May 24, 2009
by tenacious toys
8:16 AM
From now till the end of the day on May 29th, we are including a free 4-inch Amos x Strangeco King Ken figure by James Jarvis with every order, no matter how small! This is a great way to get a colorful ape into your toy collection, so head on over to Tenacious Toys this week to place your order...
May 21, 2009
blog toy2r, brandt peters, crocadoca, david horvath, deady qee, egg qee, frank kozik, horvath turtle, jeff soto, spider boon, sun min
by tenacious toys
12:59 PM
Jeff Soto 8" Terrarium Keeper Minnesota Edition Qee
Sun Min Spider Baby Boom mini figures
Sun Min Spider Baby Boom mini figures
Frank Kozik 1.5" mini bombs
David Horvath 3.5" Turtle
David Horvath 5" Bossy Bear (we have 3 difft version with eyes pointing in difft directions- your choice!)
Preorder Brandt peters Serv-o-Matics by MINDstyle
Preorder Brandt peters Serv-o-Matics by MINDstyle
May 18, 2009
by tenacious toys
10:46 AM
I was both amused and a little unnerved this morning when I flipped open this month’s issue of Fast Company magazine and poked through their “100 Most Creative People in Business” article… A big full-page pic of a giant red KAWS figure was on page 95! WTF?!
On further investigation, I found that 3 of the 100 people Fast Company chose are in the designer toy industry!
Here they are:
#54: Masamichi Katayama, Principal at Wonderwall
#56: Charles Rivkin, President & CEO of W!ldbrain (FYI Wildbrain owns part or all of Kidrobot)
#70: Brian Donnelly (KAWS): Artist/designer/owner of OriginalFake
This mainstream media coverage of players in our little designer toy industry is exciting, to be sure, but does this mean that our industry is now considered “legitimate”? And if art toys are now legit, is that good or bad? I mean, as a store owner, I can only be happy that more and more people are getting turned on to designer toys. More people buying toys means more customers for the shops. But, when a subversive idea hits the mainstream, does it continue to be subversive?
And what will happen to our subversive “toys” once the general population gets their hooks in? Will our toys become “Disney-fied”? Will a sufficient number of artists and companies continue to push the envelope of subversion, and continue to test the limits of people’s comfort zones? Or will many of our beloved manufacturers embrace the growing mass interest in their products by developing more cartoony, less offensive, less explicit art toys so that they can make bigger profits?
I mean, profit is good. Me and Stephanie were collectors first, before we started Tenacious Toys, but without generating some sort of profit, we’d go out of business fast. So profit is a good thing. But would increased profits be worth the price we’d pay once the art toy community starts catering to the masses?
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