Toy OTD: Gary Baseman Cranium Playing Pieces: Betty, Billy, Becky Sue, Señor Verde (2008)

It's always nice to see a toy have design continuity. Gary Baseman designed Cranium's original packaging some time ago, and recently Baseman fans have been rewarded with a special version of Cranium Wow, an offshoot game featuring Baseman-designed playing pieces! As a kid who preferred playing with the pieces more than with the actual game, I couldn't resist picking this up.

These are pretty simple little figures, but they're made exceptionally well. The sculpting is elemental - very basic shapes - but it's appropriate for Baseman's style and super-cute.

The color work and printing also look great! Both support the source style nicely, and work with the small scale.

Naturally, there's no articulation, but you can remove their hair/hats (as well as their feet) and interchange them for a little customization. Nice!

The packaging of this edition is really sharp, too - bold black with cool fonts to appeal to older gamers and collectors. Another smart move - letting the game play to its new strengths by displaying the figures as part of the overall design! As you may have already guessed, there's another reason for this. Each game has a randomized group of playing pieces, so you can see which characters you're getting!

If you're a Cranium fan, you'll probably have no trouble buying another game to get the figures. If you're not really a board game fan, you may be bummed about wasting the materials (and money) for a whole board game just to get some cool exclusive figures. Then there's the thought of buying multiple games to get all of the figures - there's overlap in every set of four, so getting a set would be really expensive and wasteful. Unless you give everyone you know Cranium Wow for a holiday gift (each stocked with game pieces you already have), how would you do it? What was Cranium, Inc. thinking?

Originally, there was a plan for this. Collectors could go to cranium.com and buy a full set of the figures without having to buy the game at all! The only catch was that to learn this, you had to buy a game and open it - or stumble across the info at their website. So they certainly sold more games, but didn't encourage people to buy dozens of extras and throw them out.

These days, unfortunately, the figures aren't for sale on the site any longer. If you want these pieces, you'll either have to buy the game and be content with four, or go on eBay and see if anyone's selling a set that they bought a year ago. As it turns out, there's a set of twelve (that may be all of them, I'm not sure) for sale right now for $15.98 + shipping. Go to it!

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: 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: Jada Toys Chub City Figures: Chub C. & Al

Here's another nice example of the designer toy aesthetic influencing the mainstream. This line of figures and vehicles began in 2005, when the art toy movement was already well underway. I suppose it's possible that the concept had been in the works for years, potentially predating urban vinyl, or that both were independently inspired by graffiti art and hip-hop culture. Regardless, it's an appealing solution, if you're okay with that culture being commodified at Wal-Mart.

Dub City focuses exclusively on customized vehicles, so I'm not sure why Chub City - which is targeted at a younger audience - added character figures into the mix. I'm assuming it's the Galactic Heroes or Super Hero Squad demographic, since they have a similar super-deformed design. I don't know if the character designer has roots in comics, graffiti art, or both, but I think these mini-figures are an improvement over their Hasbro counterparts!

These characters have nice source designs, and have been adapted into 3-D really well. Their sculpts have some good graphic forms, and occasionally a figure is put into a fun, lively pose. The paint apps are tight for the scale (particularly the clothing graphics) and the color choices are striking, adding another level of complexity to the line.

Since they're so flat-footed, balance isn't a problem, and there's rarely an accessory, apart from the odd microphone or boom box. Packaging consists of the usual hanging back card/blister pack - the graphics are okay, and there's some decent relief molding of the logo, but it's nothing unusual. The figures are packed by themselves, and can also be found packed with a small diecast vehicle. They aren't always to scale with each other, which is good for the price point but kind of a drag as far as play value goes.

I'm not sure that the Chub C. and Al figure/vehicle two-packs are still for sale in stores, but you can get Al and his Scion on eBay for $9.00 + $6.95 shipping, and Chub C. with his Chrysler 300C are starting at $0.99 + $7.00 shipping. Go for it!

Toy OTD: Japanese Topo Gigio PVC Figure

Since my wife is a puppeteer, I'm sure that there's some cross-pollination involved, but I've always had a fondness for Topo Gigio! I'm too young to have watched him on the Ed Sullivan Show, but the skits are great to see on DVD (well, aside from the really-not-meant-to-be-watched-one-right-after-another thing).

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of domestic merchandise available - not surprising, I guess, for a character who hasn't been famous in the U.S. for about forty years! Like many faded stars, Little Topo does live on in Japan, as well as many Spanish-speaking countries.

I think this mini-figure was originally one of a blind-boxed series of Topo Gigio PVCs. There's a store in Sausolito, CA called The Sausolito Ferry Company that sells opened blind-box figures - you pay a little more for them, but at least you know exactly which figure you're getting! I'm pretty sure that I bought it there for $12-15. I'm not sure, though - maybe it was a Comic-Con purchase.

You don't get mini-figures like this for articulation or packaging, but the sculpt and paint work here are both very nice - there's an admirable level of subtlty, especially in the face. The character's on-model, the textures are strong, and check out that guitar - pretty tight for a mini-figure!

Unfortunately, there's nothing like this available online right now. I'd set up an eBay favorite search, or hook up with a Japanese auction service. Good luck!

Toy OTD: Dark Horse, Tim Burton's Tragic Toys For Girls And Boys: The Boy With Nails In His Eyes, Mummy Boy (2003)

Here's some great examples of how it's possible to take the trickiest of designs and make awesome toys from them.

At first glance, the original Tim Burton drawings would seem impossible designs for 3-D - at least for toys with no stop-motion armatures, or without feet bolted firmly to the floor. But Dark Horse does an incredible job! The sculpts are very true to the original art, and the paint work manages to convey some of Mr. Burton's watercolor style as well.

I've had these figures out of their packages for some time now, and there's no sign of sagging - very impressive, as that's a common problem with top-heavy toy designs. There's either some sort of armature inside the PVC, or somebody really did their homework and figured out how hard the plastic would have to be for long-term support without becoming too brittle in the process. Nice!

There's no articulation here, but that's a risky approach - joints can wind up making the figure more prone to breakage, while still not offering a lot of posing options (as we saw to a degree in McFarlane's Corpse Bride line). I'm happy to trade articulation for better stability, but that's always been my preference.

These two figures are actually part of two different three-figure sets, both of which are well worth the money, and still quite easy to find. You can get The Boy With Nails In His Eyes along with Oyster Boy and Junk Girl for $13.49 + shipping, and Mummy Boy packed with Toxic Boy and Jimmy the Hideous Penguin Boy for the same price at tfaw.com.

Toy OTD: Sony Creative Time Capsule Toys: Jim Woodring's Imperial Newts

I'm not sure exactly when or where I picked these up - I may have ordered them from KidRobot, or eBay. Regardless, someone at Sony had the great idea to ask themselves, "How cool would it be if we made toys that look like they should be dispensed from those quarter machines outside your local supermarket, but were actually designed by really talented artists?" Not only did they ask that question, but they answered it!

This series is comprised of six different newt designs, all created by comics great Jim Woodring. Each toy comes in its own little dime-store egg. Half of it is clear plastic, so you can even pick the figure that you want! Nice.

The sculpts are strong and detailed, very faithful to Woodring's designs. The paint work is a little shaky, but acceptable for the scale of the figures. They're sold disassembled, but building them is pretty trivial - the figures are reasonably well designed for post-purchase construction.

They've been sold out for at least a year, so buying them online might be tricky. There's three of them for sale on eBay for roughly $20.00 + shipping each, so you'll have to keep looking for the other three. Good luck!