Coming off last week’s cheers and jeers for my article about the numbskullery surrounding Force Friday, I’m going to take a brief detour from all things Star Wars. I know many of you are still pretty miffed about standing in line for 10 hours only to get a single Lego brick and a Phantom Menace Ric Olie trading card, but I can’t agree with all your Dark Side-tinged rage. Yes, the stores are unusually under-stocked, but can you blame them? The movie is still 3 ½ months away! And sure, the guy that takes the maximum 3 figures of the same character is going to flip them online, but it’s his right to do so. What does he owe you exactly? Does s/he owe you something because you took a half-day and camped out at Target together? Nah. Because you stood there in line together and laughed and sang together? I’m reminded of the below analogy:
Doing something nice for someone and expecting them to do the same is like not eating the lion because the lion didn’t eat you.
I’ll be circling back to the Star Wars hubbub next week, but for now we’ll plow ahead with another article that is going to get me a lot more mean comments on Facebook.
CUSTOMania
In the world of 1/6 scale figure collecting, there is a relatively new movement that’s been carved out by private artists to produce custom figures of characters that have not previously been immortalized in plastic glory. Some artists may be talented enough to pull off an entire custom figure, but it's more likely that a full team of multi-talented artists put together the final product, which breaks down into four skill sets: sculpting, painting, tailoring, and packaging. The most defining factor of the total figure is the custom head sculpt, which is sculpted by hand in polymer clay and then cast in a resin compound. The final cast is then fitted and attached to a basic plastic base body, which are readily available in all shapes, sizes, and textures. An artist will paint the head and possibly the hands or any other exposed area where skin shows—just in case the base body is not the same shade.
They might also paint the accessories that will accompany the figure, either original casts or repainted pre-existing items. A tailor does the entire outfit, which depending on the character can be a basic three-piece suit or elaborate layers of multiple textiles. Another artist (or one of the same artists depending on their level of talent) will put together the packaging for the figure. The package art can range from a minimalist black box to elaborate graphics making the package look like it could be sold on store shelves. The figure may also include a COA—certification that the specific artist or artistic team’s studio had officially produced the piece. The final addition is usually a tongue-in-cheek name for the figure as a way to dodge litigation from either the actor themselves and/or the movie studio that owns the rights to the character.
THE NAME GAME: Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange becomes “Gang Boy” or “Crime Cure.” Willy Wonka is “Factory Owner.” Walter White from Breaking Bad has had a ton of custom figures and the names will make your head spin: “Bad Reaction: The One Who Knocks” or “Chemical Poisoning Teacher.” In the end, the final custom product can cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars and are produced in very small numbers (12 to maybe 75 total). But they sell out—every time. Why? Sometimes it’s a character that will never have a shot of ever getting an actual licensed figure (Alex and his ultraviolent friends for example), but most of the time it’s a character from a film or tv show that is a huge part of the pop culture lexicon and if that film or tv show speaks to you—you gotta have that character on your shelf. It’s also because sometimes the figure is done in the likeness of an actor or actress that is not necessarily okay with their resemblance being represented on merchandise.
Some actors have no problem plastering their mugs on merch—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, and Harrison Ford come to mind. Others are much more anti the peddling of junk with their faces on it. Michael J. Fox was very much against it when he was younger, but publicly regretted it later in life. Think about that. There was no Back to the Future stuff in the 1980’s—even after 2 successful sequels, video games, and a cartoon! Years later after a change of mind—voila! Now we have an awesome Hot Toys Marty McFly and a whole slew of new Back to the Future toys and merchandise
Now go look up “1/6 Scale Custom Marty McFly” in a Google image search and look at all the custom Martys that came out before Hot Toys dropped perfection. Go ahead. I’ll wait.......
Horrible right? Most are pretty dated looking, but the better-looking ones would have cost you 3-4 times as much as the Hot Toys version does today. 3-4 times more and some from over five years ago! I’m sorry, but how is the owner of a $750 Marty McFly happy about the release of a quality, licensed version for a fraction of the price? I know we all don’t look at our figures with price tags in mind, but that’s a hard pill to swallow and for the sake of the following argument, price and value are good metrics.
Clint Eastwood is notoriously and vehemently against likeness usage. How many licensed Dirty Harry or Man with No Name figures have you seen? Zero because he won’t allow it. No Dirty Harry Callahan, no Josey Wales, no Pale Rider, no Bill Munny…and that’s the short list. For whatever reason, he doesn’t want his chiseled mug on junk from China. I can’t blame him though; it saves us from Funko churning out dozens of Pop! and ReAction figures. I think it’s the one license Funko doesn’t have, but we’ll come back to Clint in a second....
When it comes to the consumers themselves, there are definitely not many that can squirrel away enough money to purchase $200+ Hot Toys figures, let alone $1000 customs. The ones that can afford the high dollar figures are feverishly devoted to the artist or artistic team and their style. The figures are looked at by collectors as an art form due to their handmade sculpts, fine paint applications and tailoring, and custom accessories. By all accounts, they are art—and without getting into a philosophical discussion about what art actually is, their handmade design, limited number, and high price tag (followed by even greater value down the line) is enough to deem them "art". (Publisher's Note: see hi-art/lo-art or wiki)
I personally have always found all action figures as a form of hybrid consumer folk art. As a kid I would take an entire Saturday morning to set-up all my G.I. Joes as my own form of (sic) suburban landscape sculpture. As adults we arrange and rearrange our collections constantly, something that not only has artistic sentiment but is also stress relieving as well, so toys can offer something that is both ephemeral and creative, much like art itself. Our toys also evoke passion and as collectors we tend to be very passionate about our stuff. This is clear when you talk with collectors who follow some of these private artists who are making huge strides in this new boutique industry of high-dollar custom toy production. They sometimes fanatically argue their purchase decisions and the self-proclaimed notion that these toys are actually art. This argument gets even more heated when one of their prized pieces, which they spent thousand of dollars on, gets bootlegged and sold to the mass market online.
Though the concept of knock-offs and bootlegs are not new to the world of toy collecting, there is now a feverish stance taking place in the 1/6 scale community against companies (which are mostly based in China) taking a private artist’s work, copying it, and selling it at a much cheaper price. This in turn could potentially ding the value of their $1000 private commission because of basic supply and demand. Let’s go back to Marty McFly. Even though his Hot Toys figure is not a bootleg, his appearance on the mass market is going to cause a downshift in the value of a $500+ custom because someone will inevitably decide to unload the custom version and then take a loss if they pick up the Hot Toys Marty. When this happens a couple times over, the high-end piece is going lose market traction. Sure there is always going to be inherent value in a handmade product versus a mass-produced one, but not the value that existed before a more coherent, mass market product was released. Again, some of us may have no desire to look at the expense and value of our figures, but unless the piece was a gift, you’re fiscally tied to the item in some way. And again, since value and art are both subjective, a collector can step back from both these things and close their ears. But the consumer can do the same. Unless you’re a fan of the artist’s work, the regular consumer will buy a Hot Toys Marty McFly every time, based on Hot Toy’s reputation for quality and a lower (but certainly not reasonable) price tag. That’s one less buyer for a $500+ version and less opportunity for the owner to receive what they regard as full value for it if (and when) it comes time to sell.
We’ve now talked both art and economics; so let’s get back to Clint Eastwood because he is where this whole story gets interesting. Up and coming Asian toy company Redman has been on a tear recently with a few cowboy releases that look a heck of a lot like Mr. Clint. “The Cowboy Outlaw” is a clear tribute to the film The Outlaw Josey Wales. The figure’s production shots even have Josey holding both pistols with his arms crossed—taken directly from the movie still. The next Eastwood film Redman is tackling is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the character Blondie is certainly one of the most iconic roles Eastwood has ever played. In fact the only argument you would have against it being the most iconic would be if you were a Dirty Harry prefer-ist, but that’s like arguing who is cooler: Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Being that Eastwood’s portrayal of “The Man with No Name” is so popular, he’s of course had his share of high dollar 1/6 scale custom versions—two in fact who’s original price tags were well over $500 each. If you not only just wanted The Good, but The Bad and The Ugly as well, you’re shelling out a rent payment. Redman’s versions are each $140 respectively; more in line with the price of other 1/6 scale bootleg figures of similar style and design.
It’s very clear when you put pictures of the custom version next to Redman’s that the custom ones are superior. The tailoring is more precise and the paint application is more accurate—but 500 more dollars accurate? I’m not so sure. The collectors of the higher end versions don’t seem to take too much umbrage with the release of a competitively cheaper version, but they do have a problem with the head sculpts. All three characters in Redman’s knock-off The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly line are rip-offs of some of those $500+ private artist pieces...and the owners of those high-end pieces feel that the blatantly obvious grift is wrong and damaging to the industry. But wait. The private artist didn’t get approval to make official figures, so who does this hurt really?
And that lands us back to the question I posed in the title: If I buy the Redman's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly figures which have head sculpts recast from an artist’s high-end work—am I a douche? After a few very passionate discussions a few weeks ago on Facebook, clearly I was.
Ever since I started collecting 1/6 scale figures, I always wanted a decent Blondie aka “The Man with No Name.” To me he’s the quintessential cowboy figure. If you had to have one cowboy from film in your collection, he’d be the one. Some may say John Wayne, but even then Eastwood as Blondie would be a very close second. Back when custom figures were priced around $350, I never had a chance to score him. As more customizers came on the scene, there were more opportunities to get figures of Blondie, but prices also increased as skill levels rose. Eventually I was priced out of the market. I can’t rationalize spending $500 on one figure anymore. I can’t. That’s a lot of money. Trying to collect a few choice Hot Toys figures is expensive enough, let alone trying to keep a side-eye on the burgeoning custom market. So behold my excitement when a comparable and cheaper alternative popped up online.
GOING META: It was an easy ‘yes’ for me and I pre-ordered them the day they went up, but to my surprise, the figure was getting some backlash from the collector community because ALLEDGELY the sculpts were recasts of a private artist’s work. The total summary of my feelings was, “Ok, why would I care about that?” Clearly the custom artist did not pay MGM Studios or Clint Eastwood for the rights to make money off the Blondie character, so why should I care if Redman steals the unlicensed work and makes a “The Cowboy” figure? It’s like trying to call the cops on someone who just stole your weed. In the end MGM issuing a cease and desist to a small company based in China is a litigious nightmare, so no one can stop a company from making a stolen copy from something that never licensed in the first place.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” - Charles Caleb Colton
“Do you know what this is?” (*The author rubs his thumb and index finger together.) “The world’s smallest violin playing for the customizer.” - Mr. Plastic Trash
IS APPROPRIATION APPROPRIATE? / WALLET v COMMUNITY EXPECTATIONS:
One of the arguments I got on Facebook was that “buying the Redman Blondie was like buying a knock-off Rolex and thinking and claiming it’s a real Rolex.” That is completely incorrect. I’m not trying to pass off the Redman figure as some $900 custom art piece nor do I think it’s as good as it, I’m just happy I can get a Blondie figure (and Angel Eyes and Tuco) and not have to tighten my sphincter when paying for it. The value of owning a serviceable version supersedes my desire to own a slightly more accurate version based clearly off price and in the end my wallet will win out over any ethical feelings I may have about some guy in Korea who incidentally made not only a decent profit, but probably made more of a profit than most owners of his work would like to think about. And maybe the artist should take this ALL as a compliment.
Join the continuing dialogue on Facebook, where we celebrate ONE YEAR tomorrow!