Horror in the toy asile - circa 1979

I mentioned the 1979 Alien was based on a toy, but the back story warrants a recap for those who haven't heard it. In 79' Kenner released a 12" alien figure which looked like the movie alien, with inner jaw action, basically 12" of terror. Now, if you haven't asked yourself why they would make a nightmare inducing toy for kids based on a R-rated movie they haven't seen, then don't feel bad, Kenner didn't think that far ahead either.

Kids were terrified, Parents complained (before taking their kids to therapy), and Kenner pulled the toy from the shelves, but not before creating a TV ad, (and not to mention going down in history for making the best toy ever.)

This guy knows his Alien toys.
Watch the TV ad where the children play a game which consists of them trying to run from the alien. (as there were no Space Marine toys out at the time) The eventualy realize that nothing can the Alien, then run from the room in a desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable death that awaits at the Alien's horrible snapping jaws.

Kubrick Aliens 400%

These are great, the design is the same, & aside form the normal Kubrick articulation, they have removable domes, moving jaws, & extending inner jaws (controlled with a tab under the back of their head faithful to the 79' toy). 79's Skull detials are GID and the toy comes with a poster.
The movie colorway has blue lines and a dark dome, the 79' version is faithful to the toy.

Also notable is the fact that the 79' version comes in a box that is as close as you can get to a reproduction of the original box and still fit the Kubrick in it.



Also for sale is the 100% versions of each. Pretty amazing, as they have the same articulation as their 400% counterparts down to the inner jaw sliders. Even the 79's box is a reproduction.

Sakuragicho Rakugaki 08 cont.

Here's some more from 08' Sakuragicho.
See more in the previous post.

CRZ

CRZ set arrived. good stuff. Thanks for the discount Robert.
Looks like they opted for a whiter, more opaque vinyl for the GID version.
Wish they had used the normal stuff for a little more glow.

Mechtorians

I was staring at a toy blog from the Netherlands, and even without being able to read 90% of it, it's pretty damn good and gathers a lot of news that's left out of the main vinyl sites I normally check, Check it out: dunny.nl

There I saw a bit on Dok A's upcoming Mechtorians.
They're close, and the first round will be the pictured six. round two will fill out the remaining six designs. What was great was the quote from Dok A himself, or as dunny.nl puts it: Doktor A heeft het volgende gezegd:

‘Window boxed all the way. None of that chase nonsense here. Enough for everyone. No need for flippers to make a cut and no tearing out of hair trying to compleat your set… I have been listening to the forums…..‘

"Met dank aan Pepper!"... I think that means, Right On Dok A!

Nocturnal Video

Slapped together a few min of footage from Nocturnal.
Enjoy

KO & BP on Art Basel

Speaking with KO & BP about what they saw at Art Basel was encouraging, and as Kathie put it a little 'scary'.

Encouraging is the credit "low brow art" is finally getting, not to mention the influence it's having on other art.

Scary is the current Post-modern Chinese artists, now free to practice, and how directly they're sourcing other artist's material.

Glycos Junk Shop

Received my junk shop order today. I had ordered three of the 10$ sets, contained were 9 Pheyden (13 part) figures and a bonus Crayboth.
After a look I found small problems, sloppy paint, a few air bubbles, and some problems with the PVC dye. All that said no problems with the molding, so fully functional parts at a great discount.

Nocturnal & Signing

Nocturnal was great. The signing went off smoothly as well, people were polite enough to counteract the NY A-holes that harrased them last signing, so there will be future signings after all. Thank you Santa Cruz for saving christmass.

Happy people.



Brandt's Peacekeeper, Kathie's Hazel, along with pic of the mammoth mindstyle box.

The Vinyl Frontier

There have been a few indie 'exploring the vinyl scene' movies lately; Toys are us, Toypunks, (with vol.2 on the way). both good, but this one looks like it's taking it up a notch.

Check out Vinyl Frontier, ETA is still up in the air but was planned for a December release, so can't be too much monger now. From the clips they have up on youtube, it looks to be really interesting, or maybe it's just the fact that the artists are free to talk without a narrative. Fingers crossed.

KO & BP

Kathie and Brandt are, as runmored to be, extreemly nice people.
Spoke for a good while and got a ton of great material, I think there might even be enough for an article after I censor most of it.

Nocturnal Setup

Nocturnal will open this Friday, went down and helped J set it all up. KO&BP should be flying in on the 11th. Hopefully they will dig the mellow SC vibe after getting harassed in NY.

There's a lot of work to be seen at the show, not pictured is a lot of work on wood, a giant customized Qee, and a lot more. the graphite sketch of the squid is going to be one of the new BP toys.

Apparently Mindstyle changed their company policy without telling anyone, Now they won't ship until full payment has been received, AND stopped taking credit cards. So bottom line the scavenger customs will not be here in time for the show.

The two oil on wood paintings, 'trumpet' and 'Manchester' are my favorites, it looks like Brandit put the orange/pink base coat down then thinned out the part where he wanted the color to show after he finished the painting. looks amazing and the ethereal effect really compliments his style.

The Lost Combat R

When I finished the brushpainting of the Combat-R Zero, I snapped two low rez shots on my cell, then rolled it up and sent it out to atomic toys. (The post office was closing for the weekend soon and I was headed out of town. Given all that, I was in a bit of a hurry to get it out before it got shoved to the limbo that is my to-do list.
I sent an email with the pics, letting them know it was on the way, and never heard anything. Lesson learned.

Anyway there was a CRZero post and I put the pic up, someone from Atomic then sent me a message. Long story short, it seems that they never received it, but liked the art. He mentioned that a few months back he had gotten a call from the post office about some oversized package gathering dust there.

Here's hoping that's it...

art crunch

Everyone's having an economic tough time, or at least that's what they will tell you if you ask.

Looks like the art crunch affects even the most wealthy & hedonistic of us all.

Japan's no better, DVRB sent an update with the sad news that the giant hobby shop 'Mr. Craft' in Ebisu closed down. It's surprising, that shop was one of the giants.

TofuMix 1-5

The rows of Tofu Kubrick behind me are a good indicator that I'm seriously biased when it comes to these, but even with that working I can't help but think that some of these could have been done a little better. The Kiiro knob is a nice touch, but otherwise the design is hardly recognizable, the Evirob needs it's horns, not some painted on teardrops. The horns are understandable given the size of the box is completely filled with the square heads, but they could have been plug-in's loose in the box. I can understand DVRB wanting to kick out some of their favorites, but probably wont be recruiting any new fans with this series.

Uh Oh Toys

Here's a guy making his own toys, yaeah they're boxes of tissue, but he's making his own toys.
UhOh Toys