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And remember, listen to Toys on Tap.
Captain Bootleg, the bootleg captain sent ya.
Why do you keep referring to himself in the third person?
Good night. Stop with the stupid voice now. I'm not sure why you made me want to sound like a pirate.
Oh, so that was a fake voice.
Aw, yucko!
I didn't realize it was just a pretend voice. Oh, okay.
So as a recap, I think we ended right as you leave working with Hasbro.
You had this understanding that they didn't want to take part in what you were cooking up, what you were brewing from your music and for how you were sending it.
Yeah, I remember. I mean, I think as far as organizing all these episodes thematically, I kind of envisioned that this would be the main one.
And have it be about toys specifically because that's what this is called Toys on Tap. So this is really about toys.
So I figured I'm gonna want to just explain how I wound up making toys the way I do.
And in order to do that, I think it's kind of necessary to like roll it back a little bit to like the beginning and just sort of trace like the sort of milestone moments of just like how my sort of thinking about toys.
Formulated. And when I was a baby, I had the Fisher Price Little People. That was like my earliest toy that I ever had. My parents, thankfully, had the whole economy and the way and the value of money was completely different in the 70s.
You know, my parents have rent at their apartments like 150 bucks a month. You know, one person could support a family on a regular salary at a regular job, getting paid a middle class salary.
You could pay rent, you could save money, you could take vacations, and thankfully you could buy your child every fucking toy you ever wanted.
Also, my understanding is that sometime in the mid 70s, late 80s, like the cost of petroleum and plastic changed dramatically. And that's like why a lot of toys got smaller.
You know, and, and, yeah, and why and just how the economy of toys changed a lot but I was alive, you know what I consider to be sort of a golden era.
You know, 70s, 60s, 70s and 80s, I think were some of like the best toys ever and they'll never it'll never it'll never be like that again.
But I had the Fisher Price Little People, you know the little peg people. Yeah, they look like little midget things right. Yeah, they were just like a cylinder with a head on it. Yeah.
And I don't make these anymore because kids choked on them. At the time like they still have a series Fisher Price still exists and they still have a series of toys called Little People, but they're bigger and they're chunkier and they're, they're like differently shaped,
but these were literally just a fucking peg. Yeah, and I love these fucking things and they played a major role in my sort of toy development into pretty much one of the crucial moments, but I'm going to put this at about 1974.
I had all these toys I love them you know they had the farm they had the little house and their little cars and they were a peg, so they could just peg into anything, you know they even have like a little toilet I have the toilet in the bathtub right up here on my shelf.
And they were just great toys and I remember when I was that young they were made out of wood still that little people was like a wooden body with a plastic head on it.
And I think I mentioned in one of the other episodes that I was really into the Osmonds. That was my thing I was really into the Osmond brothers and all that and um, we used to get those little teen Tiger Beat teen beat magazines that had all the fucking stupid
stuff that they had about about these pop stars, and they would always list like what their favorite color was, and I had all the Osmonds favorite colors memorized like Alan was blue, Wayne was orange Merrill was black Jay was green and Donnie was purple
right I still remember these things and he used to perform in these colors like if they ever were like matching outfits but they were in different colors and I was kind of fixated on this.
And then for for wreck me and my mom took come a couple of these peg peoples and painted them to look like the Osmonds. Okay, so like, you know, we took the that they took for the for dad figures and then the boy figure for Donnie and we painted them blue
orange, whatever and then put the a little, little initial because they used to wear these big belts, you know so they would little initial of who it was, and I was like boom now I have little Osmond toys.
I've been customizing figures since I was five years old. Yeah, you know and I think this was sort of pivotal because this was probably my mother's idea but just the idea that like the toys.
You could do shit to your toys, like you can manipulate them and alter them in some way, and that they could serve as a canvas for painting and other creativities was just in my mind since I was five years old.
When the Star Wars figures came out. I remember, I was just pissed off because they never made the rebels rebel soldier, you know they had the death squad squad commander, just like the, which is a crazy name for a fucking action figure, you know they
change it to the Star Destroyer commander later, and I'm looking at it and I'm like this looks just like the rebel soldier why don't they just make another one with different colors, you know so I painted it I paint I did terrible job of it painted the helmet
painted the suit like different blue with the vest and was like okay great. Now I have the rebel soldier figure too. And I used to get so pissed off it's like why don't they just make this figure with a different head and call it grand mouth talking.
I was always always aware of the production side of things I don't know how, maybe because my father was an engineer. And also because he had a friend who worked in the toy industry.
There was this toy company called Gabriel which doesn't exist anymore and they used to make a lot of games I think they made like the pop a matic shit and, and they had like Fisher Price knockoffs and he was to get free toys so I was on like my works in the toy
industry so it just it was even as a child I understood that these weren't coming from some magical place or someone like I knew there was a company that made toys.
You know because I'm and I remember like, you know, looking looking at the figures and trying to figure out like what you know why don't they do this why don't they do that I remember when the human toys came out in like, it was just like 82, and I'm like huh.
I see they got two different styles of chests. They got three types of legs, three types of arms and and one type of pelvic piece, and they just do them in different colors and mix, mix the mix the combinations and like I see what you did there.
I was 11 years old and like oh they did this to save money. And it's like I don't know I just my mind was always going in that direction for an 11 year old that's incredible because I can't remember shit about ever acknowledging, they did that with action figures.
Really, like as a kid, I never like, I just wanted to play with the toy didn't care enough about I mean I wanted that to don't get me wrong I wasn't like a completely detached from it but it was just like I couldn't help but looking at it, you know, and we used to take things apart
and I guess maybe because I was my father was a tinkerer you know I just like always like oh there's some screws in the back of this thing let's unscrew it and see what's inside of it or, you know, let's, let's chop it up.
And like I just I don't know where the fuck I got this idea, but like, I was never I know I always wanted to do more than than than than what was offered you know, and I love the cantina creatures when those came out I was fucking through the roof I think I talked about
this in the other episode, or just like they were my favorite toys of all time and I was so obsessed with the grito figure and I've told the story a zillion times with it belongs here because this is the, the total accounting of everything.
I was like I'm going to make a copy of this figure.
And I don't know what made me think of this I got a bar soap, and I got it nice and wet and hot so soft and then I mushed the grito figure into it to make the imprint. Yeah, of it like a little mold.
And then I took a green crayon, put it in a little saucepan and heated it up on the radiator and then poured the melted crayon into the soap in attempt to like a make a casting I'm like, 10, you know, the wax bonded to the soap and I couldn't get it out
it didn't work. But the fact that I was thinking that way at that time was kind of telling to me. Yeah. You know, it was just like I mean it's telling to me now at the time was just one of the things I did as a kid.
Now I was really obsessed I wanted there to be Marvel figures, like they never made like Star Wars style Marvel figures so I had, I had the clay and I made all my favorite Marvel figures out of clay they you know they look silly but it was like always thinking
about making making making the shit that that I didn't see in the world. And one, one interesting thing that happened that really made me even more aware of how toys worked as a kid is that, um, I think because my father's friend had the toy, the toy
connect and I think there was other people involved. I got invited to go be part of like a focus group for the mash action figures. Yeah, remember they made mash toys. Yeah, I must have been 11 or 12 I don't remember and I, you know, I watched the show was always on
in syndication and it's maybe a little young for it but I knew what mash was. I watched it. And they were like, you got picked and a couple of my friends to go over to the toy building what there used to be these two towers.
That were that were these big office showroom buildings that were called the toy building and that's where Toy Fair used to happen, where these these two places where every toy company in the entire world had an office there.
And every year they would have the big, you know the big trade show for all the toy industries and they would do all their business in those buildings.
And they would go to the jab at center and those buildings are been repurposed into condos or whatever but at the time. That was the toy building I was I gotta get in there I gotta get in there.
I think I always felt like I belonged in the toy business somehow and I should be in there. So it's like okay this company called try star toys. It's going to make these mash action figures and they want you to go bunch of kids to play with them.
And so we go up there, and we're in this little conference room and they bring it all out and they had like quite an elaborate setup it was like, it must have been like 10 or 15 different figures of all the main characters and they look great they were so detailed
and well painted. I didn't realize I was looking at prototypes at the time, you know, but, but, um, I remember they seemed a little different than regular toys because the arms were just held in by little pegs you know they weren't I was like, I didn't put it together
and then they had like the helicopter the Jeep, the ambulance and then they had the big playset which was like the big tent which was like the swamp. Yeah, and then they had the surgery room and it was just like so elaborate and you take the roof off of the, the, the, the, the
little tent and then they had all the little tables and they had little details and they were all exquisitely painted they had like, like they had like the office and there was like a little typewriter on the desk and was all exquisite, so detailed and then you know we played with them.
We said yeah these are great we love them. And then, when the toys finally came out. We got them for free you know we got they sent it to him, and they were significantly degraded from what they showed us, you know, like, and then I realized, oh I must have been
looking at, like an early version of it because all those little details were gone the figures weren't as well painted. Everything was just cheaper and shittier than what I saw in the showroom and I'm like what the fuck is going on here.
This isn't what I looked at you know I wouldn't have signed off on this, you know I remember saying that if they showed me this I would have not liked it because they just were fucking cheap.
And I could tell a cheap toy from a good toy. And, you know, and they would break and they just all the detail I love the fucking detail all the detail was was gone. And that was just that just like, you know, really just demonstrated to me that I had some sort of
affinity for this thing.
And then,
whatever I played the toys for the rest for the rest of my childhood along these same type of lines. And then I told you before I grew out of it.
And when I get to college.
I'm doing this independent study thing. And I make this toy crack house I talked about this. Yeah, I was like I wanted to make. I wanted to just make something funny and ironic.
And I was like, and I wanted to, you know, I was doing sculpture and I was like I want to do something cheeky so it's like why don't I take a kid's toy and make it fucked up in the adult, you know why to make something really inappropriate that looks like a kid's toy
and made the crack house, and whatever it did what it did.
And then, long story short, I come back to New York, and somehow or other it wound up in juxtaposed magazine.
Like, is that a local one or is it bigger.
What juxtaposed. Yeah.
It was a big magazine at the time it was like Robert Williams. So, very famous lowbrow artists started it in like, when did it start coming out 1980 something 90, but it was just basically and this was before the internet so it was like, it was basically
all the lowbrow shit was in it I'm pretty sure Frank Kozak was in it all the time and, you know, they just covered like, you know, before the toy industry started all the people that would have been making toys that were making paintings were in that like
like Shepard Fairey was on the fucking cover every other fucking month you know, and somehow or another I don't remember what happened I think the crack house got in in in the magazine. And I start getting if this is before email I start getting postcards in the mail.
I run a little store in fuckville USA. Can we wholesale this from you. And like, this isn't a product, you know, this is the piece of sculpture and made for for for art school like I, I could probably make a lot of money.
You know, if I found a way to get this made. Yeah, you know, and I had no idea how to do this whatever toy industry connections that I may have had left over from a kid from my parents were gone and they were not wasn't going to make a fucking toy crack house.
I had no idea how to how to make this fucking thing.
And I, so I couldn't I didn't even know who to call so I just left it I left it fucking hanging for a while. And, um, but I continue to make shit, and I was making shit out of sculpey hoping thinking it was maybe it was art maybe you know and they all look like
different toys. And I remember just one day for some reason I'm getting drunk at a fucking art gallery, and I'm making all these little sculptures they look like, um, to Hara, you know, to Hara said, you know, it's like they would, it looked like that, you know,
these wonky hand sculpted things that look cute but are wildly inappropriate. Yeah, you know, and I was and I was like, thinking that this is going to be my be my art, you know, this is what I'm going to make as an artist, and it was like why don't I put it in a blister pack,
you know that would be, and just hang them on the wall and it'll look like a toy store you know whatever.
And, and so I started like getting Star Wars figures and like taking the blisters off and then using the fucking solvent to take all the paper and glue off and then I would stick it on and how these stupid things like fridge fighter I had this thing called fridge fighter
was making all this toy food is obsessed with toy food. As a fucking kid I had all the little kitchen shared used to play house and was just loved it and was like, I love toy food and action figures I'm going to combine these things together somehow.
And so I started making that fridge fighter and and I was working at fucking canal jeans at the time, and I don't know what the fuck happened but I was always anywhere, any opportunity to have to show the shit to people thinking like my thinking was, you know,
if artists if painters can make prints right, this is like early 90s, if painters can make prints. Well why can't sculptors make toys right. That makes sense to me and this is way before there was anything even smacking of a designer toy in the world.
I had this thought, not to say that anyone stole that idea from me. I just maybe I saw it coming. You know it just seemed it just seemed to me that just seemed obvious, you know, we interrupt this broadcast of toys on top to bring you this.
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And I was, but I didn't know there was nowhere to go. I remember I had this like internship at this place called Art Asylum. Have you heard, you know Art Asylum they used to do this guy named Digger.
And I think right after I got out of Canal Genes or maybe before when I couldn't find a job I took it I couldn't find a job, got an internship at this toy company in Brooklyn and they did all the model, the sculpting and prototyping for toy biz.
And they were making molds, making sculpts of like all the Marvel characters, you know, finally I got to the Marvel characters, you know, and then he had me doing this low level shit.
You know he taught me how he had the big casting tank in the back and everything and he had me casting figures and I fucking fucked it up.
And I couldn't get it right. And like I couldn't I couldn't work there, because he wasn't paying was an internship. But I showed him all my little models and I asked them like how do we get this made.
How do we make the crack house, and he tried to help me but without any money it wasn't going to happen. And like I was way out of my depth, you know I had no concept of like how much it was going to cost and then how to deal with the factory and then what happens
when they come get shipped to you and then how to distribute it. I this is before Dove this is before all of this shit. So it was like I couldn't make it happen.
So it was like dependent on like a toy company. And for some fucking reason which to this fucking day. I have never figured out how this happened. I get an email, saying that Mattel wants to meet me.
Okay, one. I'm getting flown out to El Segundo, California, to show my shit to fucking Mattel. I don't know how this happened, either I showed it to somebody or somebody saw it.
And, and I get invited to go out there so I was like okay I'm going to pitch them fucking fridge fighter had all these you know it was like a great I thought I had the best idea in the world I made all these little models and prototypes and like had all my little doll,
my little play food sinks and all this shit I was like, putting action figures on and and sorting show how like this is a combination of like boys and girls toys you know it's like taking the best of all of it.
And I was in California thinking this is it. This is it. You know, I finally figured out my way they're going to love me, and I'm sitting down and I'm having a meeting with fucking Mark Taylor, you know who was, you know who that is the guy that
fucking created he man. Yeah, night. Beautiful guy, you know, and then he had a bunch of fucking younger fucking, you know fucking stuck up little shitbag executives with him and I showed him everything.
And he was like well obviously you got something going on here but we just put out something called food fighters a few years ago. And it didn't do very well. And this is not what we're looking for right now.
But hit us up again when you got something I'm like oh man I didn't even think of that. You know I had no I didn't know how the business part of the industry work that we knew about how to make the shit, and what appealed to me I didn't realize that
I didn't even think about that. You know I just thought this is a great idea. It's a great idea you make it right. And it sells itself I didn't realize that they. There was all these other business concerns.
I think I still haven't realized that shit. But I just I was like that was another fucking closed door. So, in that meeting you pitch that idea they say they have food wars or whatever that is, which I've seen those but I can't imagine why they
wouldn't. It was like a chicken leg, they were like they were like little food there's like a chicken leg a hamburger. Maybe there was a steak. And had the arms up right. Yeah, they weren't that interesting I thought my idea was much better because it was more
integrated, you know because like they would kill each other by cooking each other, you know, and just like stuff like that was way more thought out in that. Did you pitch other ideas like on the spot whatever you have no I didn't know I didn't have anything
else. The only other thing I had was a pimple popping thing, where it was like imagine it's like a picture of a person's face. Yeah, and it has bubble wrap on it and the bubble wrap was filled with gap. If you remember gap was like the Nickelodeon version of
slime and I was like okay they already have GAC. So there, this is a way, and I showed them that they didn't they weren't impressed with that even though now they have pimple popping toys all over the place I was always fucking 20 years too early to all of the shit.
Yeah, but anyway.
They didn't go for any of it and like I took it really hard you know like like everything I was like oh this means it's over. You know I didn't think like come up with something new and go back. It was just being in that environment, it wasn't that they rejected my
idea. I just got the feeling from the way they were talking in the way they were thinking is like this is just not going to work for me, you know I'm too fucking too I'm too fucking creative for this shit was the same thing that hit me when I realized I wasn't going to work for Star
Wars was that like, I'm going to have to fit myself into a square peg here, you know, or a round hole whatever you know you know whatever the fuck the same is, you know, and I was just like this isn't none of this is going to work for me.
And I, the mainstream toy industry just seemed close to me and I didn't, I didn't really know what I was going to do figured I'm just going to keep pursuing it as as fine art.
And all my attempts to do that also failed because I had no juice in the art world whatsoever, and any opportunity I had to show it to anybody that had any sort of expertise or knowledge in the art world.
Thought it was bullshit, even though it looked just like fucking little miniature red groom shit I don't know if you've ever seen red rooms.
It's red groom shit but small and in a package don't you get this is how can you not get this but nobody wasn't getting any action anywhere toy world art world nothing.
And so I just sort of stop thinking about it for a while. And then around 1997.
I've been loosed in the lower east side which is now becoming overrun with like hipster businesses and streetwear and all this shit. And there was this store called recon, which was the clothing brand of graffiti artists named future 2000, who is rather famous
and rather established as, as, um, you know, an important person in the art world. And he was doing a lot of shit in Asia, and they were having a, they would have parties there at the store whenever something new came out.
And I would go to these things and try to meet people and hot in the hobnob, and they were releasing this thing called the fucking point man, which was as far as I can tell the first designer toy ever made it was basically just this.
Character that he draws a lot it's just like a weird alien thing with a pointy head and pointy ears he's done the zillion versions of it. But this is the first one and it was like a plastic figure of his character and it was in a blister pack, and I guess it was made in
with a Nego from bathing ape I guess had helped produce this thing. And it was for a mo wax records, you know, and it was just like, here it is. Yeah, that's what I'm fucking talking about how did this get made. I mean I was I was almost jealous.
But it was like obviously I'm not going to get. I'm not, I can't hate on future I mean he's been an important established artists for the last 20 years you know it's like, if anything I looked at this and they told me, aha.
I'm on the right track. Yeah, if this is going to be a thing. I'm well positioned now. It's like, this is exactly what I predicted would happen.
It's happening. Someone else is blazing the trail and all I have to do is follow and I'm got it fucking me. So I just started hanging out in that scene. And right around that time a little bit after that maybe a year or two later this place called 360 toy group opens
this door to recon and that was run by this guy named Jay Kwan, and he used to work for this company called sir, who was this guy Russ who's still around us to do that and these are guys are all making t shirts and fucking sportswear and, you know, jackets and all
that stuff. And this was like, sir was really into the Planet of the Apes shit you know he did the Che Guevara Planet of the Apes.
And then he had this image, you know, which was all over the place and all these guys had these little stores, and they were going back and forth to Japan and Hong Kong and dealing with all these guys out there.
And I guess some, some kids out there in Asia, you know, because that's where all the factories were figured out how to like make the shit in the factories and all these Japanese kids, you know when all these old guys who used to make all the Japanese vinyl
toys. Back then retired, you know they put these guys to work making little toys of all their icons from their clothing brands and some of the early guys that were doing this was like bounty hunter and bathing ape was doing all of this stuff and and Jay Kwan who
was from the 360 toy group was doing supreme toys, and he did the first call shit. And he had this nice little boutique store with all the toys set up and I would go in there and he was friendly used to smoke weed and that you smoke me out all the time.
I have an extensive interview with this guy on my podcast.
He was from the 360 toy group, and it was, he was like the first guy ever met that was actually like doing the production, you know, like he was taking ideas and sending them off to the factory and getting the toys back and selling them.
And, you know, he was doing Stussy and he did the Keith Haring stuff, and he was nice to me and he would let me put my little prototypes in there and show stuff like that but he wasn't I wasn't famous enough to like put money behind.
You know in a way he kind of pitted me a little bit, because he like saw how hard I was trying and he figured, you know, he gave me as much encouragement as he could.
And he even offered at one point to produce something for me if I could pay for it, it was going to be like 11 grand and I couldn't getting up 11 grand was more than I could imagine at the time, it was heavy.
And now it wouldn't be so much of a problem but back then for me, you know, because of my working class blue collar poverty mindset. It was a bridge too far and I couldn't get there, you know, and this is like, this is when the bitterness started to settle in a little bit,
and I worked every angle New York city was fucking popping off with this thing. And I remember was extremely exclusive like Jay Kwan was so fucking funny. He, there was no like this is all relatively new in all these weird adult ex esoteric action figures that aren't
connected with the Star Wars or superheroes what the fuck is this. And like these well meaning tourists would come in and be like, hey, what is this shit and what is this is so cool it's like get the fuck out of here if you don't know what it is get out.
He was so and he didn't care if he sold it. He was so committed to policing the exclusivity of it. Yeah, you know, and like on one hand I like that and appreciated but it also made me feel like, am I in or out, I don't know.
Yeah, you know, am I excluded from this and not, you know, I'm not invited I'm like outstanding right outside.
You know with the red velvet rope and I'm at the front of the line but nobody's opening up the velvet rope for me, so I can see inside, and they're like waving to me from inside but they're not inviting me in and it was like all right all right I
was like I understood I understood why I was frustrated I understood why because I was a nobody I mean they knew me a little bit from that weirdo with the Boba Fett helmet in the boombox. And that's about it, you know, and like you know my toys didn't look like their toys you know they were a little lumpier and just like a little sillier and just like, I don't know they weren't hip enough you know they weren't street they weren't hip hop enough, you know, because that's what they all very invariably looked like and so they had like fat laces and big shoes and sagging pants and like you know,
remember like the big guys were like Michael Lau. And then, my friends over here had a store called go to, and it was Tony Chan who became boss Chan and my stories and Bill McMullen billions McMillions, who's, you know, and they had this little store name go to.
And I met those guys because they had to kiss stormtroopers in the window and I had to go and police that because I ran Star Wars downtown. And then they had an exhibit by this other artists called Eric so who did all these Bruce Lee toys these are like the first time you ever saw any of this shit in
America so I'm going around and grating myself all over the place and sort of getting known as the guy that did all these little sculptures. I even had a show at the vice store like vice magazine had a store.
And they put all my crack house in there and all that stuff so I was like, showing the work, but not a single fucking soul wanted to pay one cent to have it made in a factory in China, and I'm getting kind of fucking stress now because now what I thought was going to be an easy go.
I'm getting left behind a little bit, you know, and then like Toy Tokyo opens up, you know, and I'm, oh my god I go in this place and it's like,
that's your heaven. Yeah, it's heaven I mean because why I love Toy Tokyo so much is because, and this is the first one where they were upstairs, and you know when I meet Lev, you know and he's got what I loved about it and healing me that's where I met healing made he was
working there. And like he had because he had two rooms he had like all the vintage shit. You know they had the exploding bridge from superpowers which I almost put $500 on a credit card to buy right then and there, you know, and then they had the other room which was all the
designer toy shit. And now you're starting to see other companies, American companies starting to come out like strange Co. And I can't even remember Pete Fowler, you know and all these early guys and I'm like oh my god, you know, I'm like getting left behind, you know and Lev was dabbling in production
and I made something for him I made this elaborate crazy fucking like thing was like this video like our Atari creatures like it was like a video game console with a face and like a fucking tentacle arm and then all this shit, and I showed it to him it's like you want to
make this and he's like, too simple. What do you mean too simple. It's like God, it's got an eyeball dripping off the top of the joystick and there's a plug in the back and a giant quarter going in his back and he's got like a claw arm and there's like a little, little video game in his chest
and he's like how do you mean too simple. Yeah, but whatever wasn't his taste and in making I'm starting to I'm like, ah, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. You know, and then, um, okay, I'm getting this I get finally.
I have another opportunity. There is this, um, this store called a life. And they were like another streetwear brand, and they had this big store on orchard street, and they were doing, they would do art shows there, they had these big windows and these
big walls and they were doing art shows with all like the contemporary guys like they did like Todd Reese Todd James and Espo did the show there. Roastar Ryan McGinnis Shepherd fairy did a show they're like, you know, kind of big dogs you know now, this is when they were
doing art shows. And I made friends with this guy named JK five, who was also his name is Joseph Aria Lloyd but he was named JK five and he had this book called subconscious the source Rex, and it was just a sketchbook, and it was all this weird ass fucking
Star Wars shit. You know, have you ever seen any of his shit. No, it's fucking incredible. He makes he's working for tops now making Star Wars cards and he's fucking it is miserable as I predicted he would be, you know, he's doing licensed Star Wars shit yeah are those the
70 or whatever they're called there, they're doing a sort of Star Wars, s, take on the 70s style this top said the 70s style. But the thing is with the baseball cards. It's just the tops guys and they don't give a shit if it's in laws as long as it doesn't have dicks and violence on it.
They don't give a fuck. They put my ridiculous card out, you know, through Toy Tokyo ironically, you know, I was part of the toy toy Tokyo set they never credited or sent me my fucking samples they suck. But Star Wars is a whole fucking different story which I told you about
at length last episode. So my friend is making doing his own concept of Star Wars cards and they're just putting him through the wringer change this make this bigger make this smaller take that out it's just like you want he hates it, you know, but of course you know if they call you, you go.
He's doing a show at a life, but he's, he's a two dimensional artist, you know, and he does these mashup drawings of Star Wars and all kinds of pop culture shit, and I loved his work, and I'm like, listen.
I'm really good with the sculptural shit. Like, why don't we team up and like, I'll make like big a couple of sculptures of your work for the window I was just angling I just thought like this would be a good place for me because I want to be in the store, and I want to be affiliated with all
of them and I want to be able to show what I can do so I'm willing to like play second fiddle to you to show what I can do. So, I immersed myself in this guy's world he lives up in North White Plains right.
And, which is like about an hour, little suburban area about an hour and a half north of the city. So I'd be going up there, like, every weekend, you know and just bacheloring it up in this apartment that he had that was dedicated solely to making art, all the
stuff that was going on except for like a couple of beds and couches and we lived like bachelors you know I was in there, cooking you have this whole cooking hot dogs and baked beans and whatever.
And from morning till night fucking waking up smoking pot and sculpting I had all the blue foam this is all shit I learned how to do it Hasbro, you know cutting sculpting these giant sculptures and coating them with resin and then he would paint them.
And he would put boxes and boxes of fucking old toys from when he was a kid, and then I supplemented that with shit I was fucking siphoning off from from Hasbro I never fully quit working for Hasbro till 2013.
It was always like on the side I would do it like once a year, get a little money and then get a bunch of fucking toys off of it, you know, but I bet this point I had kind of given up on like it being anything other than just a freelance gig where I got free
food occasionally and and they would fly me places once in a while, and I got to see all the new stars toys before I realized but I get given up trying to work there.
But so and I would go up there and like, and I was like we were making all these.
I don't know what happened just something I'm going to cut all the heads off of these things and swap them around and just chop it and mash and we're making these massive installations of just thousands of action figures all mounted to boards and like here's Star Wars
figures hanging out in Smurf houses and his family was very Catholic so they had all these porcelain Virgin Mary statues that we were putting Boba Fett's on just like doing whatever just making this insane fucking installation, and then to make it even worse for myself
I was working fucking like a lunatic going broke doing the shit.
And then we're going to make a collectible that went along with this, and he had this little character called an Eno, which was basically this little teardrop creature that he would just draw on all these different forms and shapes and colors.
And we want they were going to make a glass version out of it, you know, he was thinking this is going to be like my Smurf you know because it's like this is like a template shape that I can that can just have infinite variation on it was like okay we're going to make this,
and they were going to make a life was going to pay to make them in glass and for whatever reason that fell apart. And I had already sculpted it, you know I made a little sculpey clay thing of it was like a little figure sitting in a base that was shaped like a lotus leaf.
And I was like well we still got to make these.
And we had this friend named Charlie Becker, who had a studio across the park from a life of this building called 195 Christie Street, which was like an artist studio building famous building like I think fucking Patty Smith had a studio there like a lot of
known people have been worked out of that building it's completely gentrified now but, and he had a resin casting studio. He was making molds and fucking sculpting stuff and doing casting and I didn't really know a whole lot about this I'd seen it when I worked at
the art asylum but you know art asylum was just making them out of these just white resin he was doing shit with colors and transparent stuff and it's like, hey, can you help us make this fucking you know figure, you know, and he was like sure you know he was friends
with all of us and he was like helpful. And so we were going to we got some molds made for some reason we didn't make the molds ourselves, we took it up, took the figure up to the jewelry district which is like on 48th Street in New York City you ever see that movie
times. Yeah, and I'm Sandler we took it there. Okay, took it. So we took it to like a jeweler, and they made some silicone molds made two sets of molds, brought it down there and I would go there and pouring resin first time ever poured resin and
mixing glitter in it and dyes and pigments and just I'm trying to make every single poor different. And then once they were all done mixing the figures with the bases and I had to sand them and fucking they were I was a fucking so much fucking work but it was like my first
fucking toy. Yeah, had them done at the last fucking minute we had them in these little plexi blast boxes it's like fucking I was up to like four o'clock in the morning, like literally to the day before the opening, you know making these fucking things and then finally
they're done everything is done I fucking work my ass off I sacrificed everything for like four months, you know, and nothing fucking sold. Not a fucking thing sold. He sold a few paintings here and there and he was getting some opportunities
and I got buckets off of it. Yeah, I was so fucking disappointed. You know I thought I literally created a fucking masterpiece we turn that store upside down it was so dope. You know I made the crucified Boba Fett thing, which pops up in all my media everyone
made so much cool shit. Nobody bought a goddamn thing and I was asked the fuck out busted. And, you know, he was taking meetings with Jeffrey Deitch to do other shit nothing came of it. No press no nothing, and no money and I was like what the fuck am I doing,
you know, and was also very colorful. Right around the same time I get invited to participate in Bill McMullen's birthday. He's like I'm having a birthday party, and the only present I want from anybody is make a self portrait of yourself, give me a
self portrait. And I was like okay, I need to slap something together real quick so I took a fucking Boba Fett figure. I took a Count Dooku figure that I had laying around leftover from that shit. I think I might even removed it from the show and had a
Boba Fett head on it, painted it fucking silver put it on a gray package and it was like called it the morgue and was just because my name is Morgan, you know, it's before I called myself the suck one I was called still called super genius at the time, and, um, and I just like, it was all gray,
and I gave it to him. And like this is cool look I made a little action figure myself it looks like Boba Fett take it, and it's all this monochromatic thing.
Wow, this actually looks pretty fucking dope, you know, so let me let me, let me see what I could do with this I think I think I'm going to make more of these, because I was so mad. I was like, I was like just so frustrated that nothing was working out for me so I made
this little figure, and I was still work I was on the clock at Hasbro right. And there's a factory, or like a big fabrication place out in Long Island City, Queens where this company that I worked for that was contracted by Hasbro was making all their shit
for Toy Fair, and I was painting baseboards for the Play Doh room, you know they had these just like wooden board wouldn't you know the trim that goes along the floor, these little showrooms and I had to paint them these pastel colors and the paint was so thin I had
to paint them like multiple coats. So while I was there, I'm on the clock. There was some casting residents and silicone leftover there because they had actually hired my friend Charlie Becker the year before to make some castings of this month, this monkey
King exhibit for the Children's Museum of Manhattan you know they were making molds of these little peach buns which figure into the legend of monkey King and whatever so there was some of these leftover materials, and I already kind of knew what I was doing so while no one was watching
me. I just made a mold of this fucking count dooku Boba Fett that I made.
And then, once the mold was done didn't use a pressure pot anything awful mold the silicone is like going bad it was like fucked up I had like one mold for the body, one mold for the cape.
And so I had this thing in the back back war room. Nobody's watching me. And like I would paint the baseboards for Play Doh. And then while they would dry I would go over to the little workstation and I would pour a casting and then put a towel over it so no one saw that what I was
doing. And then you know it come out and then I'd fucking make another one make another one they were coming out so so bad. You know there's no pressure pot and the molds were getting shittier and shittier.
And like so I'm like painting Play Doh and I'm like personally think like I'm getting off on the fact that Hasbro is paying me to do this, you know it's like it's became part of the folklore almost.
And then so then I got these four and then finally the mall just failed and I got these 48 little misshapen gray, awful looking Boba Fett things, and I tried to paint them silver right with paint that I used that I stole from the job, and the can runs out before,
before I could get them all fully covered so they're like half painted. And then I had like 48 bubbles that I got off of the Star Wars figures they might even had them there.
And I didn't even I don't even think I did a really shitty job taking the paper off and I just did this crappy printout.
You know, of just black and white of this character was like a blurry photo of me wearing the costume.
I had the psychedelic brand and I was like what is this thing called because I was like it looks like shit and it's like I want it to look like shit.
I'm just trying to get my family and all my fucking frustration into this fucking thing, because I can't get it, I can't get it I can't, I can't get arrested in this fucking toy business so fuck toys and fuck everybody that likes toys.
This thing fucking sucks. What am I going to call it.
And I'm like, suck, suck Lord it's the fucking suck Lord you know why because like even though it sucked, and it was a disaster I still had my fucking arrogance, you know, and my ego and my mania so I made it the suck Lord it's like if I'm going to be the
loser, and I'm going to suck and be terrible at least I'm going to be the fucking king of it. You know, so it's like okay I'm calling this the suck Lord. And then I said I support 66, just because I like the alliteration of the number.
You know, and so I just make this thing tape it all together. And then as a finishing touch and just like, I want this to look like it came from the worst most shitty ass factory you could possibly think of, you know, I want it to look like
it's the the amount I want this to look like the greatest amount of neglect, you could possibly imagine when it's a soy splattered like this pink paint all over it to like each one had like a big paint splatter on it to suggest that these things are just laying around
some factory and someone accidentally dumped paint on it, and they still ship them, you know, and then I wrote you're an asshole for buying this on the back there was nothing on the back and I just for some reason I don't know why I wrote that, because I couldn't imagine
that I would ever buy this fucking thing. I wrote, you're an asshole for buying this on the back winds up becoming my fucking slogan for my company. And I couldn't sell them to save my fucking life.
I would carry them around and I was still going, I'm still trying to shuck the CDs, even though, even though the thing had crashed you know it was like there was still a little, you know, every once in a while I'd go to a convention and I would try to sell the CDs and the
CDs together I may have sold one or two for like 20 bucks off my, off my web store.
But they weren't they weren't going anywhere. And, and then that was just like and I didn't expect them to go anywhere, and I was just like, fuck you.
You know, and then
I'm still thinking I want to be in the toy business though.
This company sets up shop in New York City called Kidrobot. Right. There we go. Okay. So I'm like, all right.
Now all the guys that were around before Jay Kwan and them hated the hated them, you know, because like they were dealing strictly with Asian art Asian companies Asian toys.
Only the cream of the crop, you know, and it was very exclusive and very, you know, they they were they were gatekeeping the fuck out of the shit. And so Kidrobot comes around and starts democratizing it and making it accessible to other people, and they were not feeling that shit.
You know there was a lot of hostility towards Kidrobot in the fucking community that was here now, but my thinking was like you guys haven't done shit for me. I have no allegiance to you. I'm going to go where, where the opportunities are.
And so I started grating myself to the to the guys at Kidrobot. This is where Paul Budnitz was had was still running it. He was the creator, and he was still there, and he was accessible and very involved so I start talking to him.
And, you know, I think I convinced them to put the suck lord 66 in in the store they had a store on Prince Street and so ho, but that wasn't something I thought was going to be produced, you know that was just something I made as a as a as a fuck off, you know, and then
the whole confluence of events happened all at once. I was still living at my mom's house and I was working in my mom's house and I was like I live in my mom's house for fucking 12 years I'm fucking dying it's like how am I couldn't.
How am I going to get out of here, you know I was never making enough money anywhere to fucking pay Manhattan rent, you know, and I refuse to live in Brooklyn with roommates I just like I had my standards and I wasn't going to go anywhere and I was relatively
comfortable, but I was broke.
And then one day, a relative of my mother's an answer some died and left her a significant amount of money. And, and some of that trickle down to me. So I got $10,000, you know, more, more money than I'd ever had in my entire life and by then I was not thinking I'm
going to make enough money on making a toy in China, you know I was like I gotta get out of this house, you know so I found myself a little art studio down on the outskirts of Chinatown over here on Broadway.
Yes, the Broadway like Broadway right below canal Street right on the edge of Chinatown, which is pretty much exactly where I want it to be and I got a little room in there in this artist studio building for like $700 a month, which was the biggest commitment
I'd ever overtaken taken on in my life and I was like I better figure out how to fucking pay for this shit. And, you know, I invested in like a pressure pot and a compressor, and I'm like I'm going to use this shit to do my model my model making you know I'm going to do my
prototyping here, right. Wasn't really thinking about any sort of production figured I was just going to make my prototypes here and Budnitz was going to come over to the studio and I was going to make a big pitch to him.
Okay, and my idea was I want to bring back the Fisher Price little people, you know, but I want to make them weird and monstrous because what I like them, but except for the Sesame Street ones.
They were all just a normal looking people and I was like what if they were weird you know like I made a micronaut one. Yeah, which was just which was which was just weird because this was something that's this is the throwback when I was a kid.
We would go to this place called McKay's drugstore which is little neighborhood drugstore, and they had a little toy section there. And that's where I would get all my Fisher Price stuff I got like the main street I got Sesame Street I got like the airport,
you know all the little people stuff. I would get there they had a nice kid section. And then I remember my first big boy toy was a micronaut.
They had this I didn't know what they were they just had this thing called the a courier, you know the micronauts. Yep. I was just thinking to me it looked so cool to me. You know what it was was like, you know I already had three and three quarter figures because Fisher Price
also made the adventure people. Yeah, but this was like but again they were just like regular looking humans. And there's this thing it's like this space robot nighties all green chrome with this little knife and these roller skates and these weird wings.
And my mom bought that for me and then I got the time travel and I started getting micronauts a year before Star Wars came out. And I guess for some reason, because that was my first big boy toy in some weird subconscious realm it blended with the little people.
So like I made like a micronaut little person as a sort of little demonstration of like what did I want I wanted to do with the little people. I want to take the little people and I want to mash them up with, you know, monsters and sci fi and all this shit so I had my little
mold making situation, took the little person body, got rid of the head sculpted, you know other parts and then made molds of it and made these little prototypes and I had to work them and sand them like I wasn't really good at the model make the molding
enough to like really make professional looking stuff so I had to really work it. And so I set up this whole thing I made this book which I still have which dove is going to buy from me one day.
And with all the proposed ideas like fucking 25 different figures, vehicles play sets thought out to the end, you know and Budnitz comes over he looks around he looks at the shit and it's like oh that's cool.
No.
Okay.
So you would you would have known it for as a yes if it happened. No, or not even an answer just nothing. Yeah, didn't take didn't go for it. And that was it. And I was like, well, I was counting on that.
Because now I got to pay this fucking rent. Yep. And I don't think I'm good enough at making these things. I didn't see how I was my skill was going to allow me to like put these little peg people things into production.
Right then and there I did eventually but at the time it seemed beyond my craft so it was like, the only other thing I had going was like the shitty looking Star Wars figures. Yeah, and I was like okay.
I'm just going to go ahead and just say fuck it. And I'm going to make a follow up to that suck Lord figure I guess a year had gone by and I had managed to sell enough of them piecemeal here and there to encourage me to think that maybe I can make a go of this.
You know it's like nobody wants to make any of my shit. So I'm just going to make it for my fucking self. Yeah, and it's going to look bad.
It's going to look bad, and I got to figure out how to how to justify that. So, you know, I'm just going to be like you know what, I'm just going to call these bootlegs, because I'm making fake Star Wars figures anyway and I am in Chinatown the bootleg capital of New
York City. It all sort of seems to fit together somehow. Yeah, and I'm just going to be ripping off Star Wars which is what I do because I'm a fucking loser and I have no ideas of my own. So I'm just going to lean into that.
I already call myself the suck Lord. I already call my company psychedelic people are well aware that this is trash. So I'm just say these are bootleg figures and I'm just going to like wrap them in all the cache that goes along with the illicitness of buying counterfeit
goods. You know I've already declared myself as a supervillain, you know, because you know because I was like, nobody wants to fuck with me, and I'm against and I was like looking for revenge.
And I was like I just styled myself as the antagonist to the toy business I'm just going to go against the grain, and instead of making nice cool cute pretty well made collectible shit and make everybody like me I'm going to do the exact opposite.
So here I am, you know fucking supervillain.
So, I was like what else is cool. After Boba Fett and Star Wars, and I was like Bob does stormtrooper.
You know I'm going to make a weird stormtrooper.
What can I do now to the stormtrooper to turn it on its head somehow and inverted or perverted in some way. It's like well what's changed the color.
What's the, what's the least likely color a stormtrooper would be, you know, pink there's no way there would ever be a pink stormtrooper so I'm making it pink.
So I made like 25 pink fucking stormtroopers.
And then I had to come up with an idea for the packaging and like well why, why is it pink, you know like what's the story here what's the reason I will use pink so well, Mom is he gay, he must be gay right okay.
He's a gay stormtrooper so what am I going to call this gay stormtrooper gay fire gay empire, gay empire fuck it. So I just made the shitty graphic on on like black and white, you know just like use the Star Wars font and just made it look terrible.
And I didn't have any printing budget I didn't know how to print a card, I still don't. So I go to this, you know I just I go to this little copy shop in the in the East Village, run by this little Bangladeshi woman who still prints my shit to this day.
By the way, no way. Yeah, I go in there and I see she's got this pink paper you know they make these shit calls Astro Brights, and like I was so concerned about the cost of these things that I didn't want I didn't think I could afford color copies.
So it's like I'll just do black and white printing on colored paper, you know, and that's where the sort of style came from us like it's like it looks like a punk zine it's fine.
So she printed this shit for me I spray mounted it to the boards which is like something I learned how to do it canal jeans. And thankfully there was a company online called like Westwind collectibles that sold like replacement bubble so I bought those taped it on splattered
the paint on it, make this thing called fucking gay empire put it on my website.
Fucking nothing happens right.
I don't know how to sell this shit. And it's like if I don't sell it soon, you know the rents coming and I burned through that $10,000 you know yeah over the last couple of months buying all this resin and fucking, you know, I spent some money on myself
to and like buying paying rent here for a couple of months and, you know, I had to put the deposit down it's like I was running out of money and like I, there was no work I don't know what the fuck to do and it's like, this has to pay right now, or my whole shit is over.
Yeah, you know, and I guess I don't know what happened, but somehow it wound up on the kid robot message board before any social media that's how people used to communicate was on these discussion forums and kid robot had the discussion board.
And either maybe I sent it to toys are evil or somehow it got the attention of Frank Kozak. And he, as a gag he just said hey look at this weird ass fucking toy. You know this pink gay stormtrooper and he posted it on the kid robot message board and it got a lot of attention.
And then there was maybe a sale or two here and there. But then what happened because of that, I get this fucking and I'm dying I get this rain I'm dying I don't have any money I get this random email, and it's from this fucking guy in California and it says, Hi, my name is
Dov Kalamur and I'm a toy distributor in California and I sell, you know, vintage Star Wars toys and I was wondering if you had any wholesale available for your, your gay empire figure. And I said well, as a matter of fact I do.
I got a whole bunch of them right here. And he was like okay, great. And he paid me just underneath what the wholesale price was sent to check immediately. I sent him the figures I was able to pay my rent, and he's like I'll take whatever you make.
All right. Yeah, I'm in fucking business thank fucking God for Dov. If that had not happened.
I would have defaulted on my rent, and the whole fucking shebang would have been gone so like at the fucking last minute, he comes through.
And I'm good. So I was like okay I'm going to keep making this shit now. So I made, I just kept doing it I kept adding shit to it I kept adding new characters and was like I was like I finally he bought like whatever suck Lord 66 I had leftover.
I sold them to him for like 10 bucks each those things sell for like 1000 $1200 now, if you can find it. Remember it's not that long ago we sold is like on one on eBay and fucking Brett Ratner the movie director bought one for like 1100 bucks.
It's like wow, you know, but at the time you know I was just was happy to shovel them out the door. He writes back to me it's like why are the heads broken off and I'm like oh it's supposed to be that way.
And he's like oh you're hilarious. Great. And then he will he loved it because he was so sick of regular Star Wars toys that was the kicker. That's what made the shit click for me is that there was this deed there's a lot of guys my age who grew up collecting Star
Wars toys, still like them.
I wanted to go through the process of collecting them but just found the mainstream toys to be just a little too ordinary a little too accessible. It was like they were graduating from like pot to crack, you know, it was like they just wanted a strong they wanted
the same hit but stronger and weirder. And like this was the only place to get it, you know, and I was cranking the shit out cranking the shadow I made another version of the of the suck word 66 I made the suck word 75.
And this is all this is all happening in fucking 2005 and this is right around the time. Revenge of the Sith comes out right, and I'd made my piece that these new Star Wars movies were going to be terrible.
And even though the bottom had dropped out initially of Star Wars break beats.
People are masochists and like over attack of the clones and revenge of the stiff.
There was enough interest in Star Wars going forward that I was able to still sell these things here and there.
And I offered a chance to DJ outside the Ziegfeld theater, which was the big you know which was the main where they would line up. You know I talked about this last episode they would line up to buy tickets to the movie.
And so they set up a DJ booth in front of there. And I was going to go spin records and mix Star Wars samples in there to, you know, to entertain the line and I had my buddy crystal fire with me who's known as dark fader at the time.
And he needed a look for that. And like I maybe I was just going to go wearing the Boba Fett costume that I had already made. But since I had already made a figure of it. What I did was then I modeled the costume after the toy.
I took the whole Boba Fett costume changed it to all silver had a cape made a silver cape made for seamstress painted the helmet silver added the count dooku lightsaber, and just like, and then just blinged out also all platinum shit, you know and just sort of, and then it wasn't Boba Fett anymore.
It was the suck Lord now, you know, and that was sort of where it all sort of came together, where now, not only is there a toy of it and not only does the toy represent my inner life but now I'm basing my outward appearance on the toy.
So that, and that's, and then that and that's one of the whole supervillains things sort of coalesce and that's where it was like, I'm not me. I'm a character. I'm not Morgan Phillips I'm the suck Lord I am a guy. I'm a mercenary I'm a bounty hunter.
I'm a sif Lord I'm a super villain. I'm fucking you all over I'm making terrible toys that suck shit and I'm taking your money, and you love it, you know, and I just like that and then that was where the whole mythology is just sort of coalesced.
And then I had given up altogether working for any toy companies like I can cast this shit all goddamn fucking day. Yeah, here's the question I have you at one point said that this kind of spurred out of your frustration.
With, like, you were fixated on almost like revenge because no one wanted to mess with you and so you made these toys.
But dove buys all of them.
You start selling them. Where's that frustration level, because you're starting to realize that you don't need anyone now like you're able to kind of do this. Oh well I finally got my satisfaction.
Yeah, you know, I mean I just felt I just felt great because for the first time in my life I was making a living off doing what I was doing.
Off doing whatever the hell I fucking wanted. And I was like this is great because I don't have to follow any goddamn rules. You know I was so sick of like the Star Wars bullshit of having everything had to conform to all these fucking rules and all these style
guides and had to run every fucking thing up the chain. You know I could put a cock on a stormtrooper and sell it, and nobody could tell me otherwise, you know and people were people were eating this shit up because like designer toys had been around for a few years
and the rotocast vinyl, it all had a certain look, you know it was all like these sort of cartoony looking things.
You know and I was so mad at Kidrobot because they were giving everybody gigs, and they weren't didn't give me didn't give it to me for some reason.
You know, thank God, you know, in hindsight because they eventually made a dunny for me they did I got them to do whatever I want eventually, you know I didn't need them for much.
I also made this, I was making fake dunnies. I was doing whatever the fuck I want and nobody said a goddamn thing everybody was like how are you not getting sued how are you not getting sued and I was like, I don't know they didn't sue me when I fucking made the record.
So why are they going to sue me now. So, you know, I started. I mean I have, I have my reason, my theory why why they never sued me for gay empire which I'll tell you at the end of the interview, but it was like some interview it's just me talking but um, I was
like finally got my satisfaction you know it was like I'm, I was living who I wanted to be. I had embodied the supervillain character, I was making my own living doing my own thing, and people were fucking buying bullshit off of me I felt like a hustler, you know,
a drug dealer or something you know I just like everything about it was illicit, and I used to hype that up I remember guys would like want to come and buy stuff from me and I would go and like meet them out on the street and I would like let's go back here and like you know, and like
hiding and like making it look like it was some kind of criminal activity going on.
I was like that persona, and, and you know I was just like, it was just completely self aggrandizing I couldn't believe I was getting away with like talking myself up so much you know call you're an asshole for buying this I would berate my customers,
and people would. I couldn't believe me, you know, being who I was managed to pull this off somehow, you know, it was new to me, you know, I never felt that confidence before, you know, and I had the mask, you know I would take the helmet off occasionally
and walk into a room and that with that costume on, and not take off my helmet, you know, and people knew I wasn't fucking around because you know when people wear costumes they're wearing a costume.
You know I was that person, you know, like you know you walk into a Halloween party you take off your mask hey it's me who drink beer, and you don't own it.
You know I was owning that shit, you know I would come into the party, come into the thing with a boombox blasting get in my fucking stance, and I was in it and I believed it myself, I bought it.
That's why I always that's why it always worked. Comparing myself to Boba Fett, because eventually there would be a downfall and we'll talk about that later.
But, you know, you know it was just like I was in, I was just took whatever the fuck I liked about Boba Fett, and just made it that and just saying we're not going to be an asshole and fall into the sarlacc.
You know I did but that came later. Um, and I was getting away with it, and there was really there's not really much else to tell beyond that for a while you know like, like I said, it didn't look like any other toy that was so people were gravitating towards it
and people that were not wanted to collect shit didn't want to collect mainstream Star Wars stuff and the vinyl shit was too cartoonish or stupid for them this was perfect. I was cranking shit out month after month after month I fucking generated is weird group of followers
that would just like I would put it on the website and would sell out immediately, whatever I made whatever I wanted to charge for it. It took me a while to get there remember the big, the big hair pulling decision was like, should I make a toy that doesn't riff on Star Wars,
you know I wanted to make a micronaut thing I will I made like I had the antron which was one of the Mego aliens which was one of my all time favorite Star Wars lines, I mean, toy lines, and the reason why I love them so much is because they were just a rip off of the Cantina
aliens, you know, it was just like I just love the micronauts but they had their very strict look and then these were like micronauts but so different and often so American.
So I took the antron head and put it on like an emperor body. I don't know what the fuck the fuck to call it called it a galactic jerk bags, because the whole strategy was like I'm just going to like every character is just this miserable, irredeemable loser,
you know they're not even good supervillains they're just like pathetic failures, you know, just like, and making like I thought that was very funny and ironic and it goes all the way back to the crack house where I was just trying to make an anti toy.
Yeah, but I was worried like if I don't have a Star Wars reference on it. Is it, is it going to not sell, you know, and this was always always been a problem for me. And you'll see how in the next episode how it destroyed me, but I risked it I put it out.
And then not only does the toy sell this like group of people come together calling themselves galactic jerk bags, and they made a forum discussion board of just suck it suck Lord shit, you know buying and trailing and selling other, other people selling my shit,
you know, and then it's just go with this was, I could have done this gone on and on and on and on, you know, doing doing the shit, you know, and then all of a sudden, not all of a sudden but a couple years in.
And then this guy too guy too big hack, you know, it's like making bootleg resin toys. And now this guy killer bootlegs, you know making these things and it's like, wow, oh, you know, what's what's what's going on here, and
those guys couldn't get any fucking traction apparently like those guys couldn't show their fucking face on my message board, you know, because everyone's like this is what the suck Lord does, you know, and they got haze the fuck the fuck out of them.
And they, none of those guys could get an in any time any of those guys tried to fucking get over be like, that's a psychedelic rip off, you know, and I was just dominated this shit I was going to designer con at this point I was going to comic con.
I was walking around comic con with hot chicks, going to all these different booths and selling shit and I was, I was I was the ultimate get over I was winning on every level.
And I was still working for Hasbro right this is the great I was so proud of myself with the scam I was pulling. I was working for Hasbro right and Hasbro would fly me to San Diego to go work on their, the Star Wars booth at comic con.
So, I would you know I would go and I would do whatever I did for Toy Fair there and I got to work with fucking Darrell the priest who was the main guy at Star Wars.
I even said to him one day, this is a side story but it's like you know they were, you know, all these stars figures are great this was during the arrows like they were just making every single fucking thing you could think of like Chewbacca with the
different pose like there's 2000 Chewbacca's like, have you guys ever thought about making like retro style figures, you know, because I'm having a lot of success doing shit and there was like no we don't want to look backwards, you know, and now look at it now look at you, you know, I mean I was still angling I didn't have any expectation
but I was always always always buddy and giving them my two cents, trying to figure out where the angle was.
And the thing that happened was the company that I worked for would put together all these display materials and put them in this big shipping container, put it on a truck and it would go out to San Diego from from Queens, and they would let me take all my counterfeit
bootleg figures that I was taken to comic con and put them on that truck, you know, so I didn't have to pay the shipping costs. So I'm smuggling bootleg Star Wars figures in with official Star Wars display cases to San Diego would get there.
And then they would unpack the truck, and there would be my little box of pink stormtroopers inside the display case that they had fabricated with the big Star Wars sign on it, take it out, move it, you know, and then I would set up all the stars toys I still love doing that stuff
I still would love doing that, you know, and I know set everything up. And then, and then once it was set up I was off the hook for the whole convention.
And then I would just put on my costume and they bought me a hotel right across the fucking street from the convention, and I had my little, you know my little model tart staying with me.
And then I would go into the convention with my fucking suck Lord gear and a big box of toys and make this big grand entrance, and I'd show up at like the O and L design booth or the dove booth or whatever, wherever I was selling and fucking kill it.
I was just going up to buy this shit. And I would berate the audience and I would fucking do my little stick, you know, and I was like, PT Barnum you know I was so good at it you know the performative aspect, you know talking shit and chilling and making a big deal about
getting the money give me the money, fuck you, fuck you pay me.
And people ate it up.
And I lived this way, probably forever. But I was like, um, you know there's got to be more here where's the build, like, I was still feeling like it didn't.
I was like, where I could go in the toy business, like I had made, I'd finally been able to because of the success with this thing, make a Roto cast vinyl toy in China, I may I got I managed to drum up 11 grand I think I put up half of it.
And I fronted the other half, and we made some distribution deal where he would be able to recoup that money. And, you know, sent that sent out a sculpt of the suck word characters just like a Boba Fett with a boombox and a lightsaber to three a toys.
And they made it for me. Yeah, and it came back and there's this thing called the suck word 600 or just in a giant blister pack. And it was like finally here it is if like seven eight years ago, I had seen this when I was begging Jay Kwan for a gig.
I would have been like oh my god this is perfect I love this I did it, you know, but then when it when I finally got it after doing all the handmade shit it seems somewhat unsatisfying.
You know, like it just this box came and they were all look the same and I didn't love the quality and just something about it just didn't I mean they sold people liked it and it's kind of considered to be one of the classics I suppose.
But the process of it just didn't turn me on. Yeah, I gotta sell 1000 of these fucking things meanwhile I'm selling like batches of 40, you know, and getting plenty of money off of that and I was like, I'm not going to do this I don't care about this anymore.
I'm glad I did it but it's like, this is my what I do now. At one point I thought the resin figures was just going to be a stepping stone to something else, and it wound up being the thing and I was happy with it.
But, so I didn't really give much of a fuck about the toy industry, but I was having I still had my sights on the art world.
You know, it's like this gotta be some way. This is art, I mean everyone kept calling it art. Somehow this is art because you're an artist and it's the way you make it it's more like art, you know, and maybe doesn't look like art to some people but it takes art effort,
and it has our intention behind it because I'm making shit out of my own subconscious mind and I'm using it. I'm making self portraits and I'm using it as a way to express myself and it's very hands on and it's painting and it's sculpting and it's all this shit.
The art world should know about this.
And I didn't know how to access that.
You know, until one day.
I'm sitting on the toilet, looking on Twitter, and I see they're having open auditions for this TV program called work of art the next great artist.
And I was like, you know what, I can get on the show, because I had seen season one and I was like there's, why the fuck am I not on this, you know, because I had already had some television experience, and I was like, if I get on the show.
I will wow them with my fucking shit. I will become a, I will make it in the art world.
And that's what I decided to do.
And I'm going to save that tail for the next episode, because it will probably take the whole thing. But that's what I did that's what I decided that the art world and television was my ticket.
That was my ticket to becoming a successful artist.
And that's where this episode ends. So I do have a quick question.
You do you you're making toys in this heyday of whatever's going on and people are saying that you are an artist you're making art there's art intention, all those things.
Why does it, or why did it then take that, like, what was the problem that you couldn't connect to the toy and the art, like was that something in your own head that you couldn't put together.
No, it was just like, it wasn't recognized this art. I mean occasionally here and there, I know like a dunny, or the money wound up in like the Whitney design show, you know it was just always viewed as design, and like some people considered it, you know, high end design,
like I remember I used to get mad because sometimes like stupid kid robot bullshit would wind up in these sort of like fancy architectures magazines or whatever, whatever. You know, I remember there was a lot I remember a lot of magazines, you know, and I used to get in all
the toy magazines I got in fucking Toy Fair, multiple times and whatever else there was I you know anything like that all the nerd shit I had the nerd world locked.
But you know like downtown New York at the time there was, I mean it still is it always is but you know at the time it was very are, it was very art oriented you know vice magazine was was the dominant thing and like, you know, the, and like, you know,
I can't even remember who the famous people were at the time, but just like all this, just they just weren't thinking about this kind of shit I mean they were the art world was having yet another fucking incestuous love affair with graffiti.
You know, it was just like, just never could it was just too fucking nerdy and it just like, and maybe it was partially because of my personality or just, it just never clicked I had a show in Chelsea.
Yeah, right. It was sort of a prank show, you know Chelsea, for those who might may or may not know is like where a lot of the major art galleries in New York City are it's considered though the gallery district.
It's also the gay district, but, um, and there was this guy named Johan who had this thing called boo hooray and he was more like a purveyor of of collectible ephemera from pop culture and beyond and it's impeccable taste all kinds of great shit.
And he had this space in Chelsea and he wanted to do like a prank art show, you know, so of course he fucking picks me. And like I guess I understood, you know, on one level that this was supposed to be a parody of the art world, and that like the whole thing was like why would a prestigious
art gallery, give this clown a show. Yeah, that was his thinking because he wanted it to be a fuck you. And I went along with that but I also figured well that's what the art world is the art world loves pranks you know, and once they actually see the work
they'll realize that there's some depth to it, you know, and they'll get past you know the initial veneer of silliness and see that there's actually a lot of thought going into it which was absolutely not the case at all in any way shape or form.
I mean I sold a lot of shit. But you know it was all to people that were in on the joke and it just never crashed through the canvas ceiling or whatever the fuck you want to call it, you know, it just never translated into the fucking bourgeois whole thing.
Fucking bourgeois halls of you know, of the gosians of the world or you know, and like, which is funny to me because you look at the shit that fucking like Jeff Koons makes.
And then, I mean I have an answer to all of this, which I don't, which we'll get into later, you know, like I'm still approaching this and I have a strategy for it. But at the time you know I wanted it to pass as, as it was, and it just, it didn't work.
And I figured, if I can get on this TV show.
You know, that will help and I also figured I just figured if I get on TV it'll drum up business, you know what could possibly go wrong.
What could possibly go wrong if I go on this TV show. So, I, I went to the audition.
But I don't want to talk about that right now.
Okay, I have one more question for you. I want to keep it focused on toys for this episode because I was kind of thinking for the fourth episode. It would be all about the TV shit. And then, and then how that affected the work afterwards.
Yeah, so let's keep it pro let's keep it toys for now. Yeah, one last question for you.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I keep thinking about the, the crack house that play set right that's come up a couple times for a period of your toy making career, you wanted to get that produced because people were asking for wholesale and all those things.
Yeah, now that you're on this side with notoriety with success.
However you deem that success, we see you as successful.
And I'm seeing this like resurgence in people in their 30s 40s and 50s collecting these things and wanting more toys now. What is to stop you from going back into these old things and producing the shit out of them.
Oh well for one I just think now, after all this said and done and all the different esoteric directions that I've taken myself, but seems like a kind of a pure I'll idea. I just don't think it's really that funny.
And to be honest with you, you know when I think when you look, looking at it now, you know I made this I made that thing in like 1992. And it's like I'm not going to say it's, it's just sort of like an.
I don't feel like making fun of addiction and poverty and making light of, you know people prostituting themselves for drugs and throwing babies and dumpsters. Yeah, it's really the look right now I mean at the time I was in my 20s you know and it was just like, we didn't think about these kind of things
and it was like you know I had some, you know, there's some unfortunate depictions of you know poor of poor people and people of color you know I mean I made a point to keep it racially diverse you know there's like the hooker the hooker the crack hose black, the crack
hose black and white, and, you know, and then the and then there was like I actually lifted a lot of the material from that Spike Lee movie Jungle Fever. Yeah, you know there's a crack house scene and I've never actually been to a crack as I have smoke crack, but
I've never been to a crack house. And so I just lifted it off of there but it just seems like, and at you know at the time it seems racy and edgy and especially because I was in Oregon and we were very far away from New York City, and it seems some, it seems
urban and you know I was listening to fucking NWA at the time and there was just like a callousness to it which I just don't think, which I just don't think would fly today. And it's just like it's just not something I would I would want to do.
And my production ideas just are happening, or happening in a different space I just feel like there's no real reason to go backwards in that regard I mean I still do have it at my mom's house and maybe someday I'll show it again or sell it or maybe it's, you know,
it's significant because it really was the Genesis piece of everything that came after that. And there's still shit coming. You know I got way more in store here.
It's just, it's not applicable today. Yeah, you know I mean, even, even like the little peg people, like, I made everything I wanted to make in that department, like I finally got my resin craft up good enough to, to the point where, where I could I made
everything I wanted to make. And it's like, you know how you know how expensive it is to make fucking toys, what a pain in the ass it is to ship it and deal with the distance I didn't have to be honest with you.
I don't want to deal with that anymore. I don't want to deal with that and I certainly don't want to be a toy company. You know it's like I do occasionally entertain production deals here and there and like up till now nothing's really clicked but things come down the pipe
and I'm against working with a toy company to produce my shit and just take a royalty but I have no desire to fucking warehouse shit. I have no desire to fucking go back and forth with a factory.
I have no desire to do all the marketing and fucking pay for the lead testing and all the crap. You have to do, you know, to get a toy to market, I feel like I pretty much satisfied that part of myself to a degree.
And so now I'm really just doing it by almost on autopilot just as a way you know it's just like one part of my income. And it's just like, I don't know, I have a lot of other ideas that I'm interested in, you know, and just like toys will always be a part of my life but,
I feel like I did this shit for fucking how 17 years or whatever, however long it's like, how many ideas can I have, you know, and it's like I really what I really like, you know, especially after making that fucking vinyl figure really realized that that just wasn't for me I love
the nimbleness of the bootleg shit, because, um, because like, I can come up with an idea could be a really weird random very specific niche idea. I can make it in a week, two weeks I can have I can go from an idea to the market.
And I can get it out, I get the image on social media, everybody sees that I sell enough of them to justify doing it. And then the next, you know, it's not like I'm banking on like I'm waiting six months to a year for this boat boat load of fucking plastic that's
based on some fucking inside joke that was funny. Six months ago, and now it's nobody cares anymore. And it's like, I don't need that aggravation it's just so it's so great to be able to just pull something out of my ass, and especially if some current event happens
right. And like I want to respond to it immediately boom I can make it within a couple of days I can have a figure to market. And, um, and, and there it is and it's fucking passed and it's over especially nowadays in the whole fucking meme era, you know, it's
like it's a, it's so funny to me, and you're all welcome, by the way, you know, because I'm also relieved that I don't have to do it myself like a perfect example is, you know, you know, eventually all these copycats managed to get away with this shit.
You know, and I think that's partially due to like, you know, I was due for a fall, you know, I oversaturated the market I was getting lazy at a certain point, my prices were going up my quality wasn't improving.
And a lot of these young hungry guys were coming out and making shit. And then you know and especially like I'll give credit to fucking killer bootlegs because he tolerated the haze.
You know a lot he was like, he's really the one killer, the reason why I think in a lot of ways, both myself and killer bootlegs kind of have a joint responsibility for turning this bootleg toy making thing into like a global fucking phenomena is because I created
this, but he was the first guy to be second, you know, he was the first guy to say like hey, you can do it too. This is not belong just to the suck Lord, I'm going to do it, I'm going to take the abuse that you're giving me and then I'm actually going to make shit that's
better than the suck Lord, and he achieved that, you know I was getting lazy I was phoning it in for a while, you know this is right around the TV show was happening I was starting to I was phoning it in, he was hungry.
He was doing better shit, charging less for it. And like you know how anybody becomes the big fish in the pond eventually people want to knock you down that's just human nature, they always they love the underdog, and they want to see the fat cat fall,
and that's, that's what happened and he stuck it stuck it through. And then after that, all this fucking other people start coming out of the woodwork, and then dove embraces it and starts giving it a platform, you know for a while I was like getting bent
about it, and dove is always like well it doesn't matter because eventually people all roads lead back to you. And I'm like yeah yeah maybe right.
And there was nothing I can do I could stop it. And now it's like I benefit from it because it's, it's nice I mean I feel like in a lot of ways this interview series is because of that it's like, you know you look at this whole fucking so called art movement,
and then you can point to a living person that's sort of like directly being traced to the originator of it that's interesting to people so I managed to make my hay out of it, but I'm just saying thank God.
This world exists because if not, then I would have had to been the asshole that had stay up all night after the Oscars, making a Will Smith slaps kid rock figure.
And I knew, I knew that within 24 fucking hours you're going to see something so I was like you know what I'm going to bed. Yeah, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and someone will have done it and sure as shit they fucking did more than one person did it.
Great job. Perfect. Looks exactly like it's supposed to be two figures that look like Chris rock. I don't know how they pull it off people are sitting on these like boxes and boxes of broken figures, and as soon as there's an opportunity.
Boom, there it is the package looks great everything looks great you put it on fucking Twitter, boom boom bang, and it's fucking done and I'm like great I'm still in bed and I didn't have to do it yet somehow I still get credit for it.
You know, like somehow people still look at that and be like oh fuck Lord, that looked like people send it to me oh this reminded me of you. Of course it fucking did.
Of course it did. You're fucking welcome.
But, you know, that's, that's neither here nor there at this point.
You know someday I'm not going to be doing this shit.
And I don't know what's going to happen to this to this world it's such a bizarre little niche thing that actually makes no sense I just did the 10th anniversary in action figure show a clutter, you know where it's a platform and it's a venue open just to people who just specifically
do this thing, and they put my little thing in a case by itself and that was nice, you know, but I don't know where the shit is fucking going because, you know what I have discovered that is absolutely not scalable.
You know, it is not scalable at all. And then this is one of the things that led to my, my first fuck up was that me and dove tried to scale it, you know we outsourced some of the resin casting to someone else and we had other people making it and
we were like more of it and lower the price, and something got lost there, you know, something got lost there because it's like, it's not a mass produced item but it's acting like a mass produced item but it doesn't have the quality.
And because the artist himself didn't make it some special part of it is missing now, you know, and it just somehow it didn't, it didn't work out. And I remember Comic Con 2013 and I'm getting ahead of myself this is after the TV show, you know, we tried
to do this shit and there's this big wall and made this gay Batman and Robin is called gay Gotham. You know, it was like a pink Batman pink Robin, and on the last day of San Diego Comic Con at Dove's booth I'll never forgive him for this.
And there's this big wall of them standing there and it's like nothing had sold and it's like, dude, hide those, you know, don't show the unsold they fucking had a bit of fucking vampires and the vultures had a field day, because some of my fucking
people turned against me at one point, you know, because they thought I was, you know, these are the loyal followers, and they started to really the the the hey you're hustling me gag started to become.
Hey, wait a minute you're really hustling me, you know at first it was like play we were playing the role like I was being a sucker buying your shit because I actually really like it.
I was actually really trying to play me for a sucker making this whack shit and haha look at you, Mr. You couldn't sell shit, your fucking whole image and that popped the fucking bubble.
You know, that's the fucking thing about hype is all it takes is one shitty image of like fucking dead you standing next to your dead stock to like peel the take the fucking glasses off.
You know the rose colored glasses are the fucking they live shit. And then suddenly they see you for what you are a fraud and a charlatan, and then suddenly, boom, you know people were flushing their suck Lord collection, you know people were dumping it and was just
like, it was a catastrophe, which I which I, which took me years to recover. And this was happening, parallel to like the aftermath of the TV show, which I'll get into the next episode but it was just like it, it was it fucked me up and then not only that
was my work suffering there's all these little fucking young whippersnappers, ready to come in and fucking pick up my customers and give them what they want better and cheaper and I'm like standing out here with my fucking dick up my ass, you know, soft, you know,
and like, not knowing what to do, and like, constantly feel like okay fine killer bootlegs, you're forcing me now to fucking step it up and come up with different things and that's that's a fucking tale for another time but
The next one is going to be good too, so stay tuned and listen to that.