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A blog for poetry, prose, and pop culture.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Di-Vinyl!


Hey all,

Sorry for the few day gap in posting. Friday and Saturday were big inspection days at work and that has preoccupied a lot of my time. Haven't slept much, just working straight through. Thursday was a good day though, as I got to attend a launch trading party at a vinyl and urban toy store, called Red Hot Robot.

I don't know if I have mentioned the newest mania to sweep through my life, and many of my friends, is the urban vinyl toy craze. Many artists and creators are contacted hrough an array of companies, to take a standard design or shape, and to make it there own, through paint, plastics, or whatever. Many of these "toys" are really small pieces of artwork and look awesome. The biggest craze come from a company called Kid Robot, through there dunny line. Kid Robot has released about 10 series of these toys, using different artists and themes, and Thursday saw the lastest release, the French series.

First off, having bought so many of these it was great to be at a launch day trading party, the small establishment was packed with people buying cases of these things. Between my room mate Jason and myself, we have about 14 of the 19 released, so it was a great oppertunity. We also got a line on two older series that both of us had really liked for the collection. I am still actively searching for the one out of the series I didn't get, but I am confident I can find it.

You see, one of the exciting, and sometimes frustrating, things about these toys is that they are blind boxed and assorted different. You buy the box not knowing which design you will get, sometimes that leads to extras, but with assortments on design ranging from 3 in 25 to 1 in 400, you never know what you will get.

We've even taken our habit into Ebay, scouring the web for deals on older releases that we like. What sold me on the collection was knowing that one of my favorite artists, Tara McPherson, had designed some made me look into it more after Jason's original discovery. This lead to discovering more artists I like, such as Joe Ledbetter, Frank Kozik, and many others. I've posted an image so that you can take a look at them. Series Four, with packaging artwork by Tara McPherson, contained work by all of the artist's I mentioned and is one of the strongest in the series.

There are many different types of vinyl toys, find the series that you like, some artists even have there own series to themselves. The next step is creating our own designs on Do-It-Yourself versions.

Thanks for reading and happy hunting!

End of Line.
Gerrad!

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