Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series available NOW

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Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series work-in-progress

So here's the process of creating our little Custom Marshall blind box series: take a bunch of custom Marshalls (above), and the ratio cards and stickers (left)...

 

Insert ratio card + sticker (cuz stickers rule) into each box...

Then apply stickers to outside of box, on the panels that used to show 64colors' beautiful original designs for the Marshalls (much respect to 64colors but we had to cover those designs because they no longer apply to what's in the boxes...)

Et voila! 

The Custom Marshall blind box series will be for sale in our Exclusives section this upcoming Sunday, September 26th at 9pm EST. 

Any leftovers will be brought to NYCC to sell in our booth in early October.

How to make your own blind-box series: Step #37 (gather printed materials)

Step #37 (gather printed materials): 

Gather the stickers you made to apply to the outside of the boxes, as well as the ratio cards you had printed up. Count remaining stickers you have left after that. 

Do you have enough to throw one into every blind box, along with the ratio card? 

Yes, you do. 

Take fuzzy pics with your terrible webcam so that you can show everyone by posting to your blog.

SNEAK PEEK: Ratio cards for our Custom Marshall blind-box series

The final piece of the puzzle: now that we have these sweet double-sided ratio cards printed (big thanks to Bryan Collins!) I have everything I need to pack up our Custom Marshall blind-box series!

After I add one of these ratio cards to each box, I'll apply our stickers, seal the boxes and mix them all around. Will post up images and/or video of those steps this week as we prepare for the release of this series next Sunday, September 26th at 9pm EST.

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: Steve Talkowski

Steve "Sketchbot" Talkowski is a man that needs no introduction. He successfully organized one of the best custom shows I've ever been to at MyPlasticHeart, and he's got round 2 in the works with even MORE great artists customizing his Sketchbot figure (incidentally, we also sell Steve's Sketchbot v.1 figure in our shop). 

His custom work is bright, clean and professional. But aside from all that, Steve is one of the most frenetically happy people I've ever met. He is incredibly positive and welcoming. Just a great guy. 

I gave him 3 Marshalls to customize for our blind-box series, and he did them up in paint schemes to match his Sketchbots: 3 Marshalls in 3 different colorways. Above is the pic of the Marshall custom version of Steve's v.1 Sketchbot colorway. Below is the v.1 Sketchbot:

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: Leecifer

Leecifer hails from Oaksterdam, CA. He likes spending time with his wife, drinking beer, playing video games and painting stuff. He once took a dump in the family pool and tried to blame it on their dog. Henceforth Lee was dubbed "Leecifer".

Here's what Lee has to say about his work:

"In regards to just customizing - I use all kinds of paint and spray-paint, markers, pens, pencils, pastels, etc.  I’ve hit up canvases, skate decks, walls, kicks/shoes, vehicles, all manner of wearables, door panels, toilet seats, furniture etc. I know I’m spacing on all kinds of stuff, but you get the idea.  I tattooed for a while (I didn’t stick w/ it long enough to get very good) also then, I didn’t think you could make a good living at it (little did I know).  I also spent almost 15 yrs as in-house design, illustration, and art direction for the phone company.  The job sucked horrendously, but I got to design giant inflatables, theme park styled costumes, set and stage design, vehicle graphics, all manner of collateral, stickers and posters, wearables for days, and stuffed animals of the corporate mascots and well tons of other stuff. I must say I miss the money, but love being able to do what I do now.

On commission work - I love people who come outta’ the woodwork w/ killer piece of vinyl and a crazy idea they want to see realized. That’s collaboration baby!!! Or the people who see a bizarre piece of my art on a wall and just instinctively get it even if they interpret it in a manner I’ve not thought of. I am beyond pleased that it spoke to them as well! These are the souls that keep me eating and living indoors and keep me constantly challenged and working. It’s to these folks that I say - from the bottom of my heart, thank you very very much for all the commissions and gallery purchases. I am honored and can only hope, that even in some small way, my work can make you as happy as you make me!!"

Leecifer contributed 4 Marshalls to our series: 3 like the one you see above, and one color variant.
You can follow Leecifer on his website, Flickr, and Twitter.

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: Zam

Zam is a dude to watch these days. Not only does he run Genuine Artikle on Long Island, NY, but he's also a tattoo artist and quite an accomplished toy customizer. He's hosted a traveling Qee show in collaboration with Toy2R at his shop, and he recently returned from a trip to Thailand. Zam was chosen as a finalist in the CE Battle at the Character & Licensing Expo Asia (CLEA) for the CE design he created for the CE design contest. I think they actually flew him out there. Seriously.

We consider ourselves very lucky that we sent the Marshalls to Zam a long time ago... I think from here on out, it's going to be much more difficult to work new projects into his schedule. His work is just SOLID, every single time.

Zam created 4 wonderful custom Marshalls for us, 3 like the one you see above, and one variant.

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: LYS0L

 

LYS0L (aka Brian Ahlbeck) has been very actively customizing and making resin toys up in upstate NY. He posts a lot to the various forums, and you can follow his new work on Flickr here.
You can sometimes find him outside the Manhattan toy events hanging out with miscreants like NEMO and OsirisOrion. I tell ya, he's hanging with the wrong crowd. But he makes some killer customs. I pulled him out of his element for this series, asking him to paint and not sculpt. Took some convincing but of course LYS0L's customs came out looking great- the paint is so cleanly applied, you'd think they were production pieces. There are 3 like the one seen above, plus one variant.

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: Den Ramos

Den Ramos is a pretty quiet guy, usually. 

I've always said that it's those kinds of dudes that you have to watch out for. 

Underneath that subdued exterior is a tattoo-slinging, Corvette-driving badass from Long Island, NY. When Mr. Den is not working at the Elite Gudz design studio, or laying down ink, he's hacking up toys and sculpting on them like a madman. Remember that crazy Rat Fink-style giant Munny at the Kidrobot MunnyWorld group show? The one with the full huge red car that the munny was riding in? That was Den.

I told the artists that sculpting was not necessary on the Marshalls they were doing for us, they could just paint them and send them back. Well, Den didn't listen and he sculpted the crap out of his Marshalls. This was right after the BP oil spill; Den did up 3 Marshalls like this in Tarball Brown and the chaser in BP's lovely Corporate Green. Lookin' slick, Den!

Tenacious Toys Custom Marshall Blind Box Series reveal: Ian Ziobrowski

Ian Ziobrowski is an art student and also works at Genuine Artikle on Long Island. His main character, Nuggs, has taken many forms over the past couple of years. Ian has customized a whole range of different platforms into detailed iterations of Nuggs, and each time he reveals his amazing talents as a sculptor and painter. Look for Ian's Nugg Life website to go live soon. We are very proud to call Ian a friend, and to have him as a part of our Marshall custom series. The figure pictured above is the standard Nuggs figure- Ian made 3 of these for the series, and also one chase variant.