Monday, July 03, 2006

Urban Vinyl for the masses


This was a prototype for a line of capsule toys I wanted to do, I was a huge Homies™ fan, David Gonzalez is absolutely brillant! I always wanted to create a line of my own toys, and I thought, "Wow, maybe there is room for cool shit in the mass market." At the time, I was completely enthralled with the Urban Vinyl thing, but hating the fact that these cool toys were out of reach both price-wise, and distribution-wise for any regular kids. So in the summer of 2001, I talked my friend Thomas into being partners with me. Thomas owned both a toy store and a coffee shop in my neighborhood, and was getting restless for a new challenge. We batted about a few ideas, and finally in the winter of '01-'02 we came up with this one figure. We priced out manufacturing/distribution, and found it way too expensive. We'd come to an impasse, Thomas wanted to start a small importing business to help generate capital, I wanted to approach vending co's. about liscening our designs, in the end nothing happened. I still think the concept has legs, and hasn't really been done in a mass-market way.