digestive systems, many of the children are still alive inside their stomachs. While the children wait for salvation, they scrawl S.O.S. letters. Alex collected these missives, along with police reports and portraits of some of the “more popular” monsters, transforming the gallery into a walk-in milk carton. This is concept art and is best experienced to be appreciated. For our readers around the globe, I’ll try to explain.

Take Veronica Pickles, for example. She was last seen by a neighbor with an overactive bladder heading toward a Castle Greyskull-like structure known as The Mouth. When the ground “shook like Michael J. Fox,” the neighbor called the Cardboard City police. Here, Alex Pardee uses his entire arsenal: signature monster art with great storytelling and a generous peppering of pop culture.

Read about and see the show here.