Toy

After yesterday’s exploration into the Nautical, I was going to cram the entirety of Playmobil’s new Wedding sets into one gargantuan post. And then I started putting together the Church.

Set 4296 is an epic playset, no matter how you cut it. I’m a huge fan of playsets, from the Muppets Kitchen Playset, to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, to the Simpsons’ Main Street. They contextualize the toys that we collect and display, and while a shoebox and a set of markers are great for the imagination, an aesthetic continuity between toy and environment is a pretty important experience. Maybe I’m overanalyzing it, but the Ghostbusters always kicked way more ass in their huge Firehouse Playset than under the kitchen table, fighting the nefarious forces of whatever fell on the floor during lunch.

One might not realize how much assembly is required for the larger Playmobil products, and it wasn’t until I started putting together the higher end of the Playmobil spectrum that I realized there were a ton of little connector pieces and even a specialized metal key to help you snap them into place. I spilled the entirety of the Church on the floor around me, and 90 minutes later, it was finished. The satisfaction is definitely comparable with Lego. It’s not difficult – there are just a lot of bits. The Church is also collapsible if you run out of room, as the fits are solid but easy to pop apart again – just keep the instructions. The most time-consuming part of construction was definitely the 100-or-so connectors, which are now already snapped in and ready to go.

When all is said and done, the Church measures almost 2 feet tall and 17 inches long, making it a completely realistic scale for your Playmobil figures. With high ceilings and a bell tower, it’s very simple and majestic, as well as a definite centerpiece and gathering place for all of your figures. It’s completely non-denominational, even though it bears a strong resemblance to a traditional Catholic church. Pull out the pews and set up a pancake breakfast with your Re-Ment miniatures, or throw some tiny junk on the floor for some flea market action.

The Church includes a bride and a groom figure  – one of a few sets of married couples offered through the Wedding collection, so you’re not obligated to purchase the $75 church to get your happy couple. The set also includes a priest in solid black clothes, with a removable collar. With the little white collar off, he could just as easily be a drama coach or a snooty art student. Seriously – before I snapped the collar on, I was asking myself why this guy wasn’t attacking my use of color in a crit.

Accessories are pretty minimal, once all of the decor is placed. The bride can hold a bouquet, and the altar includes a book and two candles. A fabric rug runs down the aisle, and two very small pews can be placed wherever you’d like. Of course, my favorite part of the Church is that you can very easily create a whole pirate / viking / scuba diver audience without much difficulty. It’s that quiet surrealness of juxtaposition that makes the variety of Playmobil awesome.

The bell tower is another great part of the Church, as it includes some empty space for a figure or two to stand and just hang out. No great reason for it, and I can’t seem to find a Quasimodo figure made by Playmobil, but it’s a lot of fun. With the addition of 2 AAA batteries (and a tiny screwdriver), one button on the tower plays a series of bells, and one plays the wedding march.

The stained glass windows are actually translucent, and the patterns have Playmobil figure faces hidden in them. Some of the best, most atmospheric toy photos I’ve taken have come from the rainbow of warm light that filters through these Church windows, so I’m extra pleased. One big reason for wanting the Church to play with is the fact that it opens itself up to such a wide variety of narrative photography. Because of the scale, it’s actually really great for your 3.75” figures, also – so you can stage that Han & Leia wedding you dream about, or Vader & Palpatine, or whatever your sick fan fiction talked about. I have some ideas of my own…

The set also includes life-sized, heart-shaped, plastic ring box with two kid-sized plastic rings. A whole bunch of little charms can be snapped onto the rings to establish bling. I bet that’s the first time anyone’s used the phrase ‘to establish bling’, ever.

The Church is only a small part of the Wedding, and Playmobil has accessorized the heck out of the idea with a whole bunch of great add-ons, which I’ll show off on Wednesday. Stay tuned for the rest of Playmobil’s Spring 2009 offerings – the Wedding collection has some of the best regular, modern humans yet!

When discussing designer toys, KidRobot’s 3” Dunny seems to be the standard in any collection. After five standard series and a few auxiliary series of Dunnies, the little vinyl rabbit has appeared in over 100 different guises designed by a huge variety of artists. When the collectors over at the KidRobot forums were going all wacky over ordering entire $160 cases of Dunnies, I had to see what the fuss was about. The very expensive fuss.

I bought myself a case of Series 5 Dunnies. With 25 figures in a case, the figures worked out to cost about $6.50 each, after shipping. I could justify this expense (like I justify most expenses) by telling myself that this was for the love of art, and that I was going to customize and improve any of the figures I didn’t really like. If I was really lucky, I’d score a rare Dunny worth $30, $75, or even $300. Since every figure is blind boxed (as in : you don’t know what you’re getting), you run the very real possibility of pulling a large number of very unappealing figures. And some of them, although ‘designer’, are the very essence of ug.

With the odds of finding each Dunny listed on the side of the package, I knew what I was in for. The odds of finding the Frank Kozik Mechadunny that I really loved were 1/100, the slimmest odds of the whole series. You’d have to buy four full cases to tilt the odds in your favor, and even then there’s no guarantee of the contents of each box. The flocked Kathie Olivas Dunny was roughly 1.5/50, though the box stubbornly refused to reveal its numbers, and the much coveted Huck Gee Dunny was also roughly 1/50. As far as designer toys are concerned, Huck Gee is a complete goldmine.

Nothing to do but open up the case and see what was inside. I don’t know if I can properly explain the exhilaration of a case blind boxed toys. I’ve even bought inexpensive cases of things I didn’t love to get the rush of defeating the odds, completing sets, and a series of 20 or more surprises. It’s genuinely addictive.

When my very first box contained the rare ‘chase’ Huck Gee Dunny, I couldn’t really believe my luck, and then I panicked. Was I accidentally sent one of the erroneously distributed cases that were STUFFED with Huck Gees? This recent debacle had colored the whole ‘Dunny 5′ experience for many collectors.

I opened a second box and was relieved to find that this box indeed had a different Dunny. The next three boxes all had new, interesting figures in them – a cute Amanda Visell elephant, a Reach, and a Mad Barbarians pizzaDunny. So far, so good!

Box number five contained another surprise – the uncommon Kathie Olivas Dunny that I wanted! I have a weakness for flocked toys, having fleeting experiences with a Masters of the Universe Mossman in the mid-90s. Olivas is one of the hotter pop surrealist artists right now, so anything by her is a sure sellout. Box six contained a common Dirty Donny Dunny, but I’d already had some pretty great odds.

Box number six is when the doubles started pouring in – and not even of designs that I liked. TOOFLY, Clutter and Aya Kakedas started overtaking my desk. That initial thrill of new figure after new figure became dulled with that quiet dread of ‘I paid $160 for this?’ That’s always part of the emotional arc of collecting cases of blind-boxed toys : the initial excitement, the disappointment at a mass of doubles, and by the end, things perk up as your collection fills out and a sense of completion warms the scene. Still, after a dozen cases of Heroclix and way too many gashapon, I’m never prepared. At least I could use these doubles to make my OWN Dunny designs and further infiltrate the custom toy world.

A few more boxes in and I found the rare 1/50 Jellymon Dunny, which existed in only 50% of all cases, and was WAY too ugly to keep. The Steve Harrington I wanted showed up in the 22nd box, another rare Huck Gee showed up in box number 23, and with two boxes left, I still had no Mechadunny.

Box 24 was a decent JK5 that was destined for the scrap pile. Box 25, glorious box 25, had my much-coveted Mechadunny, grand in its mechanical, spiked rabbit form. I had a pretty lucky case, even if I missed out on the common Devilrobots Dunny, and the rare Junko Mizuno. Otherwise, my collection was technically complete. I didn’t plan on keeping them all together, honestly, because I was genuinely in it for things I liked – even if completed Dunny sets can retail for hundreds of dollars.

I went onto the Kidrobot forums to talk about the case ratios, and I was almost immediately hit with messages asking for my extra figures – notably, the Jellymon and Huck Gee. By the end of it, 5 of my undesirables were traded away for eleven more Dunnies that I could use as art fodder, so even that ugly Jellymon served its purpose. If times every get really hard, there’s always that $75 Mechadunny to fall back on. You can love something for how cool it looks, but that doesn’t preclude that you need a new muffler.

So, collecting my first case of Dunnies was a rewarding experience, and I immediately started in on turning three of them into better things. Anything that eventually becomes art is inherently priceless to me anyhow.

It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a Happy Meal for myself, mostly because my appetite is far greater than one Happy Meal could possibly satisfy. McDonalds would have to create an Unbelievably Elated Meal, or a Comatose With Bliss Meal before my gargantuan hunger might be sated. Fortunately, living with a young child for the past 8 years has afforded me the vicarious joy from the REAL reason kids get Happy Meals : the toy inside.

Sure, I have some Simpsons Spooky Lightups, and a Monsters Inc. Randall that an ex-girlfriend once seduced me with, and I’ll never forget that lenticular Thundercats ring of my youth… so, I have a warm spot for the quick ‘n’ cheap entertainment of the Happy Meal Toy – or if you want to be snooty about it – the ‘Fast Food Premium’. This is why I’m especially excited that McDonalds is pairing up with Lucasfilm to release a set of 18 different action-feature-full Star Wars bobbleheads, to coincide with the release of The Clone Wars animated film.

I know what you’re thinking : aren’t I the guy who vehemently denies the very existence of anything that isn’t Original Trilogy? Why yes, that’s me, but here’s the thing – McDonalds hasn’t relegated this Clone Wars set to only Clone Wars characters. They’ve delved deep into Star Wars history to give us nine completely classic characters out of the total eighteen, and that’s a wonderful ratio for us oldschool fans. Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Boba Fett (!!!), the REAL Darth Vader, C-3PO, and even Wicket the Ewok are present, all perched atop signature vehicles from appropriate movies and scenes. Interestingly, these guys have all been done up in an ‘animated’ style to match the Clone Wars characters, and it works. It really works, against anything I might have believed before seeing them in person.

And get this : Han Solo’s head sculpt has a scar on his chin. Yes. Happy Meal toys officially have more accurate details than most Harrison Ford action figures made by the big manufacturers. This attention to detail, where it didn’t even need to exist, pretty much did it for me. I think I giggled. Of course, Han is perched in his trusty Millennium falcon, which also has pull-back action. You know the drill : place the toy on a flat, hard surface, drag it backwards, and let it go. Add this feature to the bobblehead feature and you have some pretty funky stuff goin’ on. And by ‘funky’, I mean ‘listening to Jamiroquai at full volume, cruising through space’ funky. Darth Vader has the ’sound’ feature – one of my most favorite action features of all time – which plays both TIE Fighter blasting noises, and breathing noises.

Bobblehead fans need to get these – we’re not talking about cheap heads that kinda pop back and forth. This is the apex of bobble technology that scientists have been talking about! Seriously – it threatens to break the laws of thermodynamics. Both Chewbacca and the Stormtrooper are wind-ups that really walk – so, in addition to having appeal in in these other action-areas, wind-up enthusiasts will also be excited.

Arguably, the Yoda and R2-D2 toys are also ‘classic’, though they’re perched on Episode 1-3 vehicles, thus forever exiling them from the Classic Collection. In addition to these guys, there’s a General Grievous, Anakin Skywalker, young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Asajj Ventress, Padme Amidala, clone Captain Rex, and new padawan Ahsoka Tano. Many of these guys also have pullback action, while Yoda and R2 both play sounds, and anyone who comes with a lightsaber will also include a button to make said lightsaber ignite. It’s a genuinely neat mix of features among the group, and a huge variety to choose from – or be surprised by. It kinda makes me wonder why Hasbro can’t slap a few more voice chips and light-up features into their Star Wars stuff. For almost $8 a figure, they’d better start adding something.

These guys will be at your local McDonalds until the 11th of September. As with any fast food premiums, you can hunt them down one by one, or you can be ‘that guy’ at the counter and request to purchase a whole bunch individually. The counterfolk will usually oblige your toy-lust for a nominal fee.

I’ve taken some photographs of the whole line, which can be seen in our Community, along with a shot to show the scale of these. They’re unusually large for fast food toys, so will comfortably fit into the average bobblehead collection. Finally, The Office Season Three Box Set Bobblehead Dwight will have someone to talk to. He’s never been in better company.

It’s been about a decade since I’ve played with any RC toys, because frankly, remote control things sucked when I was a kid.

Like any young male, I had a remote controlled racecar or two, but while I was growing up, all RC cars suffered from Severe Battery Uselessness, or ‘SBU’, which is an acronym that I just made up. There was no cure. You could run an RC car for about 3 minutes on 37 D batteries or a clunky rechargeable battery, and out of nowhere, it would be stricken with immobility. The reasons for this were split even between total battery death and being incapacitated by a small stick in the driveway. Battery replacement was expensive, and battery recharging was a multi-hour process. So, I completely lost interest and retreated to the instant gratification of the Nintendo.

In my absence, RC technology has worked very hard to impress me, and it’s delivered the results in the form of Thinkway’s U-Command Wall-E RC robot.

Even though the eponymous Pixar film hasn’t been released, there are about a billion Wall-E toys out there – small action figures, stuffed dolls, dioramas, and a good handful of electronic light ‘n’ sound things. For those of us who can’t invest in the $190 Ultimate Wall-E Programmable Robot (which has robot geeks all a-buzz for all kinds of reasons), there’s the U-Command Wall-E, which retails for about $40-$50.

One of the challenges that’s always thwarted robot designers is the ability to create a ‘personality’ in their robotic creations. It’s now pretty evident that years of personality design could have been bridged by simply bringing an animator on board in the design process, since Wall-E (both the animated character and the RC toy) are replete with personality. It’s a psychologically interesting thing that despite being a box with expressive eyes, that’s all we need from Wall-E to get a good read on his personality, even without seeing the movie.

This is where the RC toy exceeds. It’s not a toy designed for speed, but the slow and steady working treads that the RC uses to move are a solid mode of transport. RCs with treads are a whole new world to me. Wall-E runs on 4 AA batteries, and the remote control runs on 3 more AA batteries. After a good 30 minutes of play, the batteries are still going strong.

Wall-E has 10 function buttons and 2 program buttons on an easy to hold infrared remote. The ‘forward and backward’ stick will indeed move Wall-E Forward, but pressing the stick back will execute a left turn, as Wall-E cannot reverse direction (and can’t turn right). These are basic things – but the neatness comes with the buttons on the right side of the controller.

The ‘music’ button will provoke Wall-E to play 4 or 5 different songs and dance differently to each one. The ‘eyes’ button will create all of the neat little movements and quirks that bring the robot to life, and the fish-shaped ’special turn’ button will start a special chain of more personality-rich movements. The ‘box’ button creates sound effects.

The ’sun’ button is an odd addition. Every so often, Wall-E will stop responding to commands, and for some bizarre design / personality reason, you need to press the ’sun’ button to reactivate him. It doesn’t really interfere with play, but if you haven’t read the instruction manual and leapt right into play, this feature might be a little confusing. We finally have RC toys that can communicate consistently with their remotes and we add a feature to emulate noncommunication. Curious indeed.

The ‘program’ buttons allow you to hit any of these 10 buttons in any sequence and have Wall-E perform the strong of actions that you’ve determined, sending him into true automatic, robot mode.

If there’s a weakness in this giant mix of personality and charm, it’s that Wall-E falls backwards a lot. While the instructions suggest to run Wall-E only on flat, un-carpeted ground and to extend his arms fully forward in order to maintain balance, his movements have a kick to them (which is far better than being sluggish) that will toss him backwards. This requires uprighting Wall-E by hand, and I can’t help but wish for an extending panel or rod that would pop him back upright when this happens. Most balance issues can be resolved by keeping Wall-E’s movements steady and consistent instead of starting and stopping him a bunch.

Even as an action figure, Wall-E is a great display piece – a perfect addition to my robot and Pixar collections. While this version does not have an opening chest panel, it WILL however freak the heck out of your dog. Check out the video after the jump to see Wall-E in action. I like it a bunch, and it may have just reawoken my interest in the ever-improving world of RC.

I knew nothing of Gus Fink before I met him during 2008’s Toy Fair, but anytime I meet an artist as prolific as ‘Gus’ (nee Josh Fields), I can’t help but be inspired. Visions of quitting my job and replacing it with painting and drawing for weeks on end fill my head, and then I get in the car and go to work and another delicate layer peels off of my soul because student loans don’t pay for themselves.

What I encountered at in Gus Fink’s Toy Fair booth was row after row of small, bobble-headed figurines – bright, colorful, and occasionally creepy. While I’ve never been a big fan of the ‘cute ‘n’ creepy’ illustrative art movement that was popularized by Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez and Roman Dirge (and which has subsequently devoured the back pages of nearly every issue of Juxtapoz), I liked Gus Fink’s stuff. There was so much of it, and so much energy behind it, you could almost feel the freneticism, if ‘freneticism’ is in fact a word. If not, I’m sure that Gus Fink has freneticized it into being.

After the president of collectibles company Rocket USA saw Fink’s work, the rest was history. Rocket USA took Gus’ artwork and sculptures and transformed them into an army of ‘Boogily Heads‘ – a wide array of small bobble-headed characters from all manner of the strange. Despite being mass-produced by Rocket USA, the figures retain a very handmade, DIY feel. In fact, I’d ignorantly assumed that Gus was creating, painting and casting all of these little guys himself when I’d met him at ToyFair. I must have looked quite the fool, but such is the illusion of the Boogily Heads – that even an experienced and self-appointed toy expert such as myself was taken in by the ruse. Fink is no stranger to clever ruses, though, given the various pseudonyms that he creates under.

Three series of Boogily Heads have been released thus far, with six figures per series, and a good deal of exclusive and limited figures in addition to these, including paint variants and limited ‘gold’ and ‘platinum’ painted figures offered as retailer incentives. Each figure is packaged in great little window boxes, replete with Fink’s artwork, and just to keep that trademark air of Fink mystery, each figure is packed in with a random mini-comic, backed with a small poster. The comic you get won’t necessarily match up with the figure you’ve bought, and you might even find a super-rare comic in there somewhere, detailing a character that hasn’t been made – yet. Check out our community for a full gallery of these little guys.

The aforementioned ‘Gold’ editions were produced in quantities of 500 each, and are repainted versions of Series 1’s Oinks, Series 2’s Paperbag, and Series 3’s Zuggs. Platinum versions of these three also exist in quantities of 250 each.

It should be no surprise that I really, really dig the robot Scantron from Series 3, not only for the rare combination of intentionally awkward organic forms comprising the robot, but because he’s painted in a radiant silver. We’ve entered art toy territory, and we’re not settling for dull, grey silver on these toys.

‘Creepiest’ goes to Series 1’s Milq, a squinty and scratchy devil-bull figure with a split skull. Perhaps it’s my affection for Hellboy and Mephisto and the surreal nature of demon imagery in general, but the doughy innocence of Milq has a real appeal. If I had to choose one figure for a ‘third favorite’ position, it would be Series 2’s Paperbag, which is exactly what it sounds like. It has a certain Rob Schrab feel to it, if only because Schrab uses brown paper and cardboard in many of his sculptural creations and figures. Maybe the real strength of this series is in quantity, displayed together, assembled in some unholy cute-union, living together in whatever passes for ‘harmony’ in their scratchy, spindly little universe.

It’s easy to write them off as ‘another cute and creepy thing’, but the variety of characters, forms and ideas together presents something a bit deeper than that. Take a look at Gus Fink’s collected stuff over at his site and draw your own conclusions about ‘depth’, but the guy knows what to do to sell art, and he’s livin’ the dream. My envy of this power is not small, and these Boogily Heads are pretty neat stuff.

Scantron now surveys my web-browsing, and Milq looks disdainfully down upon my paintings. Being included among the general displays in this mess is a position of honor indeed.