One company, Two Characters, Three Cool Announcements!

California-Based Sideshow Collectibles, Inc. has recently announced three new projects based on two of your favorite Star Wars characters!

Sideshow was formed in 1993 as a designer toy and collectible studio under the name Sideshow Productions. At that time, it was a motion picture prop and special effect firm. In 1994, the company shifted it's focus exclusively to the collectibles market. The company typically produces licensed products from movies, television, animation, and comics.

In collaboration with Medicom Toys, Sideshow has recently released a stylized C-3PO vinyl toy. Approximately 8" in height, the toy has 11 points of articulation. While it was designed to fit in with some of Medicom's previous Star Wars releases. Here's the rub, to get the toy to have C-3PO's distinguishable golden shine the company had to made this 'vinyl toy' out of...plastic!

Now, 8" is certainly nice...but how about 66"!? Sideshow announced today they would also be accepting pre-orders for two other special releases: A life size C-3PO and R2-D2!

Made of fiberglass and other quality materials, these robots feature both light and sound functionality for that extra level of robot realism!

Unfortunately, the robot celebrities do not walk around. But here's hoping that they give you some relationship advice after your wife leaves you for dropping over $5,000 each on two robot statues to decorate your living room.

Hong Kong's Ultraman presents: Ultraking!

Hong Kong designer Ultraman has been working in collaboration with Play Imaginative to present us with his newest toy: Ultraking.

This stylish primate is dressed to the 9s with his studded leather jacket, shades, pompadour and pinky rings. He reeks of bananas and cool.

Either he's replicating Nelly's late 90's style, or Ultraking has been in a recent brawl. He sports a (stylish?) double bandage on the right cheek. While it's unconfirmed, this writer believes the wound may have happened during a recent battle with his lifelong enemy: Megatron.

...or maybe not.

Still, while it's only in the prototype stage, it's looking to be one of the Goliath!? favorites for 2008!

Slo-Bots!

If there is one not-so-secret passion that your friendly Goliath!? staffer has besides alternative party snack foods, it would likely be robots. (really?)

In the epic battle of pirates vs. ninjas, robots would win.

So naturally, we got rather excited in finding Mike Heisler's Slo-Bots on the interweb today. Heisler builds many of these custom constructs using salvaged parts from other vinyl toys like Munnys, Qees, and even Mighty Muggs!

Heisler is quite the talented artist, and I look forward to seeing his future creations. His popularity is certainly growing: upon writing, he had 1078 Myspace friends!

Big Battel!

No, that's not a spelling error. Kaiju Big Battel began as a video project from students at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The purposeful mis-spelling of 'battle' was due to a mis-printing on t-shirts early in the creation.

The toupe has periodic Big Battels that reference both professional wrestling and Japan's tokusatsu and kaiju movies. As time goes on, more and more characters have been introduced, swelling the ranks to over 70 unique characters including names such as Robox, Dr. Cube, Uchu Chu, and Kung Fu Chicken Noodle.

The crew recently announced the coming release of a new toy, Vegetius. Working in collaboration with Marmit, the toy is slated for release later this year. This is Kaiju's second vinyl release, after the success of their San Diego Comic-con 2007 release - Sky Deviler.

In related news, Bloc Party collaborated with Kaiju to produce the music video for their new song Flux.

Cartoon Network x Kidrobot

Fans of Cartoon Network's late night Adult Swim rejoice! Kidrobot has announced a collaboration with the esteemed television network to produce a series of 16 toys based on 8 of the shows.

The A-list roster includes The Venture Bros. 'Dr. Girlfriend' and 'The Monarch,' Aqua Teen Hunger Force 'Carl' and 'Ignignokt and Err,' Squidbillies 'Grandma' and 'Lil,' and many more! Additionally, there are two secret rare toys that will be in circulation.


The toys will be sold blind box for $7.95 each on the Kidrobot store starting in April.

Who's excited? This guy.

Crown Mickey

Medicom is a Japanese toy company that specializes in highly styled and ultra cool toys for all ages. Recently, they collaborated with both Disney and Japanese clothing brand Roen to bring us the extremely stylish Roen Crown Mickey. The design is based on a limited edition collaboration tee that Roen did with Disney.

Disney seems to be taking an interest in collaborations as of late. I think it's fantastic that such a big company is allowing re-interpretations of one of its classic characters and hopefully we'll see even more of this in the future. Disney has developed such a diverse set of characters in it's long history, I am excited to see what might be next.

Medicom has released their share of interesting collectibles in the past, but this one is definitely up there as one of my favorites.

Like a Chump

Frank Kozik began his career in the mid-80s creating posters for upcoming concerts. He has been credited for single-handedly reviving the 'lost' art of the concert poster. As his career blossomed, his work was presented in over 60 gallery shows worldwide, with multiple exhibits in Tokyo and London.

More recently, Kozik has been known for his involvement in the design and production of vinyl toys with companies such as Kid Robot and Toy2R. He is best known for creations such as the Smorkin' Labbit, the Hate Dunny, and Dr. Bomb.

His newest toy creations in partnership with Kid Robot involve 13 highly stylized real-world toys known simply as 'Chumps.' With characters including a boxing rabbit, bookie worm, cat-burglar dog, and a gangster octopus, this blind box rag-tag band of outsiders is bound to create another stir in the toy market.

Mean Muggin'

Hasbro is stepping into the trendy vinyl toy market with their newly released Mighty Muggs. Currently licensed for both Star Wars and Marvel intellectual property; you can see the likes of Wolverine, Spider-man, Darth Vader, and Chewbacca along with 10 others super-imposed onto the 6 inch figures with Sausage arms and balloon heads.

Future releases include Indiana Jones, Princess Leia, and Jango Fett later in the year.

It will interesting to see how the market reacts as some of the bigger players in the toy industry continue to get involved in the designer toy movement.