When I started reading Juxtapoz, I began to follow the Vinyl Art Toy scene. Artists create their own toy molds, release them in limited runs, and charge exorbitant prices for them. It gets meta when the artists get their artist friends to produce alternate "colorways", variations on the decoration scheme of the mold.
The reason that I've become interested in Vinyl Toys is because I don't understand them. I don't completely understand how they are made. I'm still getting my head around how people can spend hundreds of dollars on them.They are slick looking characters, like those found in comics. Unlike comics, though, they don't serve any type of purpose, but to look good. They rarely have any type of backstory beyond a small blurb that the artist uses as a jumping on point to create the piece.
The toys I am most interested are the Lucha Libre figures from MuttPop. They have a little bit of a back story, but mostly they just look awesome. Thanks to the Internet, you can enjoy them without dropping your hard earned cheddar. Via Vinyl Pulse, here is a great flickr set from the recent MuttPop show at Delkographik in France.
