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: Yutaka (?) Robodatchi PVC Figure: Robo-Z (1996-8?)

This is another Kimono My House purchase that I (think I've) just identified. Like many of my Japanese toy purchases, the design caught my eye so I bought it without having any idea of what it was!

This figure is also based on a manga - this one's named Robodatchi, which (not surprisingly) features an extensive cast of robots... oh, and some humans, too! This little PVC appears to be a super-deformed (or SD) version of the Robo-Z character. Most of the Robodatchi websites I've found don't translate very well into English, so I still don't know very much about the manga (or Robo-Z). But like a lot of other manga, it has a ton of cool merchandising!

I dug around a bit and found some blister-packed, super deformed PVC figure sets that look an awful lot like the toy that I have. I'm thinking that li'l Robo-Z probably came from one of these sets - maybe it was opened up and they were all sold separately. Let me know if you run across another one of these sets that includes my character!

Anyway, there's not a lot to say about the piece itself - the design is cool, and the sculpt and paint work are decent. This isn't a high end toy or anything, so it's a good example of a figure in this quality/price range. I think I got it for about five dollars - a little higher than your average PVC toy would cost.

Needless to say, I haven't ever seen anything that looks exactly like my toy online. If you use Google, eBay or thefind.com, I'm sure you'll be able to find a lot of stuff that's much better. Happy hunting!

Toy OTD: Sony Creative Time Capsule Figures - Charles Burns Monster Teens: Cob & Rae-Rae (2002)

This is one of the best capsule toy lines I've run across! Not only are the character designs awesome, but the capsules aren't fully opaque, so you can see which monster you're buying! Sweet.

Sony enlisted several incredible talents to showcase in this series, Mr. Burns being just one of them. Aside from his inimitable lighting, the figures are quite faithful to the original drawings.

The sculpts are strong for the scale, and reflect his design sense quite well. The paint apps support the look nicely, especially in the face. At first, the colors may seem a little cheery for Burns, but I think that's mainly due to the lack of brushwork and his often-used, pitch-black backgrounds. Regardless, the color choices are really cool!

These figures do come partially assembled, but they're easy to build. There may have been an occasional piece fitting problem, but overall that's not the issue it could have been.

One of the biggest minuses is the type of paint. The matte finish (while adding a graphic quality) attracts rub marks like nothing else. It's tricky to keep then clean, even (if I remember correctly) within their storage eggs. Also (as you might expect with Mr. Burns' oddly-proportioned characters), balance is frequently an issue, too. Some tiny pegged bases would've been a big help here.

The packaging is clever in concept (mimicking the capsule toys that have been around for at least thirty years), but in order to be true to their humble origins, the storage eggs are pretty bland looking. Only hard-core collectors will probably be tempted to hang onto them. On the bright side, the figures also come with tiny comic strips from Mr. Burns. Very nice, and a great way to perpetuate that "Bazooka Joe comic" feeling!

I'm not sure how much these figures originally cost - I think it was between eight and ten dollars each. I can't find them for sale anywhere online right now, so it's time for you to start another eBay favorite search. Good luck!