John D-C is a Sydney-based graphic artist, print maker and toy customizer. His exhibition, Haunted House Rock, showing between November 19 and December 14 at Sweets Workshop Shop in Summer Hill, is a hideously, abominable creation, monstrously mashing two of the artist’s favorite subjects: The Monsters of Popular Culture and The Golden Age of Rock and Roll. The exhibition features limited edition giclée prints and posters, gocco prints, and customised toys.

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Iron Man, Wonder Woman, the X-Men, Doctor Who and Frodo never looked so cute! These soft, adorable, and delightfully geeky ‘amigurumi’ (Japanese miniature knit dolls) created by Lady Lindsay make a sweet gift for the comic fan or movie buff in your world, even if that person is you. Or me — I’ll take Batman and The Joker for the win.

The original New York porthole into Japanese Kyju and vinyl toy culture, Toy Tokyo is back with a new East Village storefront showcase for cutting-edge designer sculpture. Along with other luminaries such as Kid Robot, Toy Tokyo has filled the void between the comic book shop and the art gallery with some of the most intriguingly beautiful and affordable art ever created.

Argentinian photographer, Marker, has created a captivating photo series chronicling the (less than) Secret Life of Toys, all those mischievous things they get up to when our backs are turned.

The impending release of the Clash of the Titans remake should spark people’s interest in these amazing action figures based on the 1981 original. Anyone who owns the Kraken, the showpiece of the collection, must be pretty stoked right now.

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I can’t wait until artists like Sacramento-based Skinner are commissioned to design candy packaging or toys or children’s bed sheets. As gruesome and completely insane as some of his images are, I would have stared at them for hours when I was ten. Hell, I’m staring at them for hours now.

Harma Heikens makes disturbing, perverted mash-ups of children’s toys, dolls, and figurines — all life-sized for extra creepiness

There’s some fun, environmentally friendly toys and cards on the Hoopla website, a new gift company based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. They get most of their goodies produced in New England and always use recycled and reusable materials. We asked co-founder Hannah Lavon to tell us about the philosophy behind the business: ‘Our mission is simply to enjoy the fun-ner things in life. We make products that you just can’t help but laugh at — and with. We strive to make even the grumpiest old grump show us those teeth. Or at least those gums. Or dentures. Dentures are definitely funner. Lots of fizzing water glasses and they double as castanets. Light bulb! We feel a new product line coming on …’

When it comes to toys, these guys really know what they’re doing. Playsam is one of my favorite toy companies. They’re based in Sweden and they make extremely polished, minimal toys for children. Their designs are classic and extremely expensive, but well worth it. When I have kids, I’ll spoil them with these.

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It’s a fight: Mr Bacon vs Mr Tofu. Who will remain at the top of the foodchain? If you’re a toy freak, this will go nicely on the desk alongside your Berbrick, Kaws and Macbook Pro. Yup, it’s never too early to start planning Christmas gifts.

Thank god for Lego. Without it, my attempts these days to do the most basic of DIY would cause the whole house to come crashing down. It is – both literally and metaphorically – the building block of childhood. And it’s still fun, especially when you see it being put to new uses. Like a great cover of a legendary song, this clip only adds to the original sketch. British comedian Eddie Izzard is waxing lyrical about Darth Vadar, and someone with a lot of time on their hands has ‘acted’ it out. Simple, and hilarious.

We asked Sean Kelly, the Melbourne-based creative force behind the artistic Bucket ‘o’ Thought website, where he takes his inspiration from: ‘The great big mess that is Human Culture. I’m currently reading The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer, as well as In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos. I’ve been watching Big Lebowski, Lost Highway and Drunken Master — which I rate highly, and exploring the Transmetropolitan comic books’.

Kikkerland, the company behind those campfire tea light holders, has a line of amazing snap-together anatomic models of beetles, frogs, moths, cows, humans, and a wide range of other animals, even a wooly mammoth. Where the hell were these when I was a kid?

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Kikkerland, the company behind those campfire tea light holders, has a line of amazing snap-together anatomic models of beetles, frogs, moths, cows, humans, and a wide range of other animals, even a wooly mammoth. Where the hell were these when I was a kid?

I love the nostalgic overtones in Peter Drake’s artwork. His new series is based on a collection of lead soldiers his father assembled over the years. ‘I was surprised when I inherited them to see how many depicted Arab and North African soldiers. There were Zouaves, Saracenes, Mamaluks and Ottoman Turks. It struck me as strange that we had been demonizing certain cultures forever. That even in child’s play the exotic could take on a menacing and evil aspect and that so much animosity could be embedded in a child’s toy’.

LA-based renaissance man David Choe draws from toy culture and comics as much as he does from Japanese painting and conceptual high art. Choe has a massive body of work, which includes sculptures, installations, murals, paintings, photographs, and graphic novels. Legend has it that his first exhibition at an ice cream shop stayed up two years longer than originally planned because his pieces sold faster than the ice cream itself.

Munny creator APW@HY is a member of the New York-based APW Art group: ‘My ideas are generally based around feelings and imagination’. [see also Bigfoot]

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