As promised, We are continuing our new “Blogging” exercise here, with a little backstory on who the fuck The Sucklord is exactly and how he came to have any authority to comment on the so-called “Designer Toy” industry. This information is out there already and probably some who are reading this already know this stuff. So beat it dickbag, if you know everything. This isn’t for you. This little piece here is for some of the newer followers who may not know the story of how a disenfranchised toy designer carved his own place at the table and rose to the top of an underground Art industry, only to see it all come crashing down. In this article we explore the primordial origins of what caused this individual to take on a career in making shoddy looking fake Star Wars figures and become famous for it. The story starts waaay back in the day…
The golden age of Star Wars was the background of my formative years. From 1977 to 1985, Star Wars, and all the toys that went with it, was the main tentpole from which an entire childhood was built. I had a generous family that bought me ALL the toys and vehicles that came out during this era. It wasn’t just Star Wars. I had all the GI Joe, He-Man, and other flavor of the day action figures that came and went. I had some creative artistic inclinations as well, and this was encouraged. I had all the clay, paint, and construction materials I needed, not to mention a Super 8 film camera and one of the very early video cameras; the kind that was the size of a cinder block and had to be plugged into your VCR.
While STAR WARS was the main inspiration for all the creativity, it was actually the documentary THE MAKING OF STAR WARS that really catalyzed things. This was the film that showed all the behind the scenes processes of building the ships and doing the special effects. It all seemed so practical and do-able. It was just guys making models out of ordinary things and making it look magical. I can do that, I figured, and began at once to make it happen. I made costumes and props, I shot little stop motion films. I made little sets and environments for my figures, I created clay figures of all the characters that were never produced, and even famously attempted some mold making and casting using a bar of soap for a mold and a melted green crayon to pour into it to make a bootleg Greedo figure. It failed, but regardless, it was an incredible era of raw unimpeded creativity…
Then Star Wars ended; no more movies, no more toys. The era was over. I was becoming a teenager, taking drugs and chasing girls. I stayed “Arty” but I stopped thinking about toys for a few years. I was in college and trying my best to half-ass my way through it and not do any real academic work. After flailing through being a biology and a Psychology major, I realized I needed a scam if I was ever gonna graduate. I took a jewelry making class so I could make a Led Zeppelin medallion and I kind of aced the class. I released the that I could grift my way to graduation as an Art Major. I sucked at drawing so I focused on sculpture, where I discovered my talent for bullshitting a crappy piece of art into a masterpiece. This was probably the most important thing I learned in Art School; something half ass can be made to seem like important Art if you tell a good story around it.
With this in mind, I coasted my way thru my final year of independent study, where I worked one-on- one with a teacher on a project of my choosing. All I really wanted to do was smoke weed all day, so I chose projects that came easy to me. I was on some sarcastic ironic shit at the time, and the idea of making a toy of a Crackhouse occurred to me. I convinced my teacher that that was a good idea, and spent 3 months making a little playset out of sculpey and cardboard that depicted little crack hos and baseheads getting high in a cute little Sesame Street looking brownstone, It was a Hit! I got an A in the class and it was all the rage at the student review gallery show. This made me realize that an Artist could use toys as a medium of expression. I figured if a painter could make prints of their paintings, then a sculptor could make toys of his sculptures. That’s my career, I thought. This was in 1992.
For the next several years I pushed the ACTION CRACKHOUSE PLAYSET as a thing. I hit up toy companies and investors in an attempt to get this thing made into a real plastic toy. I had no money and at the time there really was no way to access a factory or do something like this as an independent. I even had a meeting with MATTEL to show them some of my ideas. No action. I could not find a way to get this shit made. I continued with my practice, making weird characters out of Sculpey and trying to show them around. I got a little blurb in Juxtapoz and had a little show at the VICE store, but nothing really was happening. Then, around 1997 the Futura Pointman came out.
This was the first action figure produced by an artist, and I realized “It’s happening.” Then 360 Toy Group opened, KAWS, Michael Lau, and Eric So came on the scene, and I knew everybody. I knew that this was the coming thing. I was “Mr. Toys.” I had been doing this for years, so I assumed that I would just step in and take it over. After all, I had zillions of prototypes and I knew everything there was to know about Star Wars, which was back in style. I even had a little fame for a album I made
called STAR WARS BREAKBEATS. It was a shoe in, I thought. Someone was gonna see my work and give me a deal. A real company was gonna make my toys, I would be a star and make a million dollars. Too easy! Well it didn’t work out that way at all…
NEXT UP: BOOTLEG KING