Thought it might be cool to hear some stories (and possibly se some photos) about strange places you've seen vinyl toys around your town or places you have visited.. Toys in restaurants, clothing stores etc. or maybe you went over to a relative's house and had no idea they had Elegab toys on a shelf in the living room.. Sometimes these toys pop up when you least expect it
Not in the UK they don't, or at least nowhere i've visited . . . . I've seen a few Kozik and KR pieces here and there but definitely no Sofubi. Even mass-produced Bandai stuff is thin on the ground, unless you like Power Rangers or maybe Pokemon!
Yeah, I don't think this happens anywhere, outside of Japan and a few select part of Asia. Now, as to seeing stuff at friends' places, well, I will leave speaking to that issue to people who have them. (I am the guy that plays with plastic monster toys)
No one where I live has even heard of sofubi. When talking about it I mention Godzilla or Ultraman, and since the former has just been on the big screen I might get a nod. Correlating that to toys made 40-50 years ago, or even modern sofubi is an entirely different story though, one that gets me the WTF look. I've become so tired of explaining I have a flickr collection pic saved to show people. It's quite frustrating but I guess that's what makes this hobby special.
Every business should have one random kaiju displayed in their store just to make the environment interesting.
There's a place Snacky in Brooklyn that has a bunch of sofubi/kaiju toys scattered along the walls. I couldn't really find any good pics of the place online, but here's what I could few. (Eyezon on the right wall)
When I worked at a streaming music company my boss had several Ultraman toys in his office but he didn't think of himself as a collector. He was into Gama-Go stuff, Biskup and J-Pop in general so that was his context. Still, it was cool.
Snacky is good. All the Toy stuff is my friend Jimbo's fault. They had a globby at one point but maybe it was stolen or something. Yummy food.
This is where camiondepompier actually did its first Nuit Blanche. The guy is a collector. He got that Ika from camion as well. There was also a bar that had a wall full of the larger Labbits.
That Ika Salaryman (and the amazing totally random display of vintage toys at the now defunct Dex store) was the one thing that came to my mind as well. The Camion days were good times Oli. Miss them I do.
Finding japanese sofubi is going to be hard here too, but I did find this... Blow molded Goji holding the sing for a public bus. There's plenty of Mexican vinyl for the 60´s and 70's but the characters are mostly Mexican. All the figures of Ultraman and Goji, or Mazinger, Grendizer, etc... from those times are usually blow molded.
...But are we ready for those descriptions/images? Jokes aside, I have sadly never seen any sofubi toys out in the wild. Most people give me a weird look when I tell them I collect "collector" toys. I've met a few people who responded with "Oh, you mean that M-nny D-nny stuff?" and a part of me dies inside.
Ha! I had some friends over after the TAG show on Saturday and I showed them my "toys" and one of them rebutted by calling them "art pieces" because "they're not toys as you don't really play with them"... which is totally false. An unspoken bonus of unpainted toys is that there is no paint chips or rubs from playing/dropping/squeezing...
Yes! I often have dreams I'm in a shop packed with toys, but when I go to pay there is some issue, like my ATM card melted or nobody is there to help me. It's weird because it seems like these dreams take place in vaguely familiar places, like a quaint German village (from my Army days) or a city that seems like one I grew up near. But I never walk out with any toys...
I used to have a dream where my pop takes me to King Norman's and there are loads of Micronauts. But then we have to go before we can buy any... always in a rush. I think I stopped having those type of dreams when I finally got to start making my own toys.
^^Maybe we can get this thread going again.. http://skullbrain.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=40975&p=737484&hilit=Toy+dreams#p737484
I think I remember seeing an art car at a crafts faire, that had Ultraman figures and other toys, glued onto the entire surface of the car . Art cars are really fun, and there have been a couple of times I've stumbled across them, parked on the street: http://www.artcarfest.com/artcars.html