New York's Toy Fair is split into two locations: the Toy Center Buildings at 24th and Broadway and the Jacob K. Javits Exhibition Center on the West Side Highway. The Toy Center is exclusively showrooms, primarily for the big names that you'd expect (Hasbro, Mattel, etc.). Attendance in these showrooms is generally by appointment only. Javits, on the other hand, is filled with a half million square feet of smaller exhibitors, and is by and large where the edgiest and most interesting figures can are found. If collectable Art Toys were at Toy Fair, Javits was the best place to look. The pickings were slim, but certainly not absent. Most of the most interesting figures were found in the "Specialty Source" section of the show, which was an area of approximately 100 booths set aside for exhibitors with toys not intended for mass-market distribution. Also not surprisingly, many of the most innovative action figure designs were from our friends from Hong Kong. Perhaps the booth with the biggest impact, Toy Tokyo was a definite destination on the Javits floor. Their retail store (on 2nd Avenue in the East Village) was just featured in The New Yorker, and their booth displayed quite a number of figures that appeared at December's Plug-In Toycon show. Toy Tokyo had a cylindrical glass display case just to the right of the floor's main escalator, with an impressive array of figures and a sign directing attendees to their booth. Among the figures were Seen's Famous Monsters of Seenland, last displayed at Flying Cat's booth in Hong Kong. They also hosted Warning Label Design's Biddies mini figure series and Flying Cat's Born Wild and Scary Girl. Achy Breaky Toys was back at Toy Fair with new figures from their classic Mulletheads series plus some new and original product lines, Achy Breaky is top notch; great design concepts, hilarious packaging, and really cool people. Two figures from MulletHeads Series 2 were on display at Toy Fair: Artemus Lester, a pot-bellied, mullet-sporting, half-shirt wearing carnival ride operator with bad teeth, and Freddy Gold, straight from the Aerosmith knock-off bands from the 80's (think Poison or Ratt). Freddy either has a grapefruit in his pants or one abnormally spherical package. Achy Breaky also announced a partnership with WheatyWheat Studios to produce a series of Gris Grimley's Pinocchio collectibles. Based on Grimley's illustrated version of the classic fairy tale, the first scene to be produced featured Geppetto's Workshop and was complete with angular bookcase, tool bench and Geppetto himself. We have recently learned, however, that the partnership didn't work out, and WheatyWheat is trying to go it alone on the series. As mentioned in our PIXmas report, Hot Toys made a big leap into the U.S. with a booth at this year's Toy Fair. Featuring many figures from previous Toycons, Hot Toys had a huge collection of figures on display. Designs by Brothersfree, How 2 Work Production House, Jason Siu and Elphonso Lam were represented. HK superstar Eric So's "Hot Devil" was also well placed, as was his masterpiece "Sam Lee" 12 inch figure. Pazo Art's Surfer figures were prominently featured as well. DaJoint made their presence known as well, with products available at the SEA International booth. DaJoint featured their ZMDC figure from the Hong Kong post-apocalyptic comic book "Jiu Gang." SEA also displayed the Firedrake High School figures by HK's Farta, which appears to be modeled on Medicom's Stylish Collection right down to the packaging. Over at the Marz Distribution booth, punk rock was prince. The Stronghold Group's Mini Mosher series were on display, featuring the same Gruntz-style body type and sculpting used on last year's Korn figures. The new Joey Ramone roto figure was on display, as well as their new "CBGB Punx" (which bear an uncanny resemblance to Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten). A shelf above, Stronghold's new additions to their Gruntz rotocast line were on display, including new Kiss and Outkast figures.
It was also clear that many of the more established US companies have hopped on the "Urban Vinyl" bandwagon. Some of the results are nice, and some are just plain lame. We'll list a few of the companies here; take a look at AF Times' and Figures.com's Toy Fair coverage to judge for yourself. Let's hope this move doesn't result in irreversibly watering down this style: All in all, the Curious Unit was impressed with the showmanship of exhibitors and made sure to pick up all the free shwag they could find (including an inflatable nun punching bag, which they generously forwarded the STRANGEco way). They made friends with a life-sized Playmobil figure, got horribly lost in the Collector Doll section, and met Adam West of the 60's Batman TV show fame. All this in the pursuit of the Strange.
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