ToyCyte sale!
We've slashed our prices for a lot of our toys to make room for more customs! Go get some amazing deals today at our store !
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Patrick Francisco has been working with AlwaysSEEN.com towards an exclusive T-Shirt project and they are finally ready for release! The shirts are very limited in quantity (under 60) and women’s sizes are especially scarce. Grab yourself a shirt while you still have the chance to clothe yourself. Here are some words from AlwaysSEEN: “Artist Patrick Francisco has [...]
Continue reading...8. June 2009
In April of 2008, I’d come to an impasse on my screenplay and was regarding even the words I’d written on my grocery list as being poorly formed. I was still logging keystrokes on the computer daily, but a significant number of them were going to buying toys on eBay. Then fate intervened in [...]
Continue reading...8. June 2009
You know that slice of trivia about how Usher finds it soothing to sort his M&Ms by color before a show? Yeah? Really? You do? Stay with me, I’m going to loop back to that. Toward the beginning of my time at ToyCyte, I was writing about Jon Burgerman A LOT. A toy here, a [...]
Continue reading...18. May 2009
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Now, who wouldn’t be all over a $1500 shopping spree at KidRobot? Who would be willing to hand a minifigure to someone in the back of a cop car and snap a photo of it? Therein lies the divide between me and that person who’ll win the KidRobot Rollin’ Stock Photo Scavenger Hunt, ‘cause I’m [...]
Continue reading...15. May 2009
Not all collaborations make sense, and not all of them have to. Case in point: Officially licensed Kewpie Doll x Godzilla phone charms. Cute kewpies dressed as “scary” monsters are available in Godzilla, Mecha Godzilla, King Ghidora and Mothra editions. These Japanese imports are hard to find and sell out quick. Each measures 1.5 inches [...]
Continue reading...13. May 2009
It was only a matter of time before us hard-working. hand-working toy customizers would be usurped by the digital world. Thanks, Pimp It 3D, for starting the chain reaction that will destroy my livelihood. In all seriousness, when Pimp It 3D dropped me an e-mail this weekend, I was intrigued. It’s a pretty novel concept : [...]
Continue reading...8. May 2009
And so are a bunch of you, too. Laura McMullan interviewed me for Amazon’s new toy blog, Toy Whimsy, which focuses on toy culture for the toddler to teen set. Of course, where there are kids, there are (hopefully) parents, and as such, the need for news from the adult toy world (contain yourself Kylo76) [...]
Continue reading...8. May 2009
Ball-jointed dolls (BJDs) are slightly outside of the typical ToyCyte coverage zone, but when we cover them, they’re always by BJD king, Charles Stephan. I can claim only the remotest knowledge of this scene, after lurking on a message board following the release of Charles’ Elfdoll Qee series. But if you think vinyl toy fans [...]
Continue reading...8. May 2009
Another cold wind blows in from the Realm of the Suspiciously High-End Toy. I understand that my love for eBoy is not shared by all (and heavily predicated on my love of Playmobil), and while I can’t really fathom the costs applied to some of their limited edition shirts or painted wooden blocks, Tarina Tarantino’s WGirl [...]
Continue reading...6. May 2009
If you are the rare bird who was put off by all the violence in those carefully-crafted weapons-n-ammo accessories of recent Huck Gee customs, you’re in luck: Huck is showing off his softer side with a series of ten SkullBunny figures. This little guy has been sitting on the backburner for a year or so, trying [...]
Continue reading...5. May 2009
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Joe Ledbetter has a new print out for today’s holiday. The “Mexico” giclee is a limited edition of 100 signed and numbered 11×14-inch prints on heavystock watercolor paper. Available now for $75 here.
Continue reading...4. May 2009
After nearly a decade as a San Francisco institution, GAMA-GO opened its flagship store on 8th and Folsom in San Francisco. Founders Chris Edmundson and Greg Long were on hand restocking hoodies and ringing up purchases the old-fashioned carbon slide way. (Clothes and credit card tape kept running out due to demand.) Although Tim Biskup [...]
Continue reading...30. April 2009
San Francisco’s Infectious continues to bring in a killer collection of artists for your aesthetic adhesive endeavors. The latest recruit is Sket One. While not every artist’s portfolio makes sense rendered on a gadget skin, Sket’s works for me. I find myself blogging in public places a lot more lately, and I really wish people [...]
Continue reading...27. April 2009
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Artoyz posted a sneak peek at the upcoming Auto project by Superdeux. The French company has been putting out some of the most unique and well-designed art toys around, so we’re excited to see how this develops. Artoyz said that Auto will be released later this year. Perhaps we will also see Play Imaginative’s Memory [...]
Continue reading...24. April 2009
Your mom doesn’t need another shawl or some perfume. Depending on how old she is, she probably needs her 401K back. In absence of your ability to provide that, you should get her “something she will never expect.” ToyCyte’s pal, Jason Freeny, is taking 10% off all prints from now until May 10th in honor [...]
Continue reading...23. April 2009
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One of my personal favorite (and lovably local) adhesive art companies, Infectious, has just come out with new designs by Jon Burgerman and Buff Monster. I’ve already got Jon’s Lunar Park Infectious car art (so look out for a Honda Civic all temporary tatted up), but now we can also ensconce our smaller gadgets with [...]
Continue reading...23. April 2009
Here at ToyCyte we do enjoy a good bit of scandal, so thanks to the anonymous informant who brought this situation to our attention. While Dunnys, Qees and Be@rbricks have been blackmarket bootlegged for years, it’s rare to see a specific Dunny plagiarized and used for such an unrelated purpose. As is currently unfolding here [...]
Continue reading...22. April 2009
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Issue 14 of Clutter Magazine is now here! This brighter than bright issue’s wrap-around cover art is brought to you from the talented folk at ilovedust. The issue also features an in depth interview with founding partner Mark Graham, covering the ins and outs of the design studio and their recent [...]
Continue reading...22. April 2009
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy86Vj1wUc4] I’ve seen a wide variety of completely extraneous USB peripherals designed to do nothing more than mildly entertain as they suck valuable electricity from your computer’s sparking, sad heart, but I think that things have reached a new pinnacle of bizarre excess when we’ve started to plug wiggling schoolgirl asses into our computing devices. As spied [...]
Continue reading...21. April 2009
Staying on the French tip this morning (begun with Nanan1’s customs), I want to update you on the launch of The Dirty Cream, the “young brand & web store with a crazy graphic universe” we first told you about here. We’re seeing a trend in nationalistic designer toy stores (see last week’s Polish Your Vinyl) [...]
Continue reading...20. April 2009
In 2008, two of my favorite artists released awesome art books. If you don’t have them yet, pick up Alex Pardee’s Awful Homesick and Jon Burgerman’s Pens Are My Friends. 2009 is already looking like a good year for art books with news of Bwana Spoons’ first tome, Welcome to Forest Island. The hard-cover book [...]
Continue reading...16. April 2009
If you like acronyms, you already love this post. Charles’ Creature Cabinet presents, Fidelia’s Secret, the very first glow-in-the-dark ball-jointed doll. She’s a Firefly Faerie and will be available in about 4 hours when it turns midnight in the Netherlands here. I bet some of our toy photographer readers could create some really beautiful vignettes [...]
Continue reading...15. April 2009
Art geeks prepare to flip out. Counting down to the next Star Trek movie, Quantum Mechanix teamed up with some stellar artists to re-imagine the Enterprise. Our own toy scene’s Amanda Visell designed the model shown above. Mr. Brainwash, Ragnar and Jim Lee are among the contributors. I don’t know if the pieces will be [...]
Continue reading...13. April 2009
I’m not sure if this is terrific, pathetic, hilarious or all of the above. Back in June, I was having a slow day and wrote about dop kits and diaper bags aka Kidrobot x Schifter + Partners Allover Print Bag & Accessories Collection. The gear has SRPs of $25-$475 and the press release stated: they [...]
Continue reading...13. April 2009
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I’ve yet to be converted into the full thrall that is the ultra-interconnected madness of cellphone culture, but it’s my understanding that said culture has already surpassed ‘epidemic’ status in the far off lands of Japan, where ‘keitai’ is just about everywhere. We have keychains and backpack zipper pulls, and they have cellphone charms and [...]
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11. June 2009
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