From Mind to Matter: Nolasco & Nemo at ToyQube

Two extremely talented artists showed at ToyQube last night: Brent Nolasco and Nemo. Brent's customs have been gracing blogs, websites and shows all over the world. His signature colorful-yet-dark style can be recognized a mile away. Nemo is a NYC-based sculptor who works in a variety of mediums (media?). His sculpting is second-to-none. Check out the Joe Pesci & James Gandolfini sculpts. Amazing. Looks for his name to start popping up a lot more in the future.

(above) Brent Nolasco spent a few hours the night before the show throwing up sick painting on ToyQube's wall right by the front door. Talk about great advertising! Wonder how much that slab of wall is worth now?

(above) Brent talks shop!

(above & below) Brent Nolasco custom CRAOLA Captain Rotnclaw (which we sold to him)

(above) Please do not molest the valuable customs.

(above & below) Nolasco custom Hammerhead Sharky (a ToyQube product!)

(above) Nolasco custom Andrew Bell Giver

(above) 2 Nolasco customs

(above & below) 2 Brent Nolasco paintings

(above) Nemo customs

(above & below) 3 Nemo sculpts: Gandolfini, Pesci & a toy which is destined to have paint designed by Nolasco!

(above) 3 Nemo sculpts

(above) more Nemo sculpts: custom Statue of Liberties (originally sculpted by... you guessed it, Nemo! and now customized) plus 3 spray can which stack like a totem pole!

(above) Nemo sculpts Joe Pesci from Casino

(above & below) Nemo's Dust Mite paintings

(above) Nemo talks shop

WHO'S DA BOMB?! show details & flyers

WHO'S DA BOMB?!

presented by Tenacious Toys & Delicious Drips

Here are the full details on the Who's da BOMB?! show:

We've sent out a bunch of Toy2R 1.5" Mini Bombs to scores of artists- some well-known customizers but mostly a lot of new, fresh names!

We are now totally out of Bombs.

Because of the unexpectedly HUGE response to this online custom show, we reached out to Delicious Drips.

DD is a much larger presence in the custom toy scene and they have agreed to co-sponsor this show!

DD still has a stockpile of Mini Bombs to sell and they have generously volunteered to set up a coupon code to give you a chance to pick up your own Mini Bomb(s) from DD at a discount!

The code whodabomb will get you $2 off your purchase of a Bomb from their online store.

ANYONE & everyone is welcome to participate in this online custom show!

All customs must be finished and submitted via email by August 31st to be included in the Who's Da Bomb show.

Your finished custom may also be submitted to the Delicious Drips Submission site, which is a place where anyone can sign up and submit their custom toys to be viewed and voted on by the toy community!

Voting on the custom Bombs will run from September 1st thru September 7th on the Delicious Drip site.

The 3 Bombs with the highest votes will will the following prizes, donated by Delicious Drips:

1. $100 gift certificate to Delicious Drips

2. $25 gift certificate to DD + 8" Toy2R Qee of your choice

3. Headphonie of your choice

And, at the suggestion of DrilOne, in September we may be putting together a book of some of the customs in the show which will be published a la carte by Blurb. Their smaller softcover 7" x 7" books are only $12.95 so it's a great low-cost way to see your custom toy published in print!

You can still buy a Kozik Mini Bomb from Delicious Drips!

Regrettably we have already sent out all of the Bombs that we have in stock so we will not be able to fulfill any further requests for free Mini Bomb toys...

However, if you'd still like to participate in the Who's da BOMB?! online custom show-off, you may go to the website of the co-sponsor of this project, Delicious Drips, and buy a blind-box Mini Bomb for yourself!

They have generously volunteered to give interested parties a coupon code good for $2 off the purchase of a Bomb from their store.

Coupon code is: whodabomb

It should be noted that the Mini bombs are NOT toys and are NOT intended for children!

We have had a number of requests from educators and parents looking for handouts for their kids.

The Kozik Mini Bombs and all other "designer toys" are pieces of artwork.

They are NOT meant to be played with, touched excessively with bare hands, or given to children.

They have NOT been safety tested or rated for children in ANY WAY!

Who's da BOMB?! Custom Bomb Show-Off project

OK, this project is evolving before our very eyes!

We were able to obtain a couple more batches of Bombs to fulfill the requests of roughly the first 100 people who responded to our offer. Those Bombs will ship out to us next week some time and we'll forward them onto those of you we've already been in touch with. We have worked diligently all day yesterday to respond to each and every email we got, whether or not we have a free Bomb for you.

(It should be mentioned that our offer was picked up by several non-designer-toy-related "freebies" websites and that generated a deluge of emails from people outside our toy community requesting free Bombs. We were not able to grant any of those people a free Bomb simply because we are totally out of Bombs and our distributor is as well.)

I reached out to the good folks at Delicious Drips yesterday for their help. They are actually far more entrenched in the DIY/custom toy scene than we are and because they are awesome, they volunteered their help in several ways by co-sponsoring the Custom Bomb project (which we have given a real name: "Who's da BOMB?!").

Delicious Drips has a wonderful community-driven Custom Toy Submission section which is brand-new.

You can sign up and submit your custom toy to be voted on by the community.

Why is this cool? Because once you have finished your custom Bomb, not only will you email images to us at Tenacious Toys but you can also upload the image to Delicious Drips and have your custom Bomb voted on!

Because that will be a time-sensitive endeavor, we have set a hard date for submissions: August 31st.

The 3 winners with the most votes on their Custom Bombs will receive one of 3 REALLY awesome prizes which we will announce in the flyer, which I will work on this weekend! Honestly these are actually quite valuable prizes so I need to personally thank Lief from Delicious Drips for very generously volunteering to co-sponsor the Who's da BOMB?! project. It's really taken the whole concept to the next level.

If you are one of the hundreds of people who was not able to get a free Bomb from us, you can use a special coupon code for $2.00 off the purchase of a 1.5" Toy2R Mini Bomb from Delicious Drips: whodabomb is the code you should use.

Keep checking back here for the flyer which I will hopefully be able to finish by the end of this weekend.

Thanks everyone for your interest in what is shaping up to be quite an extensive Custom show!

100+ pieces? That's just nuts. Really nuts...

Custom Toy2R Mini Bomb Show-Off: Out of Bombs!

The response to our last post was absolutely, completely overwhelming! We have already packed up 3 dozen Bombs, everything we had in stock, and shipped them off to the first responders.

We have also contacted Toy2RUSA to get more of them for the rest of you. Seems the US distributor has fewer than we thought so regrettably we are going to cut off the requests at this point, unless there's some hidden stash of Mini Bombs somewhere. Once we get the next batch, we will of course ship every last Bomb we have to as many of you as possible, in the order that you requested them.

Thanks everyone SO MUCH for the incredibly positive responses!

We are very much looking forward to seeing these customs!

Custom Toy2R Mini Bomb Show-Off

We have a fun little custom project we want to tell you about:

Lately we've been sending a few customizers some figures to work on and we were very taken with the customs they produced.

An Italian artist that goes by the name Willow sent us this picture of a custom 1.5" Mini Bomb we sent him:...and that got us to thinking: these Mini Bombs are so small, ANYONE can finish one in an hour or so. The shape is really simple and lends itself to creative customization. Each Mini Bomb also comes with a disc-shaped base which can also be painted or customized.

So, here's the deal: email us with your shipping address if you want one of these Mini Bombs to customize. All we ask is that when you are finished, you email us a nice big picture of your Custom Bomb.

I've already been in touch with Toy2R and they said they'd post up pics of all the customs on www.Qee4All.com! I'll also post up the pics in an album on Facebook and link to your website if you have one.

AND, if you want us to, you can mail the Custom Bomb back to us and we can sell your custom on our website for whatever price you want to ask for it. We won't take a commission out of the sale price, just the wholesale cost of the Bomb and anything we spend on shipping. And we'll Paypal the rest of the money to you.

We're calling this project the Custom Bomb Show-Off because it's not really an official custom toy show, it's basically just a low-cost way for you to show off your customizing skillz and maybe get some recognition.

Dok A Mechtorians: 2 more full sets left!

Click here to order! After these 2 sets sell, we will have no more Stephan LePodds!

Sam Flores 10" Dragon Boy arrives September

Sam Flores is at it again: in September we can look forward to his next full-size vinyl piece called Dragon Boy. Apparently Sam has been spending lots of time in Asia and it's rubbed off on him! This 3-piece toy really shows that Asian influence and I for one LOVE IT!

As with Sam's previous full-size piece from Upper Playground (Fatima), and the Tiger Baby series, this one I believe will be released in multiple colorways. I think we are getting an orange version, not sure if that's the one pictured above of some variation on it... With the Fatimas there was a UP colorway and a Ningyoushi colorway and we were able to get both in our store. Will try to collect as many as possible for you guys...

Anyway, this is a spectacular piece. Retail will be just north of $100, I think, but it will be well worth it. Definitely email us if you are interested.