A super early birthday present, or playing with dolls?

I wanted to share with you an early birthday present that I recently gave myself. In case you didn’t know in 2024 I did a long series about my love of urban vinyl, and basketball. I talked about the history of my basketball figures collection going all the way back to around 1999. My big purchase last year were the two figures “Flash” and “King” which were based on Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James respectively. They were created by Jai Tseng Studio aka JTStudio. The artist mixed street fashion, and pop culture in his own unique style. He made figures inspired by comic characters like the Justice League, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He also created figures based on classic Hollywood like Felix the Cat, and Charlie Chaplin. I had a small toy basketball hoop that I got with the Nakia girl basketball player figure that I would use as a display. For more than 20 years I had used it to frame my Super-X, and All Star Vinyl figures.

The company that had the license to create 1/6 scale NBA figures was Enterbay, which was also out of Hong Kong. Their figures they made were very pricey, but their quality was unrivaled. I never had enough money, or desire for their figures. We're talking $250 on the low end, and some going for triple the price! I did however long for their scale basket, and locker accessories. As you could imagine they were expensive as well. Sadly the company closed shop sometime in 2024, and didn’t bother to give retailers any notice. They simply shut down their website, and stopped taking orders. I assumed that anything they made would shoot up in price because they were now rare. Before the resellers could mark everything up I scoured eBay, and found one of their baskets for a reasonable price. I pulled the trigger, and got it a couple of weeks ago.

The hoop was heavy, and solidly built. The pieces were metal, hard plastic, with foam padding on the front like an actual basket. It had a spring loaded metal “breakaway” rim, and nylon net, also like the real thing. It even included a working game clock. It would count down the period, and shot clock separately. It also made an authentic buzzer sound. I lost my mind watching the clocks then hearing the horn go off. Needless to say I was absolutely stoked on my early birthday present. I had to get pictures of my old rim, and new one. Can you believe the size of this thing? If you collect 1/6 scale figures I’d like to know what you think of this accessory. I’d still like to collect the Enterbay locker accessory, but it’s currently hovering near $200 with online retailers, so I’m holding off for now. I’d also like to get the various trophies that they produced as well, but those were only sold with certain All-Star figures. So my plan was to wait for someone to sell the individual parts of a collector’s set. 

Sadly the license for 1/6 scale NBA products wasn’t transferred to any other studio that I know of. While I was searching for more figure news I discovered that there would be a LeBron James figure made by Mattel in 2025. The same people that made Barbie announced an exclusive Ken doll version of LeBron. This one would be wearing street clothing, rather than a basketball uniform. He was called a “Kenbassador.” He was scheduled to be the first in a series of dolls based on actual influencers, and tastemakers. He might be the only basketball player in the lineup, but probably not the only athlete. He sold out the minute he went on sale in the middle of April. Resellers were now asking for double his original sales price. I would keep an eye on the figure this summer, and depending on how the trend went I might pick him up for my Christmas present.

So that was my toy news before the summer. If you're a collector I'd like to know if you got any new items as well. Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and 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!