Toy OTD: Nathan Jurevicius, Kid Robot's Scarygirl City Folk Figures: Crossing Guard, School Girl (2007)

Nathan Jurevicius is not only a cool illustrator, but a prolific toy designer as well! TheScarygirl City Folk collection probably isn't his latest line, but it's certainly one of his more recent ones. It's a blind boxed mini-fig series with a wide variety of characters. I only bought a couple of them, so I'll review just those two here.

Kid Robot's toys are of a consistently high quality, and this line is equally good. The sculpts capture the playful, graphically strong designs and interpret them into three dimensions very well! They're planned to be cast in multiple parts, and the assembly seams are strategically chose to blend into the design without disrupting it. The construction itself is fine, making the characters look solid. The use of materials is clever, such as the transparent plastic for the Crossing Guard's staff, and the mounting of the book stack on the School Girl's head.

The paint work is also nice and clean - there's not a ton of detail on these designs, but the color borders are sharp, small paint areas are tidy, and the broader paint areas are smooth. Details like the School Girl's eyelashes are crisp. The color palette is limited by design, not budget.

Mini-figures rarely (if ever) have articulation, so it's a non-issue here.

Balance for both designs is fine: School Girl has a back wheel to steady her; and the Crossing Guard has a broad, flat base. Mr. Jurevicius is very conscious of this aspect of manufacturing and addresses it well, regardless of the figure scale. Either small stands are included, or the designs are well balanced on their own.

Packaging for this line is terrific, both in terms of the individual boxes and the larger case. Both are heavily decorated with Mr. Jurevicius' graphics, but they're not overwhelming. The color use here is tasteful, but punchy enough to attract attention. All of the boxes are unified with a similar palette of black, pink, green and white - it's easy to keep track of this series!

There's fifteen different characters in the set, and at least two paint variants (a black-faced School Girl, and a black Jelly Cat). You can get blind boxes for $9.73 + shipping each at overkillshop.com, and a few of the characters are on eBay right now: The School Girl chase and both Jelly Cats for $19.99 + shipping each, and the Doctor for $29.99 + shipping. These prices seem a bit high, so you may want to be patient and poke around at the next Vinyl Toy Network or something. Good luck!

Toy OTD: Bandai Dragonball Mecha Collection 1: Lunch On Cycle, Grandpa Son Gohan On Scargo Capsule Bike, Yamcha & Pu'ar In Auto (2004)

These mini-figures and vehicles are really terrific examples of the blind-boxed genre. The sculpts are wonderful, the paint work is quite tight for their size, and there's multiple types of plastic used to good effect! Even though the toys are packaged in pieces, they're fairly easy to build - some even come with simple stands for display purposes.

There's six vehicles in series 1, and since my blog header can only be so long, I'll review three of them here. All three are quite nice, for the reasons I've already stated - they really capture the spirit and fun of the original manga. It's also rarer to find merchandise from the first Dragonball series - the lion's share of DB toys seem to focus on the subsequent Dragonball Z books.

Fortunately, Toriyama-san's artwork is very dimensional, so to some degree sculpting is a bit less of a challenge here (though any stylization here is very well interpreted). The colors are lively, and the vehicle choices seem appropriate for each character. An extra bonus is that most of the 'drivers' are nicely posed - many domestic manufacturers tend to wind up with an unpainted, lifeless-looking driver when populating cartoon vehicles.

These toys are a good scale - not so small that they'll seem lost on a shelf, but not so big that they're too expensive and gobble up too much real estate. I'm not if there's more than one 'pure' Dragonball series or not - the only series 2 set that I can find has some Dragonball Z characters in it.

The packaging is sharp-looking, both on the individual boxes and the larger case. It's not particularly innovative, but the designs are simple and eye-catching. Bandai was also merciful by including a picture of all the series 1 toys on the back of each blind-box. That's increasingly rare there days!

Originally, each blind box cost about $8.00 each, but expect to pay more since they've been discontinued for five years. Of course, it'll be tougher to get specific characters/vehicles if they're still mint, so rarer items may cost even more. You can get all of series 1 on eBay right now, but it'll cost you $140.00!

Granted, trying to buy all of them piecemeal would probably cost more than $50.00 to begin with, but you may want to comparison shop, or narrow your focus to your favorite in the line. Series 2 will cost you $52.00 on eBay, so I guess they weren't as popular, or were produced in greater numbers.

Good luck!

Photos and text ©2009 Jeff Pidgeon.

Toy OTD: Megahouse Kellogg's 10 Collection: Tony The Tiger & Boy

As nostalgic as America can be, it seems like Japan still trumps us in the race of disproportionate love for our own past. Thank heaven for that, or we wouldn't have all this cool retro merchandise!

As I've mentioned before, Megahouse made a series of blind-boxed mini-figures inspired by early '60s Kellogg's mascots. Here's another one from the set - an early version of the time-honored "'Frosted Flakes' helps you through your day" theme. Unfortunately, what reads as "friendly helper" in one era can read as "adult hugging kids too closely and licking his lips" in another. The set-up ages badly, at least from this less innocent perspective.

Anachronisms aside, it's a, well, great little piece. The sculpt is well-executed for its size, and while it's packaged in pieces, the figure is very simple to build. The colors and posing seem straight out of an old Kellogg's print ad, and the paint applications are pretty delicate - check out those whiskers!

The packaging is also terrific - each mini-fig is packed up in what looks to be a tiny Kellogg's cereal box! Very nice theming, right down to the counter-top display carton.

This figure line was released some time ago, but you can still get the full set of ten right now on eBay for $39.99 + shipping. Good luck!

Toy OTD: Doma, Kid Robot's Acid Sweetie Figures: Bomb Eater, Don Gelatto, Mr. Earth

Kid Robot released another series of blind-boxed mini-figures this past spring - Acid Sweeties, created by the Australian street art collective Doma. I love the design work, but wasn't quite driven to get the entire set. My toy collection's big enough these days that I have to prioritize, so I stopped blind buying and found a website that was selling opened figures. I gave away the others I'd accumulated to a friend. These, then, are my three favorites!

Happily, the characters with smaller legs are assembled, not molded as a solid piece. That means you can rotate the legs at the hip to adjust the feet, if any casting variations have thrown the figure off balance. The sculpts and paint work are very nice, too, appropriate for the tight design style.

You can still get these three figures separately if you want, though it'll cost you more than the original $8.00 price - kawaii-uk.com has them for £5.99 and £4.69 (about $12 and $10 USD) + shipping each. Still, you can go through a lot of cash just hunting, and Kid Robot doesn't even have them for sale on their site any longer - I guess they sold pretty well!

Toy OTD: UNKL Tinpo Figure: Sync 5

Here's another great Tinpo design from the UNKL brand of mini-figures! I can't remember if these were blind-boxed originally or not (I think so). Each figure came with a capsule and an extra part - if you got all of the series 1 figures, the extra parts could be assembled to form a pet!

These toys first sold for $8.00 each, but series 1 figures like this one are long sold out - more than likely, your only hope is the dreaded secondary market. eBay favorite searches are your friend in this case!