ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

It was in August of 2006 that David Rodriguez of the now-defunct Rocket Pop put out a call for artists to participate in The Bomb Project – a show in Denton, Texas that would focus on customized BUDs from Jamungo. At the time, Rocket Pop was a new, small online shop that had a lot of potential.

The call for artists summoned a great deal of talent, which included notable names like Brent Nolasco, Shawn Smith, Dril One, Leecifer, and of course, that giant among men, Collin David. Given David’s MySpace photos, the show went off great, but that’s the last we ever really heard from him. David offered to retain the pieces for sale in his online shop, which seemed like a sweet deal at the time.

Unfortunately, the shop folded soon after that, and after over two years of repeated attempts to get the many missing works back, David Rodriguez and Rocket Pop appear to have simply stolen a vast majority of them. We kinda want them back.

Despite having mail fraud charges filed against him, and then pursuing a change of address (and claiming that he had no internet access for a long time, despite the most recent login date on his MySpace profile always being fairly recent), David still hasn’t returned the works. After a very rare contact and an empty promise to return the works back in October of 2008, there’s again been silence. So, if you know of the whereabouts of any of these pieces pictured below, a majority of which are still missing and very possibly no longer in David’s possession, please comment! It’s been something of a personal quest to get these works returned to everyone, but I’ve hit a wall with how much I can do before personally driving to David’s undisclosed new address.

There are also a large number of stolen pieces from his subsequent ‘Everybody Sqwerts’ show, which can be viewed at his MySpace profile. Given David’s penchant for disappearing and ignoring contacts, the Bomb Project images are being kept below for posterity. Don’t hesitate to step on over to that MySpace profile and contact him either. I like to think of the designer toy community as a positive, constructive and smart group of people. Help us retrieve our art!