Everyone knows about the exclusive, limited run, import Japanese toy game. Shit, my mom used to line up at Toy Tokyo on release days circa ’04 or so. What’s not as well known, the very rare Argentinian alternative rock demigod custom toy game. This is strictly for live men, not for freshmen.

A company in Argentina called Mediodescocido have immortalized Dinosaur Jr. in “art doll” format complete with guitars and skateboards—the accoutrements of any self respecting band. Amazingly, J. Masics is pictured wearing a Keep Watch shirt, adding to the value of these 1/1 handmade dolls nearly infinitely. They were already rare by being one off art dolls, but the fact they managed to dress one in our limited edition, handmade doll capsule collection really shows Mediodescocido’s commitment to excellence and high quality products. If you know a guy, who knows a guy, maybe you can get your hands on this set and step up your toy game.

We were treated to the first glimpse of the Masters of the Universe documentary TOY MASTERS back in August 2011. That feels like an eternia ago. The doc pulls the curtain back on the tumultuous empire that was He-Man – from the action figure line’s rise to domination to its sudden decline. The filmmakers are in the editing stage now and to prove it, they’ve released this 11-minute clip featuring Gary Goddard, director of the 1987 MOTU movie.

To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the film last month, Warner Bros. released a bare bones Blu-ray. The disc criminally features no special features (you can read my review of it over at Collider) besides Goddard’s commentary from the old DVD. The Bloglin featured more insights on MOTU with our Pig Boy interview, for chrissakes.

But it looks like Toy Masters is gonna feature plenty of juicy details about the making of the film. In this brief clip Goddard (and a few others involved with the making of) cover a lot of ground, including the terribly rushed ending and fear of Dolph’s accent. It’s fun stuff that’ll have any MOTU fan frothing for more.

There’s no release date yet for Toy Masters, but you can haunt their website and Facebook for updates. You have, as they say, the power.

While many are currently focused on today’s election (the results of which may or may not be in by the time of this articles publication, but certainly aren’t at its writing) they’re forgetting one important thing: the world is going to end at the end of December anyway. Durr! So what better thing to do when the planet is about to go all Knowing on us than stop up on Dunny’s, specifically Kidrobot’s soon-to-be-released Apocalypse Series.

While Kidrobot actually auctioned off a select few boxes earlier this week to contribute to Sandy relief efforts, the official release is this Thursday night at Kidrobot’s store in Soho. It’ll be your best and brightest chance to get your hands one one of these boxes, which includes a Dunny designed by the team here at Mishka. Look at that cute lil alien, purple blanket and all. Mike Jones and Greg will be there (along with Ron English) to sign your stuff. Also, the Kidroboteers are putting together a time capsule, so bring something small for our primordial descendants to enjoy far, far into a dark future.

Thursday November 8th, 2012, 6-8PM
Kidrobot NYC
118 Prince Street
Manhattan, NY

What’s happening Pasadena? I’m particularly jealous of you at this moment as I imagine you are sunny and warm while my apartment is cold and electricity free, but I’m even more jealous because this weekend you’re getting DesignerCon!

A convention that’s specific goal is to embrace collectible toys as well as streetwear and art? Hmm, that doesn’t sound like something that Mishka would participate at all. And by that I mean we’re obviously going and obviously going to be selling some amazing exclusive toys (and probably buying a bunch too, to be honest).

We’re gonna be at booth #507, which is obviously the best booth, and the centerpiece of our wares is the Buff Monster hand-painted edition of the Bootleg Kaiju. There’s only 5 of them. I’m not too great at math, but I’m pretty sure that’s not that many.

If you look above, you can see all of them. Damn, those look awesome. There’s going to be other exclusives from L’Amour Supreme, Buff Monster, and David Healey. You’re gonna want’em all, most likely. See you there!

Saturday November 3rd, 2012, 9AM-6PM
Designer Con 2012
Pasadena Convention Center
300 East Green Street
Pasadena, CA 91101

Stuck on the Desert World in Super Mario 2 because of that fucking Birdo? Need some help in the Legend of Zelda‘s Second Quest? Tired of Mike Tyson planting your ass on the mat in Punch Out!!? Trust me, us too. Don’t be discouraged though, that’s why we’ve got Nintendo Power on our side.

Whether you need help beating some old favorites or just want to catch up on the latest developments in 25 year old gaming news, the magazine’s first issue has gotten the PDF treatment in all its 8-bit glory courtesy of Eion Stanley. With features of some of the biggest games of its day, over 50 pro-tips and a free poster, Issue #1 is both a title wave of nostalgia and a perspective on just how far virtual reality has come in eight (console) generations. All the old art that detailed what the NES couldn’t is great too. And did we mention a free poster?

Read Nintendo Power’s First Issue! (Click Here) 

via Kotaku

The Danes behind everyone’s favorite building bricks are celebrating their 80th birthday this year, and in celebration, have put together The LEGO Story – an animated short chronicling company founder Ole Kirk Christiansen and his son Gotfried as they worked their way through poverty, hardship and a little thing called World War II – and into the hearts of generations of kids worldwide.

From a single-workshop wooden toy operation that had to go door-to-door to move product to opening its own theme park (not to mention dropping a $400 Death Star), LEGO has certainly gone through some big changes over the past eight decades. The video’s a little corny, probably to make it more accessible for the children, but it’s also a tale of visionary innovation and craftsmanship that brings me back to spending hours on the floor building giant robots, medieval castles, and whatever other ridiculously awesome stuff their design team dreamt up. If you too had a childhood built on a foundation of plastic bricks, give this a look.

Erstwhile Bloglin mainstay Justin Jewett has been on his grind. His grizzly, as it were. Not here. That dude Hateball tho. HVTXBVLL, as he is probably now known in the biz. Somewhere. You may remember his zetaphysical forays into toyworld, showing you around kaiju blacklands; and by the looks of the picture above, it should be clear by now that he has physically far outmetaed these forays.

Perhaps most innocuously, there was this little interview for Tumbling sensation SoHowWasYourDay, where Hateball showed us his sensitive side. A portrait of the artist at his dreamiest yet busiest.

Seems like a tough day being a dork during the Dorklympics. I wouldn’t know. What he doesn’t tell you is that he did all this wearing flip-flops. I don’t even understand how that’s possible. What he does tell you though, is the name of his latest creature: Shub Zeroth. A Brian Ewing co-production. And I know where to start telling you just what it is, with the words of the man himself:

I conjured him up out of a sweaty pile of Lovecraft, [Hunter S Thompson], and Vonnegut…what a pedigree, right? It’s a healthy dose of Brian’s amazing art paired with my dryrot sarcasm. The toy has been sculpted by Miyazawa-san, owner/operator of a tiny toy company in Japan called Shikaruna Koubo.

Lookit below and make sure you clickit to see all angles of what is JUST THE FREAKING PROTO, OGODICANTWAITTOSEEITINCOLOR.

The general release is slated for fall. Til then, you can sign up for a mailing list to stay posted (it takes a few seconds) and then check out a montage of nearly everything else he has done during Comicon (it takes 2 minutes). That’s a bout the distance between now and the Fall, 3 minutes.

But wait! Would you like to know more? I had the pleasure to shoot some questions at Hateball for a side pocket of soul-searching that ultimately lead us to the middle of a soft vinyl wasteland, kicking model carcasses around and generally just jibber-jabbering. The following is a short extract of something that may or may not end in full on this here Bloglin eventually.

I pondered: With all the cultural background involved in these toys (whether manga or mythological or whatever) don’t think that the kaiju trend might be cultural or (gasp) generational? The animals will cross-over, sure… The Velocitron tentacled monsters, probably… But the Tokojis and Hedorahs? Where does the spur of the moment start, and where does the meta culture end?

It’s certainly one of the core shits, innit? How many toys ABOUT something can there really be? Before you know it, large corporations will start cultivating movie franchises that are designed solely to spawn an ever-expanding line of merchandise. How funny would it be—how absolutely ironic and blatantly HATEFUL toward us, the consumers—if there was somehow a critically acclaimed and widely praised movie that was actually ABOUT toys that then went on to permeate huge heaping swaths of the worldwide entertainment fingerprint and came heavy with pale imitations of the very ‘actors’ that starred in it.

Oh wait.

I think that toys will always tend to be about something. Something that already exists. Or existed. The ‘licensed’ items will always (probably, right?) outshine the stuff that’s created ‘from scratch’. I certainly think that what you and I call ‘kaiju’ (as in reference to ‘monsters that appear in movies and the toys that are made to represent them’) might not be generational in the way you mean. But I don’t have any better theories.

Oh, the fun to be had. Here’s my thoughts: great ideas are few and far between, and we’re not that great to begin with, so we needed our parents and grand-parents to try and err, and reduce the amount of erring we need to do. So we rely on the past, because honestly, a lot of great ideas have already been had, and a lot of great people have been here before us, and it would be a shame to not pay attention. But there’s an (at least) equal amount of inspiration in the world around us that these people of the past did not have the chance to exploit, and it’s our job to pull those strings together to create little bundles of joy for our generation to enjoy, and for the next generations to have documents of how shitty we are, and how there’s always room for improvement. Give them something to think about. Give us something to no longer think about, because it’s right there. We made it. #Meta. #Crypt. Holler.

New York City and its outer lying boroughs can be really brutal in the summer, even desolate at times. Activity slowed to an almost halt because of the heat and all your friends being away.  At least that’s my perception of it growing up here.

This Saturday might be the exception to that because Tara McPherson’s Cotton Candy Machine Gallery is hosting it’s annual Tiny Trifecta Art Show starting at 7PM. I’m not a fan of small gallery art shows because the majority of attendees just want the free alcohol and never buy any art.

This show is probably the complete opposite of that to the point of people camping out the night before to jockey a high enough position to acquire a piece of art for only $100 from one of their favorite artists. Every piece of art in the show is only $100.

That may sound a lot to some of you but considering the superstar lineup that Tara brings to the show, that’s quite a steal. Now I’m not saying me or Sucklord are superstars or anything like that because we are in the show and I will reveal our collaborative pieces here. We’re actually the bottom feeders in the art world.

We make toys, sometimes call it art and try to pass it off as real art. Nothing lower than that but I don’t really give a shit.  Anyway, here’s our collaborative three pieces for the show.  I illustrated directly on the blister backing card and carefully hand selected 9 loose figures with Sucklord out of a card board box of his spares and rejects.

He then skillfully hand painted each figure like a true artisan that he is. I then weaved a story with my illustration for each one.  If you’re in the Williamsburg area , corner of Roebling and South 1st Street, definitely check out the show. This isn’t the first collaboration me and Sucklord have done but it’s probably the one well worth the price tag if you can score one.

Oh the ’80s. A time when boys could ride Luck Dragons, girls traversed labyrinths, and David Bowie had nothing better to do than chill with a team of creepy puppets and scheme on cradle-robbing in its most literal sense. For anyone who’s yearns for the halcyon days of Rad! and gaming gauntlets, 8-Bit Zombie has your fix, and it’s oh so bad.

With awesome (and often gory) re-imaginings of everything from everyone’s favorite Hyrulian hero to the original N.E.S. wizard himself, the crew at 8BZ will fill the void bored into your soul by the past three decades and outfit you in some pretty sweet gear in the process. Just don’t go putting yourself into debt over it. Remember kids, no one wants to be a Reagan.

Мишка x Medicom Toy 2012 Color Ver. 100% Be@rbrick ($25.00)

We’re not in Kansas anymore folks, and as promised our Be@rbrick model is getting the full color treatment. This thing’s a bonafide double rainbow. Just last December we let you know about our exciting inclusion in the 20th anniversary 23rd Series of Medicom’s iconic Be@rbrick’s. We had Lamour Supreme cook up a black and white design that featured all kinds of majorly monstrous Мишка imagery. The thing was a total blast to design, and no we’re taking it to the next level.

Available in our online store now, the Мишка x Medicom Toy 2012 Color Ver. 100% Be@rbrick is the perfect addition to your Be@rbrick collection, and will look especially snazzy next to its monochromatic counterpart. With vibrant tones like the magenta ears/brains, classic blue Keep Watch iris, and that crimson lightning bolt, this Be@rbrick is a real looker.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
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Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234