buffawhat.com

NYLON TV + WAYNE COYNE @ KidRobot

Posting this because Scranto loves Wayne Coyne, and I love KidRobot and Nylon TV.

Watch as he talks about music and aliens and makes a custom Dunny.

The Le French Connection

One of the greatest things about the Le French Dunny Series is how there are visible connections and proof of collaboration between some of the artists. Instead in some series’ where each character is completely different, I’m gonna point out a few details on some of the French figures that bring them together.. as well as explain why the Easy Hey is so goddamn ugly unique.

First off, the French Color Trio.

Look at the 123KLAN, Oktus (I’ve yet to score this figure), and Superduex  together, notice anything? The three colors (blue white red) aren’t just the French national colors, they are a prevalent design aesthetic for Superduex, who also did the packaging design for the series. Superduex, 123KLAN and Oktus all have collabo’d together via french Design groups like UNCHI. Looking at the art styles of 123KLAN, I’d assume that they followed Superduex’s concept to create a matching figure. And Oktus was more of a color adherence. either way, the three look appropriate placed next to each other.

Now, onto the the Peen and the Sourpatch.

We found the cock and balls “discreetly” painted on the underside of the SecretLab figure during the Hero Party. It wasn’t till the end of the night that I discovered that the Koralie I just traded for had a raspberry under her. I refuse to believe that this is a coincidence.

Ok, now why Easy Hey is so.. Unique.

For being 1/400, this is a real stinker of a figure. I guess thats makes sense, seeing it was based off of Easy Hey’s Kid Onion “pet” character….

On another note, Oktus and Easy Hey are both part of the same French Design Group called Delkographik

The French Dunnys are selling fast and strong, stop by Hero Design in Buffalo and pick up a few, or visit the KidRobot page to learn more.

French Dunny Wrap Up

The Le French Dunny’s were released yesterday from Kidrobot, and toy shops all over the States held trading parties to celebrate. Hero’s Party was a blast, natch. We had french food (French Fries, Croissants, and French Toast, FTW!), beer, wine, and a store packed full of people hovering over the boxes, bartering and buying from one another; the atmosphere was one of a kind.

I rounded up 18 Dunny’s total, including the two rare chases, thanks to luck and the awesomeness that is Beth and Mark. Of course, Mark was up to his usual trickeries and greed for his own collection, and I was finding ways to manipulate points and punches and free tickets for the raffle. Turns out my luck was well enough, because I won the $50 hero gift card, which I promptly spent.

I managed to score a good amount of the ones I wanted, and now that I have the two chases, I feel like I could possibly complete this set. It really sucks that the most common pull was the Mist. I feel like it’s a garbage toy because the design was simply a different colorway from a previous series, nothing new, nothing to terribly attractive. I have an army of them now (five!), and I’m sure I’ll get more.

I don’t mind too much that the SecretLab was  common as well.. at least it has a white cockandballs painted on the underside.

Since it was a trading party, I also brought my Be@rbrick 2007 Wondercon Transformers pack to trade with Mark. He gave me a Stomp Super7 Kaiju for it, and I feel great about it. When I bought the Be@rbricks, it was an attempt to build a connection between Mike’s love for Transformers, and my love for the art toy collection. Obviously it didn’t work; Mikes’ out of the picture, and I’m moving on.

8-Inch Ninja Dunny Protects Fine Child Labor

It seems that the theme for gifting Buffawhat this Holiday season has been vinyl. I’m not complaining.. less I have to buy for myself!

Kevin, my buddy from Singapore (he’s from Buffalo,but he sold his soul to a bank for two years and they promptly shipped him overseas) gave me the 8-inch Ninja Dunny by MAD. He’s kinda baddass, not so much for the paintjob — pretty basic in that aspect — but the ninja sword and star are really beefy and make the ninja Dunny a great collect.  There are two more colorways: a black chase and a exclusive red Ninja, but the standard white with blood looks better than the chases.

The dunny is standing behind something else that Kevin gave me: a gold and enamel embellished coffee cup with saucer and lid. The crazy thing is that its made in Thailand by little kids, because their hands are so small they can hold the tiny brushes to paint the fine details. Once they reach a certain age, they can’t hold the brushes steady any more and have to find another career. All this for rice and a few coins. Child labor has never been so pretty. I’ll try to post a better pic of it on flickr once I get out of my office.

Kidrobot: Dunny “I’m French” Series drops in February

Since the Kidrobot forums are now cracking down on unofficial announcements, the leaked images of the new Dunny “I’m French” series are slowly creeping out to the blogosphere.  These images were supposedly uploaded to the wrong server by Kidrobot, and meant only as a sample for wholesalers.

There really isn’t too much known about this, except that The toys should be released in February, around Valentine’s Day, and in the 3-inch variety. Oh, yea: all the designers are French.

He’s cute ^

Beth, from that super little toy and poster shop on Allen was explaining to me how these things go from artist renderings like this off to custom mold makers and back and forth till they arrive at Hero waiting for my greedy consumption. I think I’m gonna research that a bit more and do a “How Dunny’s Are Made” post. For, now, I quiver in deep anticipation for what looks like a killer follow up to a great Series 4.

The Gingerbread Dunny Fiasco: Part Deux

Sorry for the delay, a slight glitch in office the office tubes, and a trip to the YMCA prevented a same day update to part 1.

Of Grumpy Bears, Mummras, and Giant Black Hoovers

Mummra promised Saturday that we’d make the dough Sunday when I came over with the Grumpybear. We figured out the recipe and let the dough chill all day. I made the cutout for a six-inch Gingerdunny this time; even with perfect dough, they will spread, and I wanted to keep as much detail as I could.

Rolling and cutting was SO much easier this time…. keeping the poor cookies alive: not so easy. See, Marc — Mummra’s “it’s complicated” man-slave companion — likes to bring his two black labs over to hang out, too. We call them the Hoovers. They see food, its gone. Nailed down, no matter. The only way to keep them away is to literally put a wall or door between the Hoovers and the food. I’m sad to say about half of the batch was lost to the never ending gullets of these beasts. After everything was done, I had 10 Gingerman Dunny’s safe and sound.

Success and the icing on the cake… er, Dunny

I met up with Angel on Monday and we started decorating. I was so excited, they came out so much better than I thought, and I think I have the first documented batch of Real Gingerman Dunny’s to reveal:

Take that AllthingsJen! Angel of course had to turn his into a GingerTranny, her name is Dunnicia, and her boyfriend is the best of the bunch

We even made the rare “bitten” chase:

What I’ve learned

• Never trust designer fluff as fact. I should know this. Just because you see a cute little recipe for Gingerbread cookies that came with a toy doesn’t mean you should follow it.
• I really miss baking cookies.
• Dogs are fucking annoyances when baking in the kitchen. Thats why cats are the rulzer.

Oh yea, one more thing. Here’s a little homage we made to a great little video that NO ONE should ever watch. We call it: 2 fags, 1 cup…..

The Gingerbread Dunny Fiasco: Part 1

I don’t get how Jennifer does it with her house parties and cookie days. I’m a big ole homo and I can say one thing: domestic shit is hard. It didn’t used to be that way, a long time ago in the safety of a country kitchen I could whip up a storm of confectionery delights, pies, cookies, cakes, whatever. Christmas was the season of diabeetus. Nowadays, I can hardly stand to eat a cookie, and I haven’t baked anything since before 2006. This year I was determined to end it… and this is part one of what started as a simple homage to jennifer with a nice little domestic cookie post, and spiraled into so much more.

The plan

• I picked up the Gingerman Dunny from Hero not too long ago and inside was this little teensy recipe for gingerbread cookies. I thought “thats kinda cool, I should make these cookies for real and shape them like dunny’s.”
• Concept at hand I grabbed Angel by the ear and we skipped gayly to Tops, then to the Dollar store, then to Target, then back to Tops to get supplies. See, I haven’t cooked or baked in so long I don’t have any of those grande essentials like a mixer, a cookie tray, or even a rolling pin. I also found out that spices are expensive as hell, especially ginger.
• Oops! Forgot last Friday that Block Party had a little shin-dig going and we were invited. Angel and I stashed the bags in his store and we made our way next door to mingle for a few. At that time, I realized that one of my intended recipients for the cookies has a gluten allergy. No worries, we headed to the Lexington and picked up gluten free rice flour. I was determined to make what sounded like a good thing: gluten free gingerbread cookies.

The First Try

[Heineken, baking soda, whole wheat flour, cinnamon, baking powder, candy dots, Brobee, icing tips, organic molasses, red, white, and blue icing, ridiculously small recipe, rice flour, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, shortening, Labbit, Buffawhat]

• All seemed well. I commenced to making the dough, and despite my initial forrowing at the recipe, I was going to play by its rules, save for the rice flour. Angel was around to yell at me for being messy, and to document the occasion. I was gonna have an AllThingsJennifer Post goddamit.
• Cue the photos…

• After letting the dough chill for a few hours… we return and immediately notice a problem: its not very doughy. Oh well I say, thats ’cause of the rice flour. I make the best of it and toss a batch of misshapen dunnies in the oven.
• Failure seems imminent as they melt into puddles of something, something unholy and dark.

• bollocks. An immediate racking of the brain to solve failure pops with the realization that I missed one key ingredient in this new world of gluten-free baking: Xantham Gum. Not your conventional spice — actually, not a spice at all, derived from fermentation of glucose — xantham gum is what you use to substitute for gluten, which helps to hold everything together.
• Oh well, I guess we won’t have gluten-free ginger Dunny’s then. It was a good try but I wanted them made; I decided to make them glutenous and the way God intended.

Second Fail, and first success.

Even after letting the second batch chill overnight, the same melted mess came out of the oven. A hard look at the recipe and a call to Mummra revealed that the card that came with the Dunny’s was bogus. Not enough flour and shortening instead of butter made the batter too runny.

The new recipe was 2 cups of flour, half a cup of molasses, stick of butter, with the rest of the ingredients staying the same (baking powder, baking soda, salt, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon). This was guaranteed to work…..

(come back later tonight to see the read the rest of the story and see the finished products)

• [update] part deux is here!