TeXt Marks The Spot

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This 5-part series is one of my favorite pieces of writing about toys.  I researched, polled and interviewed my way to a report on the controversial topic of “blind box packaging.” The feature is divided into segments on toy companies, toy fans, toy stores, toy artists and toy bloggers.  A few excerpts (and some exciting pingbacks from Poland and the Netherlands!) are included below. Please click the links to read the whole story.

Toy Companies

Blind boxes allow toy companies to take chances and produce more figures; toy stores don’t have to worry about getting stuck with unpopular figures. Like gumball machine toys, blind box toys keep fans coming back for more. Rarely does a person buy a single blind box, get exactly what he/she wants and call it a day. Rather, people buy blind box toys by the handful or case, going back for more in the quest to collect the entire series. This is, of course, great for toy companies and toy stores.

And it’s good for some toy fans too. Popular reasons for peoples’ enjoyment of blind box toys include: the element of surprise, the thrill of the chase and the social connections from trading duplicate or undesirable figures. Blind box toys also function as a gateway: they introduce people to artists and a new medium for collecting art.

However, unlike gumball machine toys, blind box designer toys typically cost around $8, with some as much as $30. For completists (collectors who want a whole set), the thrill and social factors take a backseat to completing a series. Eventually some casual fans graduate to being serious fans. At this point, a schism opens up between the newly minted collector and the toy company.

Toy Fans

When figures are sold in blind box assortments, there are still ways around buying in the dark. We can buy toys on the secondary market (which includes eBay and fan forums) or through open box retailers (stores that open the boxes). Specific figures are often priced higher according to ratio or rarity. Sometimes people take advantage of this and buy speculatively so that they can resell (or “flip”) the hottest toys for big profit. This makes an exciting chase for some fans and a frustrating hassle for others. The alternative is buying blindly and paying for toys we don’t want or already own.

There are precedents that manage to strike a compromise for people who like and dislike blind boxes. David Horvath issued his latest Uglydoll series as a case containing all 12 action figures, each concealed in a blind box. Serious collectors can obtain the whole series easily enough by buying a case; yet the blind box fun still exists for fans who want only a few figures. This strategy is win-win for any company whose objective is to get a set of figures into a fan’s hands. Other ways of increasing the warm, fuzzy feelings? Limit the number of duplicates  (ala Artoyz Elements Alpha Series) or include all standard figures in a case (like MINDstyle’s Scavengers). Mini-figures can also be sold in window boxes, clear bags and on blistercards. In light of these possibilities, a case with 5 or more of the same figure starts looking more like a case of greed.

Toy Stores

The fine folks who own toy stores are themselves also customers: They buy the toy companies’ products before we walk through the door. The toy companies have a vested interest in taking care of the toy stores, but they also control the merchandise and which shops get the hot items. I was concerned that toy retailers wouldn’t want to go on the record for this story—that they’d be too worried about offending the toy companies or alienating the fans. But blind box stories, like blind boxes themselves, are full of surprises.

Toy retailers are an eloquent and gregarious bunch who are also collectors and members of our community. Rotofugi, Ningyoushi, Toy Tokyo, Shoparooni, Red Hot Robot, Lulubell Toy Bodega, Wizard Sleeve Toys and hometown heroes, The Sausalito Ferry Company all gave their two cents (sometimes more) for the story.

Toy Artists

On Monday, we began a conversation about blind box toys, and we started at the source: the toy companies. Kidrobot and MINDstyle both said that their fans enjoy the blind box experience. On Tuesday, we talked to the fans and reaction was split: with casual fans liking the fun experience and serious collectors experiencing the blind frustration. Wednesday’s topic was toy stores–largely in favor of blind boxes, but also presenting alternatives. That got me wondering: Do toy artists enjoy the blind box experience? Here are Doktor A, Joe Ledbetter, David Horvath, Jon Burgerman, MCA, Huck Gee, Sket One and Buff Monster (who have over 20 blind box series between them) on the topic.

Toy Bloggers

At this point, you should be well-acquainted with my stance on blind box toys. When it comes to this topic, I don’t like surprises. I like compromises. It’s possible to please casual fans and serious collectors and still make money. Maybe we don’t all agree on everything, but I think we know one company artists won’t be working with anytime soon. As Huck Gee said: “Keep it simple, don’t be greedy, have fun.” When companies take care of their artists and fans, we notice. And so does karma. A certain toy made it all the way to the White House. Coincidence? I think not. But enough about what I think. Here are some final thoughts from the biggest mouths in toy blogging: Andy from ToysREvil, Saki from I Heart Cool Stuff, John from SpankyStokes, John from SuperPunch/ToyCutter, Robby from Albotas, Colette from Tomopop, Collin David from here, there and elsewhere, Brian Slivka of Plastic and Plush and Kirkland Jue from ToyBot Studios.

Pingbacks Galore! (Thanks!)

This was a lot of fun. I got to work with Johan, a French blogger, and my mother, a French translator. It didn’t hurt that the French artist, SKWAK, is one of my favorites.

SKWAK is back! Technically, he never went away. He’s actually been pretty busy, and his current schedule includes new toys, new tees and a show. Johan of the French art blog Some Cool Stuff recently interviewed SKWAK. If you can read French, bookmark his site and read the entire interview here. Alas, I cannot read French. Luckily my mom is fluent and was happy to translate. Johan asked SKWAK excellent and thoughtful questions about his art, style, mind and world. SKWAK reports back on an 8-inch Dunny with Kidrobot (!), an upcoming mini-figures series with MINDstyle (!!), an American animation project (!!!) and maybe even some porn (???). So with props to Johan and my mom (who is now a SKWAK fan and too-kindly likened my habit of cramming pages with words to Skwak’s style of “too much”), here’s the latest news from the Maniac World.

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.

This was a great story that saw a local company turning to designer toys to support a good cause. Of course, I had to write a feature on it.

17FEET is a small and mighty interactive design group based in San Francisco. They’ve worked with heavyweights including Microsoft and Samsung and local favorites like CLIF Bar and SFIndiefest. When it came time to send holiday gifts to their clients, they looked past the traditional offerings of logo’d t-shirts and fruitcakes. A passion for designer toys had been brewing like a constant drip of Peet’s coffee in the office, and with that in mind, the Feeters set their designs on combining that interest with feeding San Francisco’s hungry.

Read the rest here.

I’ve been expounding the virtues of Letter Pressed for a while. Their Artist Series reads like a Who’s Who of the vinyl toy community: Joe Ledbetter, Jon Burgerman, Nathan Jurevicius, Bwana Spoons… In theory, every one of us should own something letterpressed. In practice, as with paint colors and Venetian blinds, you need to see a sample. While I want my words to convey the elegance of the paper and the clean, vibrant impression of the art, you need to touch these for yourself.

To that end, Letter Pressed’s Mark Begley provided one lucky ToyCyte reader with a pack of hand-numbered Cool It letterpressed cards by Le Merde. Check out the interview and contest.

In the fall of 2008, times were getting tough. There was hope, but it couldn’t come quick enough for many people. I couldn’t save anybody from a foreclosure, but I could partner up with a toy store from Taipei and a toy designer from Tokyo to make people laugh with a contest of truly lowbrow proportions.

I don’t typically go for potty humor, but I’m crazy about Touma’s Pooty figure. There’s something so absurd about a skunk off-gassing a vinyl fart cloud. Every time I look at them, they make me smile. To that extent, we’re giving away three of the figures in exchange for a laugh. The funniest comment will receive the rare all-black Pooty figure signed, dated and doodled as a collab between Touma, ToyCyte and Paradise Toy Land (who donated the figure for the global good of rebuilding the ozone layer one poot at a time). Two runners up will be awarded the standard pink (with grey) and standard blue (with purple) Pooty figures, also signed and dated by Touma. All figures are 8 inches tall, produced in China by Headlock Studio and feature articulation at the poot. Each one comes in a window box with a Paradise canvas tote bag.

Read the interview and comments and laugh your ass off.

Toys Are Us: A Revolution In Plastic is a documentary on the vivid world of vinyl toys, the people who make them and the collectors who love them. Produced by X-Ray Films, Toys Are Us was shot on location across the country, exploring the scene through the eyes of both designers and fans. The documentary features interviews with Frank Kozik, Patrick Ma, Tara McPherson, KaNo, Erick Scarecrow, Mark Nagata, Nathan Jurevicius, Brian Flynn, Brin Berliner, Mars-1, Jermaine Rogers and more. Now that the director’s cut is out, I thought it was fitting to interview the director, Brian Stillman, himself.

Read the interview.

This was originally intended to be just filler between “more important” features on ToyCyte, but it really caught on and got picked up by other blogs. Who knew that even among “toxic” toy lovers there was still an interest in being green? I guess I did.

Everything’s going green these days, and the toy world is no exception. Perhaps appealing to our guilt at the amount of plastic we consume as toy fanatics, a growing crop of collectibles attempts to balance the extraneous and the ecological. Just because you live in the city doesn’t mean you can’t grow a garden. I hereby coin this photosynthetic phenomenon herb-n art toys.

Read the rest of the story.

I’m sure this is going to sound a little, uh, bromantic, but I totally love these guys. Taking head and chest hair DNA into consideration, I think Todd Berger might be my brother for real. TeeBee is one third of Cypher13, the design collective (comprised of Todd, Alex Henry and Lucian Foehr) responsible for one of my favorite blogs, JoyEngine. Their latest project, SOFT&FURRY™, is a global DIY collab. I’ve been watching the simply shaped woodland creatures evolve into colorful customs from around the world. ToyCyte has covered S&F™ since its onset, but for further insight, I went straight to Cypher13.

Read the rest of the interview.