Customize MUNNY beyond all recognition in version 4 of this DIY KidRobot classic.

Beards, toupees and other incognito gear morph MUNNY into the master of disguise.

You can draw and paint on MUNNY, use crayons, pencils, ketchup, or anything else you can think of. You can make clothes for MUNNY. Make things to put in MUNNY’s hands! Snuggle him, pierce him, drape him, cherish him. MUNNY is open to pretty much anything.

Each 7-inch figure comes with four blind accessories, a marker and collectable sticker.

To-Fu Head creators, Devilrobots, crack out Eggy Dunny.

This pearlescent-shelled, 8-inch vinyl is the perfect partner for making omelettes or souffle, or egging the neighbor’s house.

This is the latest in the line of Jamungo’s Sqwerts. Here is MAD’s contribution in green. Limited to 500 pieces, worldwide. Packaged in a nicely illustrated box by MAD. Also available in a rarer color-way which is brown (250 pieces).

This is a very rare and expensive piece by popular artist Joe Ledbetter, the Lava Ringo Bear. Check out eBay and you’ll be seeing this figure being sold for $1000! This figure has been long sold-out and only 60 pieces were produced. It is highly sought after by collectors and is considered the Holy Grail of Ledbetter works. If you have this, fellow collectors will bow down before you.

Even if I’ve been collecting designer toys for over a year now, I still consider myself a newbie and has a lot of catching up to do. It’s hard to complete a line-up. Designer toy prices really increase fast! I guess I’ll just forget about getting the older pieces and focus on what’s being released now.

Fire Bone Fly (bonulaphid borealis) is the larval stage of one of the most intriguing creatures on Monsterism Island. All known fire bone fly larvae have the ability to produce light, a behavioral function that has received considerable speculation amongst many monstrological societies and experts. The most generally accepted hypothesis is that they use their luminescence as a warning signal, communicating to potential predators that they taste evil. Their glow increases in both intensity and frequency when disturbed, angered or prodded with a stick.

Miao is the first collectible designer vinyl figure designed by Zakka and decorated by SIMONE LEGNO/TOKIDOKI. It is an updated design of the Japanese Maneki Neko/lucky cat (an iconic Japanese figure that brings good luck and good fortune.)

Miao measures 7 inches tall and comes packaged with his BFF Mousubi, a 3 inch character designed with the elements of a musubi/onigiri (Japanese rice ball wrapped with Nori/seaweed) and a mouse. Miao and Mousubi are sold in a collectible fully illustrated box also by Simone Legno of Tokidoki.

Thunderdog Studios artist Tristan Eaton has teamed up with ESPN to create a limited-edition, re-imagining of the ultimate X Games athlete. Transformed by gamma radiation from mere mortal action sports competitor to a highly evolved super-athlete with perfectly honed skills, the figure represents the unequalled progression of action sports witnessed only at the X Games. His sleek helmet is coincidentally carved into the shape of an "X," but the real reason for the aerodynamic design is known only to a secret group of athletes given access to prototypical military sports gear. As leader of the group, our super athlete was last seen in the Mojave desert attempting to olly off a top-secret defense missile, hence the band-aid and stitches.

Just recently there has been a twist in the toy collectors’ world.  While others still collect the mainstream or the highly-collectible movie, comic, Japanese pop culture-related merchandise, a few branched out in order to explore the subversive art of designer toys, urban vinyls, etc.

Collectors are usually exposed to blister-packed action figures, die-cast replicas, gashapon, resin statues, plush dolls and anime/game-based vinyls.  Action figures are good for display, there are highly pose-able ones depending on the number of articulations and usually include a lot of accessories.  Die-cast are also nice display pieces especially since they’re made from metal, they are usually replicas of vehicles seen in movies and series, robot-replicas, or even popular comic book and movie characters; these are highly detailed as well with small moving parts.  Gashapons are the popular Japanese random figure from the coin machine or boxed-versions; made from PVC, they’re cheap and makes your collection look a lot.  Resins on the other hand are expensive but very good in detail and quality, and extremely limited. Plush dolls have been popularized by the Japanese crane machine, very limited as well and designs are usually super-deformed anime and game characters. Finally, there’s vinyl, almost like the resin statues except different material and a bit interactive since you can remove accessories of some models, also limited.

The Japanese are well known for their detailed and beautifully crafted vinyl game or anime-based characters.  But slowly, the world of designer vinyl has already invaded the collectible market, now with popular and unknown artists from all over the world making unforgettable and limited-in-number designs.  The quantity produced is small, so the price range is much greater than an average blister-packed action figure or the Japanese anime/game-based vinyls.

Designs are out of this world, ranging from bloody killer bears, creatures that look like imaginary friends, scary girls, smoking rabbits, designer furniture, and even dung!  Depending on who you talk to and what interests maybe, the expression varies. That is the beauty of this subculture of collectibles. The great appeal of designer vinyl or art toys is the effect they have on genre boundaries, rendering them malleable.  Vinyl can be graffiti combined with high-brow art combined with Japanese street fashion. With the wide variety in design, collectors usually start by focusing on a specific artist or a specific series.

Don’t know which artist or series to choose? Make your own vinyl then! Designer toys have their own and unique way so that a lot of people can truly understand what designer toys are really about.  Do It Yourself!  Buy a blank, pre-molded vinyl; draw, paint, just leave the blank vinyl alone or just keep it next to you for company.  The choices are endless. Talk about extremely limited since you made it yourself. Create an alternative that is your own to communicate your own identity.

Find the big blank vinyls or the painted ones very expensive? Try out their version of boxed-random figures. It gets addicting once you start to open one. With the random figures protected by a foil package, it has been said that even x-rays can’t see what you’ll get.  There are a lot of rares and even figures not shown in the inserts. Ratios are usually low with figures appearing only once out of 96 boxes opened. There are even figures appearing only out of 300 boxes!

So you want something to hug? Designer toys are not limited to vinyl and those Kubrick-like pieces.  They also have hand-made plush dolls like Ugly Dolls. From small key chain plush to giant 6-feet tall plush, this is a very popular series with more and more Uglies arriving and looking for a friend…namely you, the human!