Street Trash (Inspired Minifigures)

Heyooooooo!

Thanks for reading this blog. For those of us in the toymaker community sat uncomfortably between KidRobot rip-offs and politically ironic 3.75s it's often an incestuous, nerdy, lonesome and under-exposed world where the wrong things go right and the right things go wrong.

Anyway, have you seen Street Trash? Yeah?! Then this will make perfect sense.

A few years ago, when VHS became cheap thanks to DVD, my housemate and I built a good collection of cult horror VHS such as Street Trash, Braindead, and Savage Streets. Weird how rare Troma VHS always seemed to be here in the UK.

Anyway, Street Trash naturally appealed to everything I like. Really witty, well made, good characters, and utterly disgusting. So I've made this rubber MIMP inspired mini as tribute. Available right here: http://bigmantoys.bigcartel.com/product/street-trash-inspired-toilet-guy

Most of them are neon colored rubber but I've found time to do a handful of handpainted. Really pleased with these little turds. Based off the cover to the VHS copy I have.

If you're into minifigs and you haven't seen the film, I'd encourage you to see it. There's a lot of the DNA that inspires this vague 80s horror gore revival thing that seems to be happening (and I'm happy to see).

ALSO! I'm dropping a handful of neon rubber Treegarr Saplings. Limited to 5, one time only, and FREE subject to conditions, as of tomorrow night.




















Additionally, I'm working my knackers off on the quiet with an onslaught of 5.5 projects that i've got reason to be excited about. I love making my minis and I personally thought Burning Chop is the toy the world needed, but there's something so satisfying about making a figure then being able to pose it next to a MOTU and have it look in place.

Eating the steak and leaving the fat + MORE BURNING CHOP FIGURES + GLYOS ANIMAL HEADS.

 Half of the alpha wave of Burning Chop are still in store @ http://bigmantoys.bigcartel.com/product/burning-chop-alpha-wave Also been working on some Glyos animal heads (available individually) for fellow Battle Beast dorks.

I was reading an article the other day about weight training, saying that 80% of our results come from 20% of our effort. I imagine that rule loosely applies to most things in life. You just never know what will be THE thing that gets you to where you want to be. You can crank yourself to the edge with effort in something, then some fluke side-project you half started can catch on like wildfire and take you further than all your hard work ever could have.

The reason I'm writing about this on a toy-maker's blog is it's a principle that been present in everything I've tried in life. I won't lie, a lot of things I've been involved in, I've had the unfair advantage of being able to make people laugh which instantly makes them treat you favorably. I never planned this or put effort into it, but it has undoubtedly helped a lot.

I went along to Toycon UK again this year but didn't take any toys. My goal was to talk to my friends, look at some toys and have fun. I walked away with a couple of new contacts in the toy industry and some vague talk of vinyl production somewhere if I do the right sculpt. I won't strain myself trying to make these things happen - I'm just going to keep on enjoying what I do, sleeping at least 7 hours a night (most nights), and working only on the ideas my heart is invested in. I've even started working on my own gym in my bigger shed to make sure I don't lose my weight training progress to toy work. There's no need to let that happen.

Toycon was a ton of fun without business to worry about. Getting to see TruTek is always cool as we have so much to catch up on every time we see each other, as well as Dan and Ian from Unbox, Luke and Rob from Triclops, Chris from TheTarantulas, and Rich from Umetoys. I wasn't talking shop for the most part, and as a result, I left with more motivation to make toys than ever. I got to meet Jon Rampage and had the pleasure of realising our mutual expectation of the other guy being a dick was the opposite of the truth. I could have lived that day 3 days in a row and still been filling my inspiration glass by the end.

On the toy side, expect 5.5s by the bucket this year.