Designer toy
Urban Vinyl (also designer toys or art toy ) are designed by artists, plastic figures. In contrast to the similar action figures (such BGI Joe or Big Jim) or three-dimensional replicas of cartoon characters are art toys exclusively for itself often comes down to surreal details and strong over-allotments, so take the pulse of current pop culture. Even " Designer Toy " is basically for Urban Vinyl, but still holds characters from other materials with, especially the designer plush.
The designers often produced in small series Toys are usually limited and numbered. They combine elements of toys, sculptures, comics and pop culture to a stand-alone work of art. Always the artist stands in the foreground. The figures are very elaborately produced roughly comparable to original fine art prints with her small-batch character. Meanwhile, even plagiarism of known (and more expensive ) emerged Designer Toys.
Formation
Mid-1990s, was designed by the designer Michael Lau the series The Gardener and put the total of 101 characters in a Hong Kong gallery. Other exhibitions, record covers and participation in ToYcon 1996 ( with Eric Sun) left the interest in Urban Vinyl increase rapidly. Sexy on the designer toy scene is the range in which plays artistic creation. Retrieved from " classic" artists like Tim Biskup and Gary Baseman up to street art artists (for example, appeared recently, the Lad of London Police as Designer Toy ) extends the bandwidth. Of course, tensions within the scene between artistic aspirations and commerce may arise therefrom.
Some of the most important representatives are Michael Lau ( The Gardener ), Gary Baseman ( Dumb Luck ), Tim Biskup ( Yeti Squad ), Sun -Min Kim and David Horvath ( Ugly Dolls ), Frank Kozik ( Smorkin ' Labbit ) and Touma ( Knuckle Bear ).
Series
The Toy Series Dunny by kidrobot pretended a kind of hare - basic form, which was then designed by well-known artists and was produced in different conditions. The Dunnys were a huge success - in addition to now five regular 3- inch series and eight special series, there are also so-called 8- inch Dunny Mod by various artists that were produced in series. Other well-known series are the same principle Kubicks, Qees, MAD * L, Stereotypes and Trexi. Meanwhile, direct white base figures for your own design are available, the first such "blank " figure was the Munny.
Business
The economic success was not long in coming. From 2002 specialized online stores like Kidrobot and Critterbox originated in the U.S. or Office Discount and Urbancity.ch in Switzerland. As the demand for some of the figures was far greater than the supply, there were some of enormous increases in value of figures that also attracted speculative buying and a lively second market by itself. But companies were aware of the phenomenon. So Sony Michael Lau committed several times for work, and now arise again and again Poised between art and consumer products, either directly or as a product in an advertisement.