Remix Culture, how Asian designers changed the game, part 10

In the previous entry of the series I talked about getting my hands on some urban vinyl basketball players in the vein of Michael Lau. The Super-X figures by Dragon Models were not licensed by the players, nor did they have anything to do with the NBA. That was okay with me. Whenever a stylized, and official 12" figure showed up in the press it was often for a gallery exhibition. Michael Lau had collaborated with Nike on exhibits, and release events. Lau put his gardeners in the new Nike outfits for the show. Of course these figures would never be available to the public. The South Korean figure artist CoolRain also did a number of Nike, Adidas, and Vans exhibits as well. He would create stylized figures, such as the "Dream Team" featuring a trio of Nike sponsored athletes in their USA team uniforms, and casual wear. Sadly these were also only created for a show, and never meant for limited-release. Knowing that these figures would never be sold, even in small runs drove me crazy. 

Some of the best vinyl figures ever released came from Hong Kong, and they were rarely licensed by an individual, or organization. To skirt copyright law they often wouldn’t name a figure after an actual person, mascot, character, or athlete. One of the ways they would get away with it was by using keywords, phrases, slogans that might be associated with an existing person, but that couldn’t be trademarked. For example; let’s say a figure artist wanted to cater to Disney fans, they might release a vinyl figure of a stylized cartoon mouse wearing red shorts with white buttons, and yellow shoes. The artist would call this figure “Oh boy!” After one of the slogans used by Mickey Mouse. This was the same trick used on the "Three Kings" statues. Fools Paradise (FP) created some of the most desirable statues for the high-end collector market. If I were a huge NBA fan with tons of disposable income, and lots of room to display a collection then I’d buy their statues without a second thought. They looked authentic from a distance, and even up close if you realized that these weren’t licensed figures they still looked great.

The Three Kings looked amazing. The company called them kings, and not players, or athletes. If you knew anything about pro basketball then you would say the trio were Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan, and Dennis Rodman. They were the key members of the dominant ‘90s-era Chicago Bulls. The statues looked like stylized reproductions of the actual athletes. Even the numbers on their jerseys were correct. Upon further inspection you’d notice that Fools Paradise used all of the tricks that a counterfeit fashion designer would use to get away with when assembling knockoffs. The sneakers looked just like classic Nike designs, but they changed just enough to skirt the law. The swoosh was different, as were the lines, and colors as to help avoid a cease-and-desist letter. Then there was the NBA brand on the uniforms. At least that’s what it looked like until you got closer, and realized the red, white, and blue symbol was actually the Fools Paradise logo. Then in the middle of the jersey were the words LEGENDS, instead of BULLS. They were able to charge almost $500 for an unlicensed figure based on Kobe Bryant, wearing what looked like his Lakers uniform. The logo on his chest was a similar font, but it said Legends, and the statues were referred to by one of his team numbers. Numbers couldn’t be trademarked after all.

The FP statues was a master class in how to create a counterfeit art that could still demand top dollar. Audiences got an impressionist take on their basketball hero in a new format. It was fresh enough to command an absurd price. Even if Fools Paradise were contacted by the Lakers organization, or Kobe’s lawyers they had already built in their own indemnity clause. By going with small limited-edition runs they guaranteed this would fly under the radar. Similarly a small run of prints, or toys by an indy artist often go overlooked by corporate lawyers during fan conventions. Fools Paradise were not being malicious with the use of the NBA star likenesses, they were filling a demand that nobody else considered. Not only that, but they would sell out of everything they had, insuring there would be no collector bubble, or shelves stocked with products that nobody wanted. This was what I meant when I said that the best artists from China were remixing culture in real-time. Thankfully I never had enough space, or money to even consider buying those statues. I wondered what would happen if actual highly-stylized, reasonably priced, licensed figures ever came out.

It turned out that I wouldn’t have to wait very long. The trading card company Upper Deck wanted to get into the urban vinyl market in 2006. Their goal was to get Michael Jordan’s heir apparent, LeBron James, his own figure before the end of the year. It seemed impossible to me. Giant businesses usually had to plan a season or two in advance, especially since they needed to coordinate with the league, sponsors, and settle on a design to get to the manufacturers in China. Somebody working at the company must have had the ear of management, as they were moving a million times faster than any corporation ever could. I found out about their plans in Francine’s article about creating a Lebron James vinyl figure at Vinyl Pulse. I was certainly interested based on the concept art alone. The proportions were similar to Lau’s art, my own work, with a hint of Kadir Nelson as well.

Chris Brunner was the lead designer on the All Star Vinyl line for Upper Deck, with art direction from Mark Irwin. For LeBron he was able to make a powerful, and intimidating design on the powerful, and intimidating star athlete. The amount of detail with the figure was astonishing. The thing that popped out to me were the accurate, but still cartoonish Nike sneakers. Funny enough Upper-Deck would switch the basketball while coming up with future designs. In 2006 the NBA announced a new microfiber composite basketball, which was met with the ire of the players. This basketball was used, and the classic basketball would appear in latter releases. The ways in which Upper Deck was able to get the figure to market with a short turnaround started making sense. They were doing double-duty with the release of LeBron. Mr. Brunner designed LeBron wearing a neutral red, and white jersey, and shorts. This was to avoid lengthy contract negotiations with the NBA, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who LeBron was playing with at the time. The outfit was Nike performance wear, and the sneakers that he was wearing were the all new LeBron III’s. Nike was using this release as part of a bigger marketing campaign.

Upper Deck announced in short order that not only were they working on LeBron, but they were also creating sculpts out of the characters in his new ad campaign. This would coincide with the release of his new signature shoes, and the alternate colorways were a nod to his “family” which were essentially his alter egos. Athlete was the basketball player that most people were already familiar with. Business wore a suit, and represented his market savvy. Kid represented his youthful, playful side. LeBron had come right out of high school into the NBA, so his perspective was still young at heart. Wise was his basketball IQ. He was a young master of the game because of the insight he picked up from the legends that came before him. Ever the marketing geniuses LeBron, and Nike would also produce a series of cartoons featuring the family. Nike, LeBron, and Upper Deck were covering their bases. Fans of the trading cards, and collectables would have something new to pick up. Fans of the sneakers would love the exclusivity of this set. Urban vinyl fans eager to see how the art form would translate to licensed figures would be lining up to collect them as well.

It seemed that the people working behind the scenes were keenly aware of how urban vinyl collectors worked. These releases wouldn’t be like printing millions of trading cards featuring star athletes, and bench players for the domestic market. They needed to focus only on the biggest stars, and their cultural relevance has as much of an impact as their scoring records. Upper Deck also needed to make sure to keep their numbers low, and also offer smaller runs of special colorways. This would appeal to die-hard collectors, and allow their manufacturers to get the All Star Vinyl line to market faster than any toy could hit the shelves.

They made sure to give the urban vinyl community a heads-up by going directly to Vinyl Pulse with the exclusive interviews. Then they would clue in their regular distributors, and press outlets with articles on what the whole vinyl movement was about. Upper Deck knew that they were headed in the right direction based on the reception to the LeBron’s. The initial drop, and the special editions sold out the minute they hit the market. In fact it crashed their website, and countless people (myself included) were furious at how they failed the collectors. When they got things sorted it looked like bots, and resellers claimed most of the initial release. There were almost as many eBay entries as there were figures produced that same day.

I wrote a very long email to their customer care department highlighting everything they got right, and wrong with the release. They were kind enough to contact me, and hold a set aside for me, and many of the other collectors that experienced issues on release day. I’m certain that they thought every release would be met with the same level of passion. Upper Deck began working with the NBA, and every major organization to bring other superstar athletes to the growing market. They designed, and released figures for the NFL, NHL, MLB, PGA, and even pro boxers. I promised myself that after the Super-X figures that I would stop buying urban vinyl figures to save some money, however I couldn’t resist.

I had no intention of buying the entire sets of any athlete, or the smaller alternate color runs. As a fan of Mr. Brunner’s art, and the other artists working on the line I was happy to get my hands on any of the basketball figures, but that was it. I didn't care about their boxer, hockey, baseball, or football lines. Despite having the best intentions Upper Deck failed to recognize that the success of the LeBron’s could not be duplicated with every release. Those figures hit because it brought together the fans of Lebron, Nike, sneakers, the NBA, collectables, and the urban vinyl community. It was essentially the perfect storm of different markets. If just a few of those people didn’t turn up with each release then the figures would end up languishing on their online store, and on the shelves of their retailers. That was exactly what happened, and one of the reasons why the line disappeared almost as quickly as it was created.

Another thing that hurt the line were the competing scales that the figures were produced in. The majority of the numbered collectable figures were roughly in the 1/7 scale, or about 9-10” on average. Each of the NBA figures was proportionally accurate. Shaquille O’Neil (7’ 1”) was the tallest of the lot, followed by Kevin Durant (6’ 11”), then Lebron James (6’ 9”), Kobe Bryant (6’ 6”), Vince Carter (6’ 6”), and Dwyane Wade (6’ 4”). The shortest of the figures was Allen Iverson (6’ even), and he was arguably the coolest figure in the lineup, just as Lightning Son from the Super-X line was the coolest figure of that lot. Unfortunately Upper Deck also released slightly smaller scale versions of Kobe, LeBron, and Kevin Garnett, roughly 1/8 - 1/9 scale. They were not proportionally consistent. The smaller figures were designed to be more affordable, as they were produced in greater numbers. I would guess that Upper Deck was hoping to catch the eye of potential collectors with less expensive, smaller, but still stylized figures. The thing was that they looked close to the same size as the more expensive releases. There was the potential that they mistakenly bought the two different sizes for their collection. They wouldn’t realize it made their shelves look inconsistent until the figures were side-by-side.

Sales of subsequent releases might have been lukewarm because of the highly stylized athletes. The thing that I absolutely loved about Chris Brunner’s art being turned into 3D models did not appeal to the general public. Not everyone understood the artistic intent behind the sculpts. Not everybody liked the aesthetic of three dimensional cartoonish characters. Online forums were going back, and forth with people arguing that the figures looked dumb, cartoony, and plain unrealistic. They stuck out like sore thumbs compared to their other statues, and toys. Fans of the line, myself included said they looked amazing. We wanted a bold new look for athletic collectables. We argued that if collectors wanted realistic NBA figures then they could always go to McFarlane toys, or later Enterbay. Not every collectable had to be a 1-to-1 copy of every eyelash, wrinkle, and fingerprint of the star player. Artists could capture the essence of the athlete in profound ways, just like the Fools Paradise statues that I mentioned above.

Another thing that affected the reception to the figures was that there wasn’t yet a market big enough to support them. People were not used to seeing figures with such a strong aesthetic. The proportions were jarring to people that had not been exposed to that kind of design. There was nothing similar to them in any toy store, or from any other trading card manufacturer. So people had not been conditioned to accept that these were not only collectable, but they were cool as well. Funny enough over the next decade just about every major franchise would shift to this style of character design. Movie franchises like Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as cartoon mainstays from Disney, Ben 10, Spider-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would all get the highly stylized treatment as well.

In order to change the market, and gain acceptance with the general public one studio had to be first. Upper Deck was a pioneer among the big companies in the USA. They were willing to take the creative risk while every other publisher was going through the same old motions. The popularity of the initial LeBron release demonstrated that the market was there. Sadly they couldn’t get customers to keep showing up, and grow the industry like they wanted. Unfortunately the studio paid the price, and a potentially game-changing line was cut short. They should be admired for everything they were able to accomplish in a brief amount of time. Upper Deck had their finger on the pulse of sports, and they understood the influence that street culture had on the NBA. However there was something that came just before it that had an even bigger impact on the culture. I’ll talk about it on the next blog. Until then I’d like to hear your takes on Upper Deck’s All-Star Vinyl figures. Did you collect any? Do you think a line of designer sports figures was a good idea? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Big Daddy Romantic Monthly Danger - A 1UP classic from July 28, 2011

Hello friends, sorry if you've gotten burned out on the Disney coverage over the past couple of weeks. I'm still on a comic book kick though and for that I'm not apologizing. I'd like to share with you a couple of books that had caught my eye over the past couple of weeks. Big Daddy Danger by Adam Pollina and Tyson McAdoo and Strongest Dad, a romantic monthly by Minoru Hiramatsu were some fun reads that you should be aware of.

The books were from a few years ago and covered some oddly similar territory. Big Daddy Danger was a short series published by DC featuring a masked wrestling character that doubled as a secret agent. Strongest Dad was a comedy about an undefeated MMA fighter trying to raise a family. The manga series was featured in Big Spirits from Japan. The story was collected in a three-part anthology.

Both titles had fun art, clever designs and plenty of nods to pop culture and the troubles of raising a family. For the Strongest Dad his troubles were compounded by the fact that he could not accept defeat or decline any challenge. Even if it meant having to test his mettle against an elephant at the nearby animal park.

Big Daddy Danger was just as absurd but equally fun. Big Daddy was both a championship wrestler and secret agent. His manager / trainer looked like Col. Sanders and got secret messages printed out of his cane. Big Daddy had a son and wife whom he often had to spend lots of time away from. In fact his son had no idea that his father was moonlighting as an agent.

The Strongest Dad lead a more normal life where the biggest challenges were more about raising two daughters and fulfilling his wife's expectations.

Both main characters had older brothers which wanted nothing more that to see the main characters defeated and humiliated. In Big Daddy Danger the brother tried to move in and become a surrogate father to the Danger son and even steal away the Danger wife.

In Strongest Dad the brother wanted to find the man or beast alive that could dethrone his kin. He even had his brother fight against a gorilla when he tried to humble him! Eventually he found a Russian bruiser, an ex solder that was built like a tank and was obsessed with drawing manga girls. When "Dad" wasn't dealing with animals he was busy beating up on a unscrupulous fight promoter that dressed like a dictator and drove a copy of the Batmobile!

The art provided by Polina and McAdoo in BDD was very cartoonish, there were great splash pages and hilarious expressions featured on the cast. The characters interacted with all sorts of goons and even demons. Possibly the funniest part was that Big Daddy would continuously peel off his mask and have a different one underneath for whatever challenge he was facing. It certainly would make for an interesting videogame mechanic in a title other than NiGHTS.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Hiramatsu was a king of facial expressions. The characters in his books have always had memorable takes. He featured some of his panels in a blog about the series.

Both issues wrapped up rather quickly, BDD in 9 months and Strongest Dad within a year. If I wanted to see a series continue however it would have to be Strongest Dad. As much of a fan as I am of lucha libre, the Big Daddy series seemed flat. Big Daddy seemed to walk through opponents and there was no real sense of drama or tension in the issues, worse there was no resolution for his brother. Strongest Dad on the other hand made every little activity into a challenge, whether it was learning to play piano or escorting his daughters on a field trip. The Strongest Dad seemed a more three dimensional character that readers could root for. It was a fun series and almost matched the greatness of Mr. Hiramatsu's magnum opus. The Japanese wrestling, parable known as Agnes Kamen.

Boundin' Buddies, a plush set from a personal hero - A 1UP classic from December 3, 2012

 

Heya friends, did you have a good weekend? It went well over here. We had a break in the rain long enough to visit some friends over at Downtown Disney. We ate some sandwiches at the Earl of Sandwich and I must admit they were pretty good. Our good friend Roger was in town to watch the Candelight Processional with his family. He brought presents for us and I was surprised by the gift he gave me. I'm a fan of animation, as many of you may know. I have my own list of favorite artists and directors. One of the best is also one of the most under-appreciated in our time. Most from my generation know people like Bruce Timm, John Krickfalusi, Tim Burton and John Lasseter by name but how many know the name Bud Luckey?

Mr. Luckey is a story man, artist and voice actor at Pixar. Audiences might recognize his voice as Rick Dicker from the Incredibles or Chuckles the Clown from Toy Story 3. He's been in the business for a long time, well before Pixar was even founded, and has always been a great storyteller. My brothers and I loved his cartoons before we ever learned his name. Bud wrote and animated several classics on Sesame Street including the Ladybug's Picnic and the Alligator King.

There was more to his songs than learning about counting. There was always and underlying morality to his best work. My favorite cartoon of his was "That's about the size." In not only taught me about scale, perspective and the cosmos but also that in time the kids listening to the song would also grow up. It wasn't just about the act of physically maturing and becoming bigger, but also the potential for all people to grow into that struck a chord with me.

Our friend Roger remembered how fondly I spoke about Bud and how much he influenced me growing up. Roger got a chance to visit the Pixar studio store and picked up something special for me.

Bud had directed the Pixar animated short Boundin' a few years ago. The story was a good morality piece on change, acceptance and recognizing real troubles. To celebrate the release the store had commissioned a plush set of the figures.

The Boundin' Buddies set was amazing. The figures were pretty large to begin with and modeled very closely to the film characters. The box itself was made up from the storyboard art from the film as well.

I am grateful to Roger for the gift and grateful to Mr. Luckey for sharing his gift with the world.

Do you have any favorite Bud Luckey cartoons? I'd like to hear about them in the comments section.

As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Remix Culture, how Asian designers changed the game, part 9

In the previous blog on this series I talked about biting the bullet and ordering my first non-Michael Lau set of vinyl figures. I longed to have my own Lau-style of basketball players, seeing as he would never release a 1/6 scale version of his iconic Jordon gardener. Around 2002 I scored a set of highly stylized 12-inch basketball players called Super-X from the company Dragon Models. I also got the mini action figure set that day. I checked eBay recently and the only person selling both sets together was asking for $1600. Needless to say when I originally got the figures I didn’t even pay a fraction of that. As I said before I was at the right place, at the right time when a trend was first starting to take off.

The thing that I enjoyed about Lau’s work was that his gardeners represented a culture, rather than a specific person. Something similar could be argued for the Super-X starting five. They were inspired by the greatest to ever play the game, but whereas the actual players were at different stages of their careers this set would forever be them in their prime. I’m glad that four of the five that inspired this set were still with us. Although I wasn’t always a fan of Kobe I could not deny his work ethic, and his mastery of the game. Sadly Kobe, his daughter, and their friends died in a tragic helicopter crash in 2020.

The “Black Mamba” had changed the game, and could be one of the few to be considered a legitimate challenger to the title of G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) against even Michael Jordan. Allen Iverson’s tribute to Kobe Bryant helped put perspective on what his rivals, and friends really thought about him. The figure based on Bryant had a vinyl sculpted afro. His Super-X figure name translated from Chinese to “Hair-to-hair ratio.” I have no context for the meaning behind this name.

As for Iverson, his figure might have been the coolest in the lot. Number 3 on the team was named Lightning Son. His sculpted cornrows oozed personality. Each of the figures not only came in a game uniform, but they all came with a change of clothes, basketball, and sticker set. As someone that longed for the street style featured on the Michael Lau gardeners this was easily the next best thing.

Number 15 was called Tyrannosaurus. This character was based on Vince Carter, who at the time was playing for the Toronto Raptors. The character had a red tyrannosaurus tattoo on his head, and a purple sweatshirt with a tag phrase “raft raft.” I’m not sure what the Chinese meaning was behind those words. The Michael Jordan character was called Fei Ren Dun, again I had no idea if that meant something special in Chinese. The nice detail about the street outfits that each had was that they were in the team colors for the players they were based on. In this case of number 23 the navy blue, and black mirrored the colors of the Washington Wizards.

The largest of the crew was number 34 aka Dakou. I couldn’t find a meaning for Dakou, but I did learn that daku meant to cry loudly in Mandarin. Maybe the character inspired by Shaq was a crybaby? I certainly wouldn’t say that to his face. Each of the characters had a slightly different height, reflecting the size differences in the actual NBA players. Sadly for Dakou his body was rail thin. The designers at Dragon Models didn’t realize that he needed a much broader frame to keep him from looking strange. His massive head needed a custom body to make him proportional to the character art. But that was a minor gripe on an otherwise amazing set of figures.

The only thing that was missing with my new figures was a backboard, and hoop to display the set with. Unfortunately Enterbay wouldn’t have a 1/6 scale backboard for a few more years. When it did come out it would cost hundreds, which would be more than I paid for the entire Super-X lineup. I couldn’t justify that purchase. The other backboards featured in toy lines were either too small, or unrealistic. I never thought that I would find something to display them with. Then one day my mom got her hands on an Avon catalog from a co-worker. She said there was a doll in there that I would want to order. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I turned to that page. It was exactly what I needed.

Get Real Girls was an action sports response to Barbie. The dolls were released in toy stores in 1999, and Avon Kids had a few that they made available in their catalogs. There was Corey the surfer, Nakia the basketball player, Gabi the soccer player, Nini the hiker, Claire the scuba diver, and Skyler the snowboarder. Nakia was from Washington D.C., and was obsessed with playing basketball in New York. She was wearing a basketball jersey, and shorts. Plus her hair was braided, as an actual Black girl might have had while playing. Her figure set included a basketball, hoop, and backboard, gym bag, sports bottle, cell phone, sunglasses, necklace which doubled as a bracelet with a silver basketball charm. Needless to say that once I assembled the backboard I had something that I could proudly display my Super-X figures with.

Nakia had tons of 1/6 scale items that weren’t even included in the future Enterbay releases. The figure set also included a passport with her story, post card, and sticker stamp. I guessed that each doll in the series also share their own story as well. Barbie might have been a general role model for all women, but she didn’t capture the love for action sports like these figures. The Get Real Girls line was rebooted in 2016 as a Kickstarter project. I finally had a basketball vinyl collection that I didn’t think any creator in the US would ever top. That was until four years later when one of the largest trading card companies in the world did just that. I will talk about it on the next blog. For now I’d like to know if you followed the NBA in the early 2000’s or if you had another favorite era, or group of players? Did you collect any 12" figures? Let me know in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Bungie drops something very familiar - A 1UP classic from November 29, 2012

Heya friends, have you heard the speculation over a screenshot released by Halo creators Bungie recently? The untitled project looks like a new FPS. I noticed some similarities between the screenshot and work from other artists and studios.

The use of soldiers and giant machines has been done in comics, anime and science fiction for years. The look of the designs are familiar. The muted colors used for the vehicles might have been inspired by Maschinen Krieger (Ma.K).

The soldiers themselves seem to be a mix of different influences, including the helmeted Commandeer figures from Ashley Wood to the amazing painted characters from Paolo Parente's DUST comic books and board game.

The giant mechanized spider in the background was undoubtedly influenced by manga great Masamune Shirow. In his manga Appleseed he featured gigantic gun platforms that looked like mechanical spiders. Shirow drew many of his mechanical influences from nature and based vehicles on spiders, beetles and bumblebees.

His work in design was so influential that the tabletop game Infinity owes a lot to the man.

I look forward to seeing more from Bungie and hopefully they'll let gamers pilot some of those massive vehicles in the game.

As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!