Heller Talks Toys

An interesting piece in the NY Times yesterday in what’s not usually a section that talks up design all that often: the Sunday Book Review. But yesterday was your day, as Steven Heller took a look at “I Am Plastic: The Designer Toy Explosion” by Paul Budnitz, the Kidrobot founder and a guy who clearly knows the whole trend. Here’s a bit:

Small toy companies — with rock-band names like Secret Base, Tokyo Guns, Cube Works, Rough Toyz and the Creatures in My Head, featuring bizarre (sometimes sarcastically cute) toys by illustrators and artists like Frank Kozik, Tim Biskup, Gary Baseman, Sara Antoinette Martin and Jim Woodring — have since flooded art and design galleries and alternative toy stores with collectibles in a wide price range.