Hot Rod Zukie custom by Benny Kline for Zukie vs the World

 Well, I went and did it. I made my first custom toy!
Alison Perez invited me to be a part of her upcoming Zukie vs the World custom show (opening at Toy Tokyo Underground, July 27th from 6-10pm) and I of course accepted! I've been knee-deep in custom toys for a few years now, watching artists rise up through the ranks and get famous. It's rad. I love seeing all the artists gain success, notoriety and sometimes, when they are SUPER lucky, they get to make their artwork a full-time pursuit! But...

 I've never made a custom toy myself. At least not a designer toy. When I was young I used to make static models a lot. Mostly cars, but sometimes planes or tanks or the Space Shuttle... later I graduated to R/C cars, still painting the Lexan bodies myself.... but I've never created a custom toy before.
So... to start myself off, I went back to what I know best: static models. I bought a dragster kit which had a nice-sized supercharged V8 engine, and built the engine. Some of you might have followed along on Instagram when I did that (if ya wanna follow me, I'm "tenacioustoys" on Instagram).

 After I had the engine built, I got in touch with Monster Kolor and picked up some paint. I invited Kris Dulfer over to hang on my roof and show me what's what... and when he got here I hacked up this Zukie's head and built a mount for the motor.

Then I got to spraying: Monster Kolor aerosols the whole way: base coat of silver, on top of that I layered C-Thru Red, and to finish it off, several coats of Gloss (aka clear coat). I've never used the paint before, and I have to say it worked perfectly. The Gloss top coat dried perfectly. Not sticky in the slightest! I highly recommend Monster Kolor aerosol, and in fact you can buy it from my shop here. Actually, you can buy Zukies in my shop as well.

It's really not the most complex custom toy I've ever seen, but it was damn fun making it and I'm proud of my first attempt! I feel a little better now that I'm part of the customizing community, as opposed to some outsider just writing about the customs and selling them. Most of my friends would probably consider me an insider already, but to be a real insider, you need to take part. Now I'm in! And I'll see you at Toy Tokyo on Friday!

Huge thanks to Alison Perez for inviting me to be in this show, to Matt Walker for providing Monster Kolor paint, and to Kris Dulfer for showing me how to do the chopping, sanding and painting!

For more images of my Hot Rod Zukie custom, click here.