SMASH TOKYO TOYS

I love the markets

2012-02-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

So....five years ago I sold all my BIG robots to a friend of mine for a STUPID price and it hurt a lot. We were desperate...we were moving from a small town back to the big city, we'd just lost a baby...things were bad.
Here's how much it hurt:
Boxed Shogun Gaiking mint
UniFive Garada Green
Unifive Grand Mazinga
All USA Shoguns
All Jumbo Zords (ALL including rare 2ft wingspan one)
All USA and Japanese released Zords complete inc Japanese base zord and battleship zord.
Bunch of booty Jumbos
FOR $500 BUCKS!!!!!
It hurt bad because today those toys combined are worth about $4500+.

BEST stupor robot ever! I paid $130 to get one of these shipped to Australia years ago and it was banged up. This one is beautiful...he even has his rubber parts. Since he wasn't released in OZ, pretty good score.

There's that feeling you have when you're a toy collector sometimes....
When you have to get rid of a toy you REEEEEAAALLLLY don't want to lose because you love it and years later you find another...cheap.
Recently I rebought a Uni-five Garada for $40 boxed off ebay because the store had put it up on ebay as "BIG ROBOT" and just recently I found another of this beauty at the markets....
The biggest...most awesome....building robot ever made:
PYRAMIDUS.
So big he has "Not to be used as a foot stool" on his feet. Remember that scene from BIG where he says "Well...it's just a robot...it transforms into a building..." That's this! It transforms into a pyramid...with arms! WTF!!!!
The lady gave him to me for $35 and it still has an undamaged rubber chest piece and as a super bonus when I got home and opened him up (because he was heavy) he had one of these guys jammed in him.

Worst robot ever!

I LOVE THE MARKETS! Difficult with all the competition at the markets these days but some days there's that one jackpot. I'll never be able to make a giant robot toy (that's the dream) but if I ever did it would be a giant crazy robot like this....and also, in the dream, some other company fronts the money.

How we do it

2012-02-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

The artist takes my designs, sends me pencil versions which I go over, change up anything that needs to be changed, write notes all over it....send it back....we talk some more....then the sculptors in Japan will tell me if it's possible. I hope so....it's a year coming with more setbacks than you can shake a cat at.

LOW TECH, MOFOS!
No art benches, t-squares, graphic pens or high tech programs that digitalise or straighten up our lines or turn pencil into ink here!
Just a guy in a huge chair in his undies with a laptop and a nikko working with guys on the other side of the world. Hard work.

Some New Toy Sketches

2012-02-11T21:29:00.000-08:00

So, when I did the Seismic Ace I didn't really know what I was doing. I used the wrong company to make it, terrible distributor, the worst plastic type...everything.

What I wanted to do but didn't know enough at the time was to do a toyline of robots with interchangeable heads and bodies.

Now I can do that...I've learned my lessons, now I can make the toys I wanted to make 3 years ago, the style I wanted to make them, the colors I want and the size I want. I just had to go somewhere closer.

This has "BOOM" in kanji on the backpack in the finished version

Here are some of the very early sketches we are working on.

Best of all, my mascot robots, Seismic Ace, now SEISMIC KING and Centurion K16 have the same body so I can have two awesome robots made in one and with 8 heads being made...weeeellll, that's 8 different robots all on the OG body...I'll let you work out what that means for the Smash Tokyo roster of toys....especially since there are 4 bodies being made.

The Atomic Beartank Qee is not making me as much money as I thought it would. Our fans are perplexed and have ALWAYS clamored for the upright version we copyrighted back in 2009....so here it is with Gauss arms.

He has "Turbo" in kanji on his back in the updated version.

This body is still a work in progress...I asked our amazing artist to give him a "Creature" arm...I meant a "Creature From The Black Lagoon" arm and mechanical. Obviouly my fault and sometimes happens when working over the internet and assuming that everyone knows what you are talking about! He will have two mace arms, shorter and with bigger maces. His gear chest here is sunken but it will be external on the finished one, more basic. There are pics of some of the heads in the next post where I am inking some of the pics. These will be made at 4" scale with two parts.

One of my favourite sets of toys are the M1 lucky bag flesh minis and particularly the U-Tom (seen below)

This is about the size, scale and type af mini we are doing, it is "pulled down" so the arms need to go downwards and the plug is in the head. Were we to have our robots with fists up the plug would be in the waist.

I am an unpainted vinyl man so expect the first few pulls to be unpainted vinyl in super vibrant colors.

New Toys 2012- It's ALL Happening.

2012-01-30T02:51:00.000-08:00

Well. ...I thought we were doing one robot toy in Japan this year.
Turns out we are doing a LOT more.

It's harder than I thought just getting started. Especially when you have the cash, you have the ideas and the designs but not the turnarounds to give the sculptor...so FUCK!!!!!

Worse, our sculptors have been very patient with us but there have been SUPER EXTENUATING circumstances at this end that have set us right back which are a bummer...we want to start but we can't...we don't want to piss our Japanese guys off but fear we are.

Ah well, its rolling now.... should be all worth it in the end. This'll be the first time I'm not going it alone...I've taken on a partner who is helping with the character designs which is something new.
We'll see how we go.
More in a month....when we have some designs ready and in at the sculptors!

Since I don't have any pics for this post....how cool are these!?

Factory Shots

2011-12-30T04:58:00.000-08:00

It occured to me these shots aren't up anywhere on this blog...so here they are, the SEISMIC ACE factory shots.

So, this is how the Ace looks as a finished product and in the end, thanks to the Aussie govt giving me 7k for nothing it was free to make so the troubles below aren't really that much of a concern. I've learned what NOT to do and it's all been very valuable.

So, this is the picture they sent me to approve the color for the Ace....strangely enough, after I said "Yes" they went ahead and painted it fucking gold-silver and not copper/bronze like it clearly is here.

One of my favorite pictures

Check out the toy in the foreground...if Ace is nearly ten inch, it must be HUGE. Also, I paid for Ace to be rotocasted, you can see in this photo it clearly wasn't even if you hadn't held one in your hand before.

Getting ready for magnets to be inserted....just chucked on a bench.

I love these bright silver ones in these pics.

Aces final color is "Weird golden shit" which is not the color we sent them from the swatch.

The wax sculpt

Notice he doesn't have any eye holes....the finished product also doesn't have a spherical head which REALLY sucks. In the turnaround he has a perfectly round neck which is something the finished product doesn't have and something we couldn't pick up in photos before production was given the go-ahead. Oh well, I know now he should've been done in Japanese vinyl as a sofubi style toy.

Beartank Buddy

2011-12-27T20:13:00.000-08:00

My wife had this made for me for Xmas....initially we were going to get his gear ears sewed on but now we love his big, stupid dome head.
He looks like a real robot now....just plushy and boofy.

Plush Beartank-No Ears, Big Dome Head. All Cool.

CHRISTMMMAAASSSSSSS

2011-12-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

So, we ordered a truckload of xmas cards at the printers who guaranteed they would be here well before xmas giving customers time to mail them all out in time for xmas.
They arrived at 5pm on Christmas Eve.
BASTARDS!
Ironically, after spending a week in hospital, having none of our presents turn up from overseas on time for xmas, cooking implosions, missing toys, sick kids and numerous other disasters........
I had chosen the appropriate christmas message.

SEISMIC CENTURION APPROACHES

2011-11-15T03:06:00.001-08:00

You have NO IDEA how much I love this.
I have been trying to get the Centurion 'out there' in print media, 3d formats...you name it since my baby died five years ago. The idea for him came about around this terrible time so he's like my family's pet project. We recently lost two golden opportunites to have the Centurion made due to other people's interference so finally seeing the Centurion released into the public looking as good as this is a bit of a dream come true.
So FUCKING WOO!

This rather sterling digital painting was done by brilliant artist Robert Kim who's outstanding robot art can be found here http://roboto-kun.deviantart.com/

Seriously, spread this around. Send it to everyone you know GET MY ROBOT NOTICED.

Australia ALSO has giant comic conventions

2011-11-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

So in America it is fairly well known that conventions like SDCC, New York ComicCon and DragonCon are established as pretty much (some of) the BIGGEST cons in the world (outside of Asia) for cosplay nuts to descend upon.
NOT TRUE.

Let me introduce you to SUPANOVA pop culture festival which is held all over Australia and can pull 30 000 people through it's door in the first hour in it's smallest city. It is held in Brisbane (huge), Melbourne, (Huge), Sydney (MEGA) and Perth (well, it's Perth.)
It's FU**ING NUTS for geeks, freaks, gronks and nerds and if you're into anime, toys, cartoons and tv celebs then this is the place to go.

Hot-cha! Make sure you take a professional camera-guy who is tripping balls like I did.

When it comes to anime/superhero/tv fans in costume...well....if you weren't in costume, you were the minority. I would say 8-in-10 were in costume and most people went to a lot of effort.....although I prefer the screwballs who don't and the people who just don't give a fu** myself. People in $3000 iron man costumes aren't as impressive as guys in a cardboard box with a bucket on their head with "Irun Mun" written in crayon on the chest. (My opinion only)

Metal Iron-Man while good for pulling chicks wasn't as cool as Bucket-on-his-head-Iron-Man (who'd had a few buckets methinks.)

My camera-guy took HUNDREDS OF PHOTOS and we had to put some in the bin because he took some booby shots and some shots of the sky...and the lens cap and what he thought were "giant devil ants" but was really his shoes. So I took what was left and put them into a slide show to show off what Australian cosplay looks like....keep in mind it's shit hot here so some of these people need medals.

Chinese Batman, bald, skinny Superman and big Ms Marvel were favourites for me.

I love this guy!

My cameraman loves these girls.

BEST-COSTUME-EVER Great Sage Equal of Heaven!

We likey.

Remember..hot here in Oz. Also, how does April look so plastic? It was amazing. Also, people immediately assume people in these costumes are blokes.

This guy endured abuse by bubbleheaded teeneage girls for an hour in line for nothing and then got called a loser by some other imbecelic 20+ not in costume and left the line after losing his shit before he killed that kid. Seriously, who goes to a con where EVERYONE is in costume and heckles everyone around them? BIG UPS TO THIS GUY!

Big ups to everyone in the USA who actually recognises this guy.

.

Spankystokes Free Shit from Smash Tokyo

2011-11-08T02:53:00.000-08:00

So every Designercon we give away free stuff through Spankystokes because John is our biggest U.S. supporter and is always doing stuff for us and has for nearly two years now.

So we had a number of spankystokes.com decks made up and our usual line-up of Seismic Ace and Centurion decks to give out.

Looks like they went down a treat. I wasn't sure about the red Centurion deck since I just throw shit together and send it off to the printers but I'd be happy if I was this guy since it turned out pretty good and it's not just hand drawn shit but UV-laser printed/etched, high-quality maple.

"Scccccoooooorrrrrreee!"

Wish I was there dang it, Spanky has THE BEST giveaways each year. Those boards are hot.

"I'm going to hang this shit on my wall!"

Suckpax Series 3- Featuring Mattyboombatty

2011-10-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

So apparently it's really difficult to get into card series (if you hav 0 talent) and good luck being one of the cool kids if you're not in one.

So, I straight up asked Sucklord if he'd give me a shot because no other bludger would and he said yes, so good news for me!

Like he said "The Sucklord does not trifle."

Go buy this, give Sucklord your money.

Funny enough I came through with heaps of time to spare with only one or two small hitches.

30 cards later here we are. My 2 y.o. spilt some water on three of them literally the day I was mailing them including my favourite FREE BEER card so that was BAD MOJO!

These are actually the 'good' ones. I love the space Greedos and the Wanker Trooper

I drew some of these on buses, trains, at work, at parties, with textas, crayons, paint pens, charcoal, cigarette butts, lipstick.....works of art they are not, they are, however, the first chance anyone's given me in 15 years to actually put pen to paper and "art". A lot of them are TERRIBLE but I think that was the point.

* Also if you get one of my **good** art cards I'll buy it off you for ten dollars.

Anyhow, I forgot to even take a pic of what I did aside from this mess which probably won't even make much sense but the eyeball ones move around like a child's pop-up book when you pull some slides on the back and I can't even BEGIN to describe what you do with the booby cards:

The nudey card has pop-out nipples and the eyeballs move on the 'eye' ones. Also, the two-part SPOOKY BOOTY card doesn't have a top part...oops.

I saw this on toysrevil.com which was cool because the usual suspects did amazing bloody cards but at least mine weren't the worst and I can sleep at night knowing that I deliberately didn't try because I thought I wasn't supposed to! Ha! Had I have known I would have spent considerably more time with water paints and not some textas and nikkos.

You can see the whole write up here: http://toysrevil.blogspot.com/2011/10/preview-of-altered-cards-and-sketch.html

and even more on Sucklord over on John Stokes fucking AWESOME blog here which may not have anything to do with the cards but fuck it. Watch it anyway, what else are you doing?

Also, if you watch this you can see my F*ING AWESOME Seismic Ace toy a few times in Sucklord's apartment. Sucklord has done well by me...get ready for Aussie rum at Xmas Sucklord!

Beartank review Spankystokes.com

2011-09-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

So...just in case you missed it, here is John Stokes reviewing the Beartank.

The Seismic Ace reference he refers to is the large drill that runs down the far left panel of the box.

Also, things that are referenced on the box include the "Angel Wings Jet Propulsion" which was actually written on the original toy but was too small to be printed so we had to leave it off but that was after the box art was approved.

The Japanese writing says Kuma Tank (I think) although it could have said "Die Yak Face!" and I would have laughed since I had no idea what it said when we submitted it and I literally asked a Japanese speaking friend today what it says and she said "What would you have done if it DIDN'T say that?"

So here's the video: http://www.spankystokes.com/2011/08/review-smash-tokyo-toys-beartank-qee.html

Some art to fill in time

2011-09-19T03:41:00.000-07:00

Made these HUGE prints off the art for some skateboards. The guy reckons the Skyline one will be "....as big as a minibus man."

I said "In one piece, I seriously doubt that dude!" So we'll see. If it is as big as a van then I'm screwed since it's just me and my wife running the show here and hanging that thing in the lounge room will be **INTERESTING** to say the least.

I love this because it looks animated and yet it's just the Centurion template on a 2-min line drawing....yet you could just see Sybionic Titan, Mazinger or Godzilla come running up and smash him (If wishes were horses.)

This is the 2nd version. Centurion isn't actually red either, he has no existing color scheme.

The NY one was just something stupid and easy...giant robot towering over the Statue of Liberty in Silhouette...another template in front of a line drawing. Quick and easy and looks bloody cool mounted on a skateboard so we'll see how it looks in A1. This one was used to promote my art cards in the new Series 3 Suckpax but there is another, white background, normal one without the Sucklord text.

The actual skatedeck was NOT successful as the Statue was all pixelated. That has been fixed now and is a good reminder to me that I need more work as a digital artist.

SEISMIC ACE BOOTY M.U.S.C.L.E.S

2011-08-30T05:01:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this awesome resin shit! I made the head on that thing dude! It's tiny.

Anyway these are put out by Jon Malmstead at Rampage Toys and are cool as all get out.

I totally stole this image from the most awesome University of M.U.S.C.L.E and a full write up can be found here on their fine page.
Later on ten more rubbery versions were made by Halfbad Toys and THEN sold through Rampage Toys. I bet those ones were cooler than The Fonz. They had different barrel bodies. Jon Malmstead sells those so hit him up for those here http://rampage-toys.blogspot.com/.
Don't forget to order his new Ugly Unicorn kaiju before it sells out either!

New idea for next year

2011-08-30T02:14:00.000-07:00

So, originally called "Stupid Ninja" and sporting a dead ninja on his back I really was interested in doing this in Japan next year in unpainted vinyl as a mini.

I've been carrying around a yellow unpainted S7 Mini Mummy Gator for awhile looking at the size and feel of the vinyl. This toy would be bigger in WxB obviously and would have similar skin as a Anraku GOGA so I like to think it'd make a kick-arse original toy.

The name is not permanent and was put there at the last minute, right now it's not quite a dragon or a lizard so research is needed for a more traditional Kaiju name that doesn't encroach on any other companies.

If it doesn't pan out we also have an offer from a company to do our upright beartank as a "real monsters" series type of sofubi but I would want to rework the sculpt so as not to disappoint fans of the genre.
There's also been some talk with Velocitron about doing the Centurion as a larger, resculpted GoNagai/Bullmark-ish looking toy. Maybe redo SEISMIC ACE the way he should have been done originally.

20/10/20011* Since this post and continued talks with Velocitron We've pretty much decided to do the Centurion and a female pilot tentatively titled "Jumbo V Pilot". Currently looking for an artist to do the turnarounds for the pilot. This turnaround for sale if anyone want it.

More Beartank stuff

2011-08-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

We must've done four colorways before settling on the grey. The grey is actually based on the "War Machine" Iron Man mainly because none of our robot designs except for Ms Shinda have had a color scheme so far, they're all just "silver". Grey/silver is the only thing that seems to fit for my robot ideas. Even my final Ms Shinda concept is B/W.

While I like this I can never use it because I messed up the levels on the writing and without Illustrator can't fix it.

The only time you'll see the Beartank with the first five released Qees in print media outside of SDCC. It was not officially one of this starting line up nor am I one of TOY2Rs "artist series'" artists.

Here is what the concept was and what the finished product is. Don't let anyone say TOY2R can't get it right. It is flawless, I would say the finished product is better than the original design. We had to change one tiny thing which was remove some writing on the back of the jetpack which was too small to be printed.

We also do Skateboards...here.

2011-08-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Buy these here. They are fucking AWESOME for hanging on the wall and skating on the street.

BEARTANK A GO GO

2011-08-20T04:00:00.001-07:00

So here is the artwork for the Beartank. We really struggled for a long time with the color, obviously its very yellow but thats what we decided on and it actually turned out really amazing.

Distributed through DKE toys starting Monday.
It is pretty cool.

Seismic Centurion SOLD OUT like a crazy mofo.

2011-06-04T23:51:00.001-07:00

So...seems these things are kind of cool. I thought the clear glitter would be reeeaaalllll whacky myself but they do have that whole Star Trek transporter effect going on. Obviously, because they are mine, I love them.

The colors released were COSMIC ICE, RADIANT RED, GALACTIC GREEN and HAVEN BLUE at 5" scale. The boys at HALFBAD TOYS did an amazing job.

They'll get to work ASAP on the solid colors so keep an eye out on spankystokes.com for that release. We are also working on our next BFR robot THE BEARTANK based on the upright version we have had up on the net before. As well as some new weapon arms and an incridble new generic body set with SEISMIC ACES head!!!

I'd better get my own set hm?

BEARTANK is ATOMIC

2011-06-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

Oh my god...did you NOT know? I DID put up a picture of a bear AND a tank!!!!

BIG F*KN ROBOTS ARE GO!!!

2011-06-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

So two years back we started a project that never went anywhere..The BIG F*KN ROBOTS project. Essentially it was to create a series of interchangeable robot bodies where the heads, arms and mybe backpacks/rocketpacks could be swapped around. The aim was that they would look like mini 70s Shogun Warriors and have all the goofy attachments that came with those.

Obviously, I thought I was on to something....I had an entire workshop set up...I had the prototypes ready for the basic body with a basic drill head and a "Centurion" head done and had a stupid name and back-story ready then KRACK-A-BOOOM...ten billion tonnes of water shit down though my roof and destroyed all my resin, my god-damn carpenter-made casting blocks, vibration bench and my molds.

So the project got canned...my artist guy left to do comics....I did the SEISMIC ACE instead.

So I found a bunch of guys named HALFBAD TOYS who know what they're doing with resin who actually like money, like MY money, like my ideas and my robots and don't think they're fucking rock stars and we resurrected the damn project.

We started with this guy Seismic Centurion K16 since the toy proto has been on my shelf for two years and he is supposed to be Seismic Aces' WWII Allied nemesis.

They'll do me a clear set with glitter and they can do the solids...then we'll do some weapon arms maybe based of our old designs. We've discussed more arty-crazy arms like ghost-arms, dog-arms, mutant bee arms etc as well as the regular mace arms and drill arms.

We have some awesome heads lined up....we want to do Beartank with a Beartank body, Seismic King, Trojan Hoss...a ROM tribute head...and we have a VERY special body lined up that will blow some minds!

MORE new toy teasers

2011-03-31T04:51:00.000-07:00

Hmmmmmm a tank and a devil Mickey Mouse..........I wonder what this could be. (This black and red teaser...for those in the know...was done by Scumonkey. Smash Tokyo ONLY does goofy looking Giant Robots/Monsters....Maybe it's MICKEYZILLA???? How cool would that be? THAT's cross-company/genre toy wishful thinking.

New toy teaser

2011-03-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

What can I say? As far as famous (mostly giant) robots/monsters/giant folk tale humans go they're just not big enough or angry enough to beat this guy...he SMASHES TOKYO! He once punched McGuyver in the balls!

Stuff We do .

2011-03-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

A lot of stuff in the works

I like working with guys over at the octobertoys.com forum and including them in Smash Tokyos 2011 developments. Right now, in particular I am working with Ralph Niese, Monsterforge and ScumMonkey on some promotional and "other" projects. Monsterforge is helping me with some stuff for the Super Sucklord that I got stuck on towards the end of the project so that is exciting for both of us since you have to be an ASSHOLE not to like the Sucklord. Above is some sketches by RALPH (Ralph Niese) of the new Seismic Cindy and the sculpts of the head we're doing. The crappy one I did as a joke a few months ago didn't go down well..even as a joke.

We want stickers. Obviously the Seismic Ace has fizzled as a toy. "Resin Sucks" is pretty much instilled in the hearts of most toy collectors and perpetuated everywhere by the big names and big companies. However...I still love the ACE and he is still our company mascot and as a big name designer pointed out to me:

"You know what? Everybody recognises your toy so even though it's not a big seller it's still probably the most recognised robot design in the designer toy world from 2010. " (aside from 3A of course). While this is obviously not true it made me feel good.

This image of Ace drilling through Godzilla is a rough sketch of what RALPH has created to stick on one of Sticky Ricks 2cmX2cm 1000 run stickers.

I can't wait to see the finished run.
We give this shit away free! So keep your eyes peeled.
Originally Ace had a backstory that he had five young teenage pilots and on their first mission a "Necra Missile" hit the Ace and because Giant Super Robots NEVER have seatbelts they all got slammed into the back wall of the cockpits and ever since Ace has always had these dead pilots inside him just rotting away. He then became self aware and has been fighting alone ever since.

Had the Ace been a bigger success these dead pilots were the next toy to be released (picture power rangers style pilots or late 70s manga pilots with skulls in their helmets.)

This was a SOLID GOLD idea too. We WERE going to do resin ones but that never happened.
Now Ace has one pilot. She's not sexy, nor does she have big boobs. She is not a walking, talking comic cliche. This sketch is part of a skate deck we're working on. You'll see this below, this is actually a "further development" to the one below. Once this is cleaned up the star on his chest will be red and I think we may give her a spray can as though she's just sprayed the star on and then we'll just stick it on a deck. Eventually we'll do these decks in bulk so they can be sold cheaper.

Also by RALPH.
So when we started Seismic Ace was one of five toys I wanted to do in vinyl. To do the Ace in vinyl at 10" would have cost US$17 000 or 17k (remember that as it will pop up a lot in SMASH TOKYO's future.) Obviously we didn't have that and did it in resin. (BIG mistake...HOOOGE!)

Now there is a small chance these toys may live again next year if I can convince some slackers that THIS is where it's at. You like M.U.S.C.L.Es? Would you buy SEISMIC ACE, THE CENTURION, CHAINSAW SIMIAN, TROJAN HOSS and SEISMIC KING as M.U.S.C.L.E sized mini figures?

What if they looked like these sketches by RALPH?

I like skate decks. I made this. You can get it here.
It's basically wall art for deck collectors. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes but until this comes out (see below) I can't really show off any of the stuff Scumonkey has for us.

My Art Is Good- Surprise.

2011-01-04T02:50:00.001-08:00

So.....

Waaaaay back when Seismic Ace first came out I was given a HUGE opportunity to get some pictures published and had they BEEN published maybe things would be different and more people would know about my toy internationally.

They weren't.

They've sat in my hardrive for seven months while I waited with baited breath, praying and hoping they might get published because we BUSTED OUR BUTTS getting them done on time. Ah, it's my own fault for believing in people...and fairies...and people.

So here they are.

These are pics we did with FANTASTIC UK artist Kim Roberts from http://kimsbrainjunk.com/ with Kris Smiths' original RUNNING ACE added because it's so good. You should check out Kim's work. She has a unique style and she did all this for us off her own back.

The Unbeatable Beartank X16

Running Ace - GO

Spot the Mistakes - Just for fun. It's stoopy. I know. Don't hate me. Also...it was made to destroy your brain.

Gojirra VS Ace - It'll grow on you...because it's cccccrrraaazzzyyyy.

Sumo - based off a famous painting.

1000 Years - There's a toy proto of this head. It's as big as your hand.

What do you think? Bet you didn't know I could "art".
If you want these to color-in I have them A4 print size full bleed free to print just hit me up on facebook.

Norris in NOT Invincible

2010-11-17T00:17:00.000-08:00

Do you LOVE Godzilla? Do you love RETRO GAMING? How about CHUCK NORRIS? How do you feel about that guy?

If these things are your bag then this is the shirt for you!

However, I really need you to do us a solid and got vote for it....I came up with the idea and got my awesome mate Derrin (Mekazoo) to do it up for me. If we get this through I will def give a heap away using the $500 voucher to our fans through spankystokes.com

Please do Smash Tokyo a favour and go vote at the link below and send the link out to your friends on facebook and email! Woo!

Norris in NOT Invincible

BEARTANK Concept

2010-10-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

Bryan Wilkinson sent out his idea for an ATOMIC BEARTANK design.

He made the feet into treads to emphasize the "tank" part but also kept them mirroring the gear shape from the ears intentionally. The overall influences are Go Nagai's 70's robots (Boss Borot, Getter-Robo) with some Microman/Micronauts and some early 80's mechs (Gundam's Z'gok, Zaku, Gun Cannon, Mospeada/Robotech's Invid). He went for a stockier, more bear-like build in contrast to the lithe form already found in Seismic Ace.

Although we may have found a new way of doing the ACE we love Bryan's AWESOME design and encourage you to check out his site.

You can catch more of Bryan's awesome gear over at http://bryanwilkinson.rockettubes.net/

He also has a blog here: http://rockettubes.livejournal.com/

It's funny, people talk to me all the time, send me things and half the time I have no idea who I'm talking to until much later on....I need to pay more attention to the toy community which is often hard when I'm in Australia and I know there is this "toy family/clique" thing going on in the U.S. which is why all the AU designers have all moved to the U.S.....not happening for me.

You can see from looking at Bryan's site that he's a top desgner who's probably worked on some toys you have in your house right now. I'm humbled that he had a go at working on the BEARTANK. I hope I get a chance to work with him in the future.

Also...INVADER ZIM...HOLY SHIT Bry...I love that series and I think I own all the Micronaughts you worked on! Wow.

RESIN HATE

2010-10-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

So obviously I'm an advocate for resin toys and things always get heated on forums when the old argument comes up that RESIN IS THE DEVIL.

Sometimes I argue both sides...

Today I was doing the "I wouldn't pay THAT much for a resin toy that size because that's just crazy." Then I launched into my "Resin is good" speech which looks like this:

"**if this was vinyl I would definitely buy it**....I hear that all the time about the ACE and I follow it up with "If it's a good design why does it matter what it's made of?" The tired old excuse of "I might drop it." is sad because...well...how impaired are you that you drop every toy you handle?

I haven't dropped a toy since I was 3. How many toys have you dropped lately?

Clear resin is a total shit to break.

My vinyl MEDUSA came snapped IN BOX. Vinyl does break! I bought a set of those Oban Star Racer girl figures and 3 of their arms fell off as they emerged from the box! All vinyl and brand new.

The paint rubs off vinyl if you accidently rub two vinyl toys of the same type together...not even vigorously. Place Mighty muggs, big dunnys, Trexies etc on a shelf touching and then jostle the shelf and each one will paint rub onto the one next to it and you'll think they have tiny crayon marks all over them. Resin hate is just a weird trend that someone started and it caught on and became toy industry lore. Now, like any other unspoken rule that people adhere to for no good reason one day resin will become super cool again for a short time...like denim on denim.

What people don't realise is EVERYONE is doing resin...Paul Kaiju, Bwana Spoons, Sucklord....these guys are FUCKING AWESOME big resin sellers!

The people we'll hate on who are actually buying our toys are all trying to make toys using resin. WE make toys out of resin. Always complaining about resin toys and then making toys out of resin sorta makes us look like dicks...

Thousands of people buy Maquettes and mini statues everyday and then say "Resin, fuck that!" while surrounding themselves in statues made of the stuff.

Same thing people.

My art toy is the same as your Yoda/Optimus Prime Statue statue....except when you drop it he doesn't explode.

Look, you are your own person. Don't listen to me, or them.

If you like it, buy it. Who cares what people you don't know think...they don't live in your house.

World's laziest blogger

2010-10-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

OK...I'm the worlds laziest.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....you know the rest.
Nothing much happening.
It's the waiting game.
Have a big contract to sign...probably the most important thing of my toy-game life but the heavy hitter I'm working with who I'm co-signing with is away right now.

Waiting....waiting......I literally have no fingernails left.

Anyone currently trying to crack the toy scene knows EXACTLY where I am right now. It's HELL.

However, I do have this. Whenever there's a big con I try to have a lot of freebies to give away.

I have A LOT of free shit for DESIGNER CON.

Apparently when I sent all my stuff to APEX I sent it in THE WORST BOX EVER and customs/ Australia Post and every other post office in the world kicked the living bejusus out of it. Decapitated the Seismic Sally and The Son of Ace I sent.

Hopefully they'll be fully repaired by the big day...they should be all systems repairs online.

DESIGNER CON HARDCORE

2010-09-30T02:03:00.000-07:00

John Spanky Stokes will be giving out three of these during the day made by awesome customiser MONSTERFORGE and myself using Garcia's awesome Jumping Brains. Probably one of the best new mini vinyls for years (dare I say iconic?).

I must admit they were mainly done by MONSTERFORGE and he's done an amazing job (I do the plastic heads and organise the lego bodies off the net.)

There are so many hidden talents on the net that I think get passed over and I really like to give them a chance to get their gear out there when I can...if I can. Not that Monsterforge needs any help from me....

MONSTERFORGE can often be found on the TOY BREAK forums and will probably make you one of these if you ask him nicely and give him US$55.

Believe me...it's worth it.

And make sure you ask John Stokes for one of these....there are at least 30 of these up for grabs. Little SEISMIC KART guys...apparently they're not bad.

QEEEEEEEEEEE

2010-09-04T22:54:00.001-07:00

I've been a big fan of TOY2R for many years now. I work with disabled kids and we make custom 8" Qees...they're not good ones but we do them. I also collect 8" Qees and I love everything TOY2R does..I study the designs, pore over their sites...love it.

So you can imagine my absolute delight when this happened:

Of course you'd be surprised that most of the world, including my friends have never heard of MATTYBOOMBATTY...maybe this might help change that. There's a lot of stories associated with this particular Qee design but they'll have to wait until it comes out.

Big thanks to TOY2R for this amazing opportunity. This is something I have wanted for a VERY long time with the very company I admire the most. I can only hope I get more opportunities to work with you again in the future.

Woo.

WHERE TO BUY SEISMIC ACE

2010-08-31T23:54:00.000-07:00

This link take you to an excellent store that sell the SEISMIC ACE for only $49.95 and is SMASH TOKYO TOYS favorite store to buy stuff and we live in Australia! Click to travel directly there. Don't know if you really want one? Watch this...it will convince you since John Stokes from spankystokes.com is largely regarded as 'the shit' when it comes to the top names in vinyl toy sites on the net in the world today: http://www.spankystokes.com/2010/08/review-smash-tokyo-toys-seismic-ace.html

Soon to be available through DKE toys for retailers.

Especially for Krakit - Art and designs to help win free stuff over on the forums. Just kidding Krakit!

2010-08-30T01:56:00.000-07:00

Hokay, Our artist from the beginning is a top Canadian talent called Kris Smith http://deathwind13.deviantart.com/ (check his shit out and friend him on facebook!) who has a pretty unique animated style that caught my eye over at Deviant Art.
One of the first things he ever did for us was a pic of a drill headed robot that was adapted recently into RAYOLA for Color Ink Book with awesome UK artist Kim Roberts (below)http://www.kimsbrainjunk.com/

Kris originally did this design for GALBOT TOYS and when they got arsed I snapped it up because I love it. I bought it, I OWN it, it's called Atomic Ms Shinda and you should watch out for it because I REALLY like it and there's another big artist who also likes it a lot and it's come a long way since this hand drawn sketch from 2009.

Some of our original head designs....recognise any of those? Seismic Aces proto head was chosen from these. Just think he could have been Dragon Master head.

This is what Seismic Ace was going to look like....you know what, I have this exact toy and it's really cool like this. If I get the chance in the future I will release this in vinyl in 5" scale because it is smoother and is easier to customise. I wish now we had've stuck with this or the Centurion below.

The "Centurion" is Seismic Ace's brother and was essentially an alternative head for the Bohrer K16 (his original name). THIS is my FAVORITE design out of all our toys. I love Jumbo Machinders and I asked Kris to give me a head that was a cross between Shogun Dragun and Joe Pi from Top Ten and this is what we got. I have a plastic 5" for this and you'd think it was factory made...it fucking rocks. I'd love for another company to approach me on this because I'm working on some other projects but ah...pipe dreams.

Our final design head for Chainsaw Simian. Not done as a design template...yet.

(above) Chainsaw Simian's original head looked too much like Optimus Primal so we replaced it with the other head above this one and that big frikkin' chainsaw. You can see all the bodies we have waiting to go below.

Here you can see that the Beartank doesn't have his chest cannon and doesn't really look like our 3d models...he sure as hell isn't going to look like the vinyl toy....oh shit...did I type that?

Stuff we're working on

2010-08-22T03:41:00.000-07:00

I made these with a group of severely impaired children because I was kinda tired of watching them doing boring art so we've started doing molding/casting/painting and we made these hand-over-hand which was awesome and these were actually the crappy ones. The kids made some awesome clear lollypop ones that were genius. These were freebies for spankystokes.com at SDCC. The kids and I have also done a lot of 8" Qee Customs. Like me they love them some TOY2R....also like me they're crappy at customs! Our stuff are up on the TOY2RUSA website. We like dots and spraypaint.

(Below) are the first look at our Designer Con 2010 Spankystokes.com giveaways....Seismic Ace 3" scale heads that come blindbagged with lego bodies. You won't know what you will get.

(Below) is a badly blurry pictured first look at the SEISMIC SALLY 12" custom doll minus most of her accessories. She actually has a pink head and each type of Sally will come with weapons and accessories that match her head colour. I don't know how she will be accepted by collectors but I'm liking her freakishness because she has big boobs and nuts accessories like the design chair and Seismic Ace "Steal this shit" blueprint.

(below) Hmmmm....that's just disgusting.

(below) ART PRINTS - SEISMIC SMASH by Kris Smith. This was a giveaway over on the Toy Break forums. I have more of these to give away over there in the future.

This is not happening!

2010-08-22T03:21:00.000-07:00

So we announced earlier this year that this was happenining in 2011 with Jon Paul Kaiser. Obviously, both Jon and i were very keen on the 99 Red Ace design since we thought it was something new and different for the toy scene.

Then some dick said we'd ripped this off.

Obviously, JPK doesn't need to rip Banksy off and the design is in fact a coincidence. The 99 RED is actually related to the song 99 RED LUFT BALLOONS and is suppossed to represent the little girl who started world war 3 but somehow a shitload of people have decided that it's a direct rip off of Banksy's work which just amazes me. So we will be working on another project together instead. Jon and I are very happy to work together on certain designs that can/may help each other in the future and would in no way want to copy another artists work and any similarities were entirely hysterical.

Seismic Ace - Still Out

2010-08-22T02:32:00.000-07:00

Seismic Ace has now been available at Tenacious Toys (http://www.tenacioustoys.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=seismic+ace) and Neon Monster (http://neonmonster.com/NeonMonster/store/search.w?query=seismic+ace) since June and has been selling well.
Seismic Ace is a 9 inch "metal" robot made to be DIY in a wacky gold/silver shade. While made of resin he is very solid and has been quite popular with resin collectors.
Available through Apex Trading Company Seismic Ace is very limited to 450 pieces.
Feel free to join us on facebook (smashtokyotoys) for all of our crazy toy designs and upcoming projects with other companies.