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!

Happy Beaver For Sale At Kidrobot (Sort Of!)

Dov told me that Kidrobot had bought some of my toys, but this is the first that I'd seen Happy Beaver on the site! Even better - it looks like they're sold out already! Sweet!

Doing The Salesman Thing

Yesterday, I finally had the chance to go into San Francisco and show my "Happy Beaver" toy to the local designer toy sellers - I visited Double Punch, Kid Robot and Giant Robot. Phone calls probably would've been better, as most of the buyers weren't right there in the shops. I'd forgotten that most of these stores have multiple branches, so they're not completely operating from the city.

My thought was that it'd be good to talk with people directly, show them the toy in person, and have it available right then and there if anyone wanted to buy some. All great in theory, and everyone was nice, so this morning I used the e-mail addresses I'd gathered and started spreading the word of the beaver.

I've e-mailed about forty different stores located all over the world, so we'll see what happens. I'll probably get most of the responses over the next week or two, but I have heard from three shops already, and they are interested! There's some wrinkles to iron out, but it's feeling promising. I'll keep everyone updated as more news comes in!

The PEECOLator

eBoy and kidrobot have debuted a toy line called PEECOL, comprised of figures that feature interchangeable parts. They've also set up the PEECOLator, a web page where you can design your own! The options seem a little limited so far, but it's fun! Here's my first design.

Toy OTD: Mezco Underdog Figures: Simon Barsinister, Sweet Polly Purebred, Underdog

Mezco's done a bang-up job adapting these characters into toy form! The sculpts and paint work are great, the posing and articulation are well-suited for their scale, and Polly Purebred even comes with a base! The accessories are well-chosen, too - Simon comes with a couple of his inventions, Polly has her retro-enormous tape recorder, and Underdog comes with replacable hands and a huge lightning bolt to replace his legs if you want to match his flying pose in the opening credits! The separately-molded, poseable ears are another great touch. He's even wearing his pill-holding ring, usually the first detail to be dropped in merchandising.

Can I also say I'm thrilled that they don't look like the current live-action feature?

In my mind, the only minus from this first series is the Riff Raff figure - he's technically well-executed, but his pose is stiff and symmetrical. It feels a little more like a prototype in that sense than a finished figure. I prefer the sculpt of Funko's Riff Raff Wacky Wobbler, myself - it's a lot softer, but I think it's also more lively. See how simply posing him with the gun and putting the cigar in his mouth make a big difference in throwing off the symmetry!

I'm not sure that there's enough other well-known characters to necessitate a series two, but I would like to see a figure of Simon's sidekick Cad, and maybe a limited convention exclusive of Overcat. Who's Overcat? That's why I think he should be a convention exclusive - I think he's too obscure to sell as a traditionally released figure.

These figures came out during Comic-Con, so they should still be easy to find. I bought mine locally for thirteen dollars each - you can buy all four at once at toynk.com for $49.99 + shipping, or you can get Simon and/or Riff Raff at Screaming Monkey Comics (an eBay store) for $11.00 + shipping each. Underdog and Polly are more expensive, fetching $14.99 + shipping each at toywiz.com.

PS - Keep in mind Mezco's penchant for multiple head sculpts and facial expressions, too - I've only seen a couple of Underdog, but that doesn't mean there aren't more!

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!