You may remember a few years back, when Hasbro introduced its Marvel Mighty Muggs – this was their attempt to capture some of the high margin designer vinyl market with lower cost licensed figures. The line met with marginal success – Muggs still exist but have gone from Mighty to Mini to Micro.
Marvel is now trying it from another angle – with licensed designer vinyl figures from popular artists. These Venom and Wolverine figures are from graphic artist Frank Kozik – mashups with his Smorkin Labbit – a cartoon character that has been immortalized in a line of vinyl figures. The Marvel Labbit versions of Venom and Wolverine are available at kidrobot, alongside Marvel Munnys of the most popular Marvel characters.
If the $49.99 price tag puts you off these 7-inch Labbits, word is there will be a smaller, blind-boxed line coming soon for $9.99 each. We’ll let you know when we know more.
If you’re a fan of urban vinyl figures, penguins, Judge Dredd, or all of the above, this product announcement I got from newcomer Blind Mouse Toys might be of interest. Blind Mouse is utilizing the services of Joe Amaro and Eamon O’Donoghue for sculpt / paint and packaging art respectively – both have a strong following in the Masters of the Universe collector community.
They also have a Stargate SG-1 penguin listed on the Blind Mouse Toys website, but both are listed with June 24 release dates and a sold out status – but I don’t know if that just means they haven’t been put up for pre-order yet. They also have placeholders for DC Superheroes and Harry Potter, so I guess there’s more to come.
My wife picked these up while we were at Rotofugi (also check out the Lucha Libre! Customized Figures at Rotofugi Gallery Art Show.) We cleaned them out of their remaining 3 blind boxed figures and then asked if we could swap out with the ones on display, since we got two E. Hondas. My wife changed her mind, so instead of that we just bought the three display figures too.
These little guys are 3-inches and have swivels at the neck and shoulders. As you can see, they have the main characters and their Player Two colorways. Ryu and Ken are awesome, but I think Chun Li came out a little plain. Maybe if she were in her Player One colors she’d pop a little more. I love that Dhalsim comes with a detachable Yoga Flame. Think we’ll have to get more of these!
Are you fans of Lucha Libre wrestling? How about vinyl action figures? If so, the Lucha Libre! showing at the Rotofugi Gallery is right up your alley.
We were in Chicago and stopped by Rotofugi by chance (we were killing some time because my wife’s flight back home was delayed) and were delighted to find this display of wrestling-themed customized urban vinyl toys. Many of the pieces were contributed by the Beast Brothers, but other artists like Huck Gee, JRYU, and TADO also participated. I only took pictures of the toys, but there were also paintings and other artwork.
Mark Nagata of Max Toy Co was kind enough to speak with Jedd-the-Jedi at STGCC. If you missed it, click here to check out the first part of the Mark Nagata interview. In the conclusion to the interview, Mark tells Jedd about finding his toy Holy Grail, his top five toys, and more!
Do you have a special story of a collectible toy of any kind that you obtained through extraordinary circumstances? Have you gotten a hold of something you never dreamed you’d be able to own in a million years, something so extremely special?
(Laughs) Yes, I do! Yes, I do have a story about that. So, there’s a Bullmark figure, which is a Japanese company from the 1960s and 70s, and they issued, in very small numbers, a standard size Ultraman figure in red vinyl. Now the reason why they released it in red vinyl is they were hoping the colour red would appeal to girls, instead of the grey or like silver colour of what Ultraman is supposed to be. But Ultraman never was red in the series, and then the girls hated the figure anyways, so it never sold, it was a flop for them.
So going forward when I started collecting the figures in the late 80s-early 90s, and I’m doing research about all the different types of figures I had to find, when I found out about the red Ultraman that was always at the top of my list, like if I go back to Japan I’ve gotta look for this, or if I’m looking at eBay or Yahoo Japan or something I gotta find this. So on one trip to Japan, we were in the Nakano mall, which is a very famous mall with like different shops, like Mendorake and toy stores.
One of my friends said “Hey, go look over in the case; I think that’s something you’re looking for!” So I walk over there and there’s a red Ultraman sitting there right, so I was like “oh my God”, and I had to find out, I had to go over and ask how much, right? So I went over and in my very, very poor Japanese asked “Ikura desuka?” – you know, “How much?” And the guy goes “$5,000” – USD $5,000. I just thought… ”I can’t, I can’t. My wife’s gonna kill me!” And I only had $2,000, that’s all I had – for the whole trip, so no way, and I don’t wanna use credit card or anything. So all my friends said “Oh, you know, I’ll loan you a couple of hundred dollars, maybe you’ll get enough to make a big pool or something,” and I said “No no no, I don’t want to have to owe you guys!” So, I left.
