UNBOXING: The Big Bang & The Super Amazing Spectacular Collection by Dudebox

The other day I received an unexpected package from a new company: Dudebox, located in the U.K., sent me a care package. My immediate thought? Here's a company that GETS IT, finally. As a retailer, one area where the designer toy industry frequently comes up short is product samples. I really, really need to see, hold, touch, play with the new products before I can make an informed decision about what to buy. I'm a regular guy, with no outside funding. I work really hard to accrue every $500 or $1000 I spend on toys for the shop. Some of you have seen me mention that on Facebook... occasionally I mention a freelance gig. Yeah. I have to work just like the rest of you.

So, when a new company pops up, or a new product is put out on the market, it's hard for me to make a decision about it. Will it sell? Is it worth the price? Will the customer appreciate it? Who the hell knows! Often I'm looking at a .pdf sales sheet with illustrations of the products! Or no images at all.

So when the Dudebox care package arrived, I was very excited. The first thing I did was take the picture above. Then I posted it to Facebook. Immediately, I got hit with several inquiries: "OH are you getting those Mini Dudes? I wanna customize some!" That's a good sign for me.

What was in that package? First off, there was a high-quality, glossy and bound sales booklet with images and prices for all the Dudebox products (the green thing that everything's sitting on). There were several branded postcards, stickers, a DIY Mini Dude, one blind box from each of Dudebox's 2 mini figure series, and a stack of the ID card inserts that accompanies each figure:

But let's get down to brass tacks here: the main focus of Dudebox is, of course, the toys. And they're great.

I'll do a bit of a photo essay unboxing here: the first box I opened was from The Big Bang. Bright graphics all over the box, and the possible figures on the side with their ratios is a formula best employed by Kidrobot and Toy2R, and it works.

No news here, that's what we collectors are looking for. The artist roster for The Big Bang is as follows: Attaboy, Travis Price, Mark Gmehling, Bunka, Grapheart, Andreas Krapf, 2Much, Drunk Park, Dust & Sebastien Pie.

Upon opening the box, we get a foil baggie like a Dunny would be packed in, and a fold-out insert showing all the figures, listing the artists, talking about blind-box toys in general and Dudebox in particular.

Turns out I pulled the Andres Krapf figure, which is on the Dude platform. This one is listed as ?/?? so I'm not exactly sure if I pulled a super-rare figure, or just one with a mysterious unpublished ratio.

This figure has great color, a lollipop accessory and most importantly, SUPER CLEAN PAINT LINES. A little hard to see from my iPhone pics, but the edges of the paint were all even, sharp and printed clean. A great job. This little dweeb has a "Kick Me" sign taped to his back!

The Andrea Krapf figure from Dudebox's The Big Bang mini figure series

Next I moved on to the Super Amazing Spectacular Collection figure. The box employs the same tried-and-true layout as the Big Bang box: graphic front, descriptive back, and the figures in the series presented on the 2 sides.

Dudebox pulled together a somewhat overlapping artist roster for the Super Amazing series: Attaboy, The Yok, Jonny Wan, Mark Gmehling, Chauskoskis, Andreas Krapf, Suki Bamboo, Drunk Park, Travis Price & Junichi Tsuneoka.

The same delicious and easy-to-open foil packet holds the Super Amazing figure. Busting this one open, I uncovered a figure on a different platform: a figure by Jonny Wan on one of Dudebox's other platforms that sort of looks like a fox to me. Couldn't find a name for this shape but one thing I'd like to point out about both The Big Bang and The Super Amazing Spectacular Collection is that they both contain figures in 3 different Dudebox sculpts... this is a little different than Kidrobot's Dunny (all essentially the same sculpt) and Toy2R's 2.5" Qees (same bodies, different heads).

I really enjoy this and for me (not normally a big fan of collecting blind-box figures for my own collection) this extra added level of mystery really ramps up the excitement of opening a Dudebox blind box product.

Jonny Wan's figure is SUPER detailed. Like the Krampf figure from the Big Bang series, this one had crisp paint details, but a WAY more complex paint design. Coupled with the flag accessory, this one would really stand out in any collection.

Reminds me a little bit of Lunabee's work.

The Jonny Wan figure from The Super Amazing Spectacular Collection by Dudebox

Now, I know I don't do many reviews and unboxings on this blog. Mostly that's because I don't get product samples in the mail... so I am very pleased that Dudebox took the trouble to mail these to me. I realize that puts me in the precarious position of reviewing products which I later stand to make a profit upon, and that makes my reviews a little less trustworthy than those of a non-retailer... so I'll just say this: I really enjoy the Dudebox blind box mini figures. They are interesting to look at, well-made, expertly painted and present well. In addition, Dudebox is a European company, so they are tapping into a largely European artist base. This is a welcome change for Kidrobot's mostly American artist base, Medicom's mostly Japanese artist base and Toy2R's pan-Asian artist base. We just haven't seen production vinyl mini figures from many of Dudebox's artists, and that fact alone makes these two series a pleasure to explore. 

I'm expecting a large shipment of blank DIY Mini Dudes to arrive this week- that was the first product I ordered from them. So until those, and our next Dudebox shipment, arrives, go check out their fancy, clean website for more info and to buy these 2 series of mini figures. You'll like them.