Three Wee Things

On a day like Christmas Day when we are inundated by  (if we are lucky) piles of new stuff.

I thought I’d show you some things in my possession that are so tiny that they would easily get lost amidst the torn wrapping paper and thrown away. None of these things came to me at Christmas, the rabbit appeared on my window ledge about 60ft off the ground from who knows where, the elephant through my letterbox as a surprise present from a friend and the chap on the toadstool is actually a sculpture by the artist Takashi Murakami, who believes that art can come in any size (about and inch and a half tall) , that I bought myself from Japan.

It is usually at this point that someone publishing something on Christmas day starts spouting (or sprouting) something about the true meaning of Christmas. But my gift to you is that I won’t. Happy Christmas!

Zen and the art of model making.

Being of a certain age, I have warm and fuzzy memories of spending my free time making Airfix kits. And it always was airfix, not Heller or Revell, I was even a member of the airfix model makers club as sponsored by Dick Emery, the great seventies comedian. Every few years I get bitten by the model making bug and years I end up with a wonky creation with a streaky paint job and that barely resembles the lovely artwork on the box. It seems that the eight year old me was a lot less judgemental of their handiwork.

This all change recently when I was trying to find a pain free way of introducing my twelve year old nephew to the joys of model making, the Japanese model kit. More specially the Gundam series of kits from Bandia. All the parts are colour coded and there are wonderful little rubber ball and socket joints so that your creation is posable. However, the most important part is…. It doesn’t need glue! Yay!

They come in different grades, the zenith of which is the perfect grade. Models of this quality have over a thousand parts and little light bits. The kit pictured here is just the common or garden type which is a tenth of the price. Even so it is far superior to the kits of my childhood. A fair compromise is the master grade, which works out at about £40 and is a good compromise between price and cool factor. I know what I’ll be getting myself for crimbo this year.

Obscure toy of the week: The Space Monkey

Space Monkey Qee

Trying to do research on anything on Dalek a.k.a James Marshall is a bit tricky. Any of the usual search terms bring up the more famous Daleks from Doctor Who, which are also pretty darn cool. Up until the release of his most recent collection for qee, trying to pick up any of his vinyl or resin creations on ebay was a thankless task of trawling through the hundreds of ‘other’ Daleks. So this is what I know, and if it’s wrong I apologise profusely. Dalek has done numerous pieces for all the major toys shapes. Notably a signature range of Dunnys, two series of Spacebots for Toy2R which were variations of the standard qee shape and also versions of the Fatcap and Jamugo’s Buds.  However, in my opinion, James’ best toys are the Space Monkeys. There have been a number of versions of these from the early Sony Capsule art range through to a set of limited edition works that would more accurately be described as sculptures. Probably the best ones are the ones that are still relatively easy to pick up, The Space Monkey Qees.

Compared to the standard Qees, these are a lot weightier, all of which is in their gigantic specially moulded heads. There were fourteen made in total and there wasn’t a duff one in the set. They all feature the trademark Dalek combination of cute and savage, of large Disney eyes and bleeding bullet wounds. They also all look just as good from the back as from the front, often being double faced. A word of warning though, some of them are quite rude. They turn up occasionally on ebay and it is possible to still pick up a few retail if you want to dig around.

dalekart.com

Obscure toy of the week: Panda SAM

The Super Animal Machine or SAM for short comes from a design team called Red Magic based Hong Kong who also make the more well known CiBoys.

Apparently they are supposed to be aliens who have come to earth disguised as animals, although the only ones they make are variants on pandas. I’ve scratched my head about this one and the only logical reason I can find for the name is that they could have been called SPAM (Super Panda Animal Machines) or something similar which would never do. Anyway, daft name aside, the are so darn cute.

What I really love about these, apart from the cuteness, is that they are really solid and weighty. It’s nice to feel something that is really there and not something flimsy and breakable. They are around three inches tall and both theirs heads and legs are attached via ball and socket joints so that they can be posed at a jaunty angle.

You can pick a few up from online stores in the u.k for around the three pound mark but to get a better range you need to order from ebay stores in Hong Kong, just don’t buy more than £15 worth at once or you will be stung for shocking customs handling fees.

Secret Base. Mmmmmm………..

Being of the skint starving artist type (Well I would be if it wasn’t for Lidl) I spend an awful lot of time coveting stuff I can’t afford. Somewhere on the top of this list of unattainable wonders is nearly everything I see on the Secret Base website. I often wonder whether I would be so keen on it if it wasn’t so damnably hard to get hold of. Even looking at the website is a trial. For a start you will probably have to install Kanji fonts on your pooter, then you have to reload it half a dozen times to actually get the page buttons to work. Once you have all this sorted you can ogle the weird and wonderful plastic toys and weirdly out of context fashion accessories. Zombie Dennis the Menace in Japan? And British Dennis the Menace at that!

You might even think about trying to buy something…  If you want to take that thought a stage forward, may your god help you. Firstly, you will realise that you haven’t a hope in hell of fitting into the clothes as they are so very tiny. Secondly, once you convert the price/telephone number from yen you will wish you hadn’t bothered as you will then need to crawl under a rock and wait for that long lost rich relative to pop their clogs. If you are still not put off, you can e-mail them to enquire about getting your potential purchase sent to you only to be told the next day that it is sold out. (Can you tell I’ve had personal experience of this?) Anyway, it’s lovely , lovely stuff and if you own any, please don’t tell me about it because I will cry.

http://www.secret-b.com/

Experimental Theatre Vs Designer Vinyl

About a week ago, Dunny Series six hit the shops. Mind you, grazed the shops would be a better phrase as they were barely in them long enough to actually take up storage space. When the exchange rates went all wonky a couple of years back, the price of  a blind box figure worked out about seven pound, eight with postage, and there it has stayed.

When the new batch appeared I was overjoyed that there would be a Gloomy Bear Dunny and a Devilrobots Tofu number, but what really got me doing the Snoopy Dance was that there was going to be another figure by James Marshall aka Dalek. Unfortunately, the dancing stopped when I spotted that, rather than the usual one in one or two in every twenty-five boxes, it was a one in one hundred issue. This meant that buying a pre-opened one would be about thirty pounds, well out of my price range. Truth be told, it wasn’t the greatest piece of his work either.

So here’s the thing, I was flailing about trying to find a justification for spending eight pounds for the chance of buying a blind box and getting a Dalek figure by luck but I couldn’t think of one.

That was until last night when I forked out eight pound for a performance of experimental dance theatre.

It took me about five minutes to work out that experimental dance theatre is a euphemism for something much more diabolical… I can barely type the word… Mime. Eeek!

At that point I made my excuses and left.

So now I have the ultimate justification for any outlay on little plastic toys.

It’s cheaper than five minutes of mime.

My amazing dancing toy collection.

A couple of years back, I finally got a house big enough to allow me to take my entire toy collection out of  storage and….

Da da daaaaaaaaa…..   Out of their boxes. Even now I hear the screams of geeks and fan-boys perforating my eardrums.

So there I was, for two days straight, open box, put figure in glass cabinet, carefully put box back in storage, repeat. Bliss!

There they were, qee, dunny, evirobs, murakami, bearbrick ,micronauts, secret base and star wars. All standing to attention on their little plastic feet.

Then after a week or so, after the novelty had worn off I noticed something quite peculiar. Some of my toys had gone for a walk on their shelves, some were even huddled together as if planning some dastardly scheme….. Strange!

Now I could understand if some had fallen over, I’m quite heavy footed and a bit clumsy so you expect a few casualties, but this was far more subtle.  Were they indeed up to something? Were they planning to get me whilst I slept, perhaps even overcome me with fumes from all their little vinyl bodies or maybe they were going to make a break for the border.

This carried on for a while before I worked out what what was going on.  It was the washing machine. The spin cycle was sending vibrations though my glass cabinets and jiggling my little plastic friends about.

Reality can be quite a let down.

What is a Squiggly Norman?

This is the question that I’ve been asking myself since I made the first one back in 1998. Is it a toy? Is it art? Is it a really uncomfortable cushion?

Well, it’s eleven years later and after much lollygagging (why isn’t that in my spell check?) and the addition of some facial features, I still don’t have a clue. So what is it? Any suggestions? Clean ones please.