Columns, Kung Fu Grip So a few of you disagreed with my top 10 list… Fair play, boys and gals – it’s all subjective. But while this kind of diversity of opinion and tastes is cool for the toy world, there’s something I should…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip You’d think with the continually expanding myriad of toys on offer, there’d be more than enough to go around. Everyone’s got their own particular tastes, and more power to us for it. Diversity is the spice of life, after all.…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip De La Soul. Run DMC. The Beastie Boys. Daft Punk. Green Day. Korn. From rap to rock and everything in between, there’s plenty of visual vinyl for a music fan to pick up to compliment their aural vinyl collections. Some…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip For a supposedly underground culture, there are a lot of publishers throwing a lot of money at books on the designer toy world. So far, most of them have taken the picture-says-a-thousand-words approach. No real problem there, but this underlines…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip If one company is to be heralded as the pioneer for art toys in the West, most people would struggle to argue against Kidrobot taking the crown. They were pretty much the first company to embrace what was happening in…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip Toy collectors and trainer collectors aren’t exactly a million miles apart [they call sneakers “trainers†across the pond –Ed.]. Both spend their days searching out their personal holy grails. Both cut back on non-essential areas of life, such as food…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip When Joe Ledbetter and Wheaty Wheat’s Ringo was first shown as a prototype, it was a big deal. Put simply, the translation of Joe’s style into 3D was the breath of fresh air that the toy world needed. It seriously…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip Toys don’t really court much in the way of controversy, mostly because at the end of the day they’re just toys. There’s not too much to really get worked up about. But even a toy can raise some objections –…
Columns, Kung Fu Grip Flipping, the un-noble art of buying a limited edition item to immediately sell it for a sizeable profit. And, in my opinion, the scourge of the toy world. Now for argument’s sake I’m going to draw a line in the sand here. This little rant isn’t about someone offering an old hard-to-find release for market value. No, oddly, and maybe even hypocritically, that I’m fine with. My gripe is with the sods who buy a release, the dissected companion being a topical example, just to flog it on eBay as soon as they get home.
Now, you can argue that it’s only capitalism. That it’s
Columns, Kung Fu Grip Toy collecting is often described as entry-level art collecting. And to a large extent, it is. Toys, like prints, are an affordable way to own limited edition pieces by artists whose work you’d otherwise never be able to afford. However, and I say this as an avid toy collector, the limited edition side of things has gained a bit too much credence as a defining element of what makes a toy desirable.
You see, whether it’s one of ten or one of a thousand, a bad toy
