UGLYCON TOKYO 10/10/08

Even more info for you.
Makes it all seem like such a
big deal, but the best part isn't
going to be from us! Can't wait.
Anyhow, the doors open Oct 10
at 11am. International Email orders begin
Oct 14th (Japan time) at 11am.
This is the URL where each
item will be posted for sale:
http://stctokyo.exblog.jp/
Note: 11am on the 14th
Japan time, is end of the day
on the 13th USA time.
Sorry, they can't take phone orders.


If you see an item/art you
wish to purchase, send your request to:
info@stitch.jp
The STITCH staff will
reply with availability info
and a payment request.
Sorry to make this post all about
buying stuff, but our email
inbox contains many questions
about this very thing.
This is a good link to check out too:
http://www.stitch.jp/top/index.html

UGLYCON TOKYO UPDATE

SUPER PUNCHER LIVES AGAIN! For the first time.
Here's a test shot of the Uglycon Tokyo version
of Super Puncher Pocket Kaiju by Gargamel.
This is the "Yokai" version. The Lonely Otaku
returns from the grave and begins to take form.


You can turn his head around 180 degrees
to transform the Lonely Otaku (above) into
Super Puncher. Action feature!


I haven't been this excited since our daughter
first said "Gamera".


This version will be exclusive to the
Uglycon Tokyo show and not made
available anywhere else.
More photos and info asap.


UGLYCON UPDATE: EMAIL, NO PHONE ORDERS


OK I added the info above.

PLAY TIME

When we open toys at the office, no matter
how cool, the honest truth is we end up
touching them only when it's time to dust.
But not this time. This time I'm pressing
buttons every 3 seconds. THIS THING
is RAD. Dai Shogun. I guess once I
saw the above photos, my Muteki
Shogun obsession kicked in and
I fell in love. I can't recommend
this enough. If you're not in Japan,
CS toys has him at a very good price.
HERE


Check out my crappy youtube video with
the sound demo.

SAFE!

I guess I confused everyone. Now people are
confusing things one step further. These
Ugly action figures are indeed on the way
and soon. And they pass safety requirements
with flying colors.
As for as toys go, we actually have 2x as many
toys on the way as we did last year. A lot
less expensive, but 2x as many. Safe ones!
That said do check out the show at Double Punch
coming up in a few days! Free on the opening day!

UGLYCON TOKYO IN 2 WEEKS

UGLYCON TOKYO opens in 2 weeks!
We're really excited. Just saw test shot
photos of the Gargamel x Sun-Min +
me Super Puncher pocket Kaiju and will post
images soon after they do. That version
will be 100% exclusive to Uglycon.
Lots of art to Fedex out to Japan this week.
Oh man. We hope all who show up will
enjoy themselves. Sun-Min's paintings
are my favorite, and really looking forward
to seeing UGLY works by Gargamel, Dehara,
Touma, Mori Chack, T9G, Devilrobots,
Mad Marbarians, Nao Wrecks, and the
other super talented guest we'll be
featuring. More info asap.


If you are in Japan, here's the info.
English on the way.

GOIN' BACK TO 8-BIT

Mega Man 9 for the WII is incredible.
It's a $10.00 download.
100% 8-bit, all new old school.
Just as difficult as the old ones
used to be. I'm way too old to
get past any level beyond the
first easier one, but exploding
was ever this much fun and
I can listen to this music all day.

(NOT) GOIN' BACK 2 CALI

“California courts have held that …
parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,”
Justice H. Walter Croskey said.
“A primary purpose of the educational system
is to train school children in good citizenship,
patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation,”
Croskey wrote.
The decision leaves the parents of homeschooled children
at risk of arrest and criminal prosecution.
READ IT HERE.
How did the Randy Newman song go again?


In a completely unrelated subject, what are you
going as for Halloween?

FORCE IT

Picked up the Korean version of the
Force Unleashed, which is just the
US version in Korean packaging.
Surprise all here in Seoul who can't
read English. Still, not as bad as
the Korean version of Final Fantasy
which, once opened, reveals itself
to be 100% Japanese text.
And we're talking 80 hours of
reading, minimum. Surprise!


I think Star Wars was all about the
law of attraction. If you focus on
something, it comes to you.
Qui Gon told Anakin that "your
focus determines your reality."
And C-3PO was always afraid, so
all the scary stuff happened to him.
See? So smarty.
But do I like the game?
I want a Grant Theft Auto version of
Indiana Jones, real bad.
You can't do this to me,
I'm an American!!!!

DAI SHOGUN

Daishogun and this GT guy showed up
today, just released in Japan on Friday.
The GT guy is OK. Kind of a remake of
Tackle boy? But the Dai Shogun is
great! It's basically a repaint of
the Go-Onger robo with a few new pieces,
including a new beak for the bird car,
a new head piece, a face piece for the
bus, and a Samurai sword to clip
on the back.


Dope fresh!
So will these be brought over to the US?
We'll know in a few weeks!
What about the new safety laws?


These are still my favorite.
Here's our yellowing small
versions of Muteki Shogun,
1994.


Hey and not to sound alarmist, but did you
read the new toy safety laws? We love them all,
and it's about time. But how will most designer toys
continue? This even affects imports brought
into the US. It even affects COLORWAYS!
Yep. Now every time we make a new color
of the same toy, plush or not, we have to retest
and much, much more.
Even if we make 50 of them. It's no joke.
From what I understand, courts aren't going to listen to
"but these aren't for kids." either and it looks like
simply putting "ages 15 and up" on a box is now out the window.
Or so it would seem.
What about the 12 inch Star Wars toys?
Those are for adults! So something isn't right.
Most important, toys need to be safe for kids.
That's all that matters.
Any thoughts?

SUN-MIN AND DAVID THINGS

WHAT DAT? You'll see!
double punch Presents
Sun-Min+David THINGS @ double punch gallery
October 2-November 2
Reception: October 2, Thursday, 6-10pm
1821 Powell Street, San Francisco, CA 94133
415.399.9785 http://www.doublepunch.com
SAN FRANCISCO – September 18, 2008 –
Monsters, eyeballs, eyelashes,
pink tongues and bossy bears will scare
the hell out of San Francisco and
charm it with complete ugliness and cuteness.
Ugly Doll and Bossy Bear founders David Horvath and
Sun Min Kim will be celebrated at the double
punch gallery by presenting some “things” from their
collection of work from 2001 to 2008.
This captures the best of what they made in the past
7 years of their collaboration as toy designers.
The selection includes collectibles such as Kaiju, Noupa,
Uglydoll vinyls, Choco and Minty, Bossy Bear and Spider Boom.
Warning: some of the pieces are long sold out
and very rare. We can't go but please do stop by to check it out!
Very limited number of prints will be there.

JAPAN

This just in. Bossy Bear book 1 will
be printed in Japanese and released
in Japan this November. Now you
too can corrupt your child's mind.
Or free it? Not sure. Why Super Famicom?
We have a piece in a show coming
up at Giant Robot SF on Oct 11th.
The show has a video game theme.
Yes indeed! Super Famicom
was THE game system for me.
That and the core PC engine
in white, with no add ons or
FM Towns Marty shuttle nonsense.
Our contribution will include a
full color print (edition of 1)
and it's original ink drawing
counterpart.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK

Down with banning books!
Click on this link to read more about
banned books.
THIS IS THE LINK
Big thank you to
Chip Gibson, the president of Random House,
for standing up for our rights, and for not
editing out the UFO cover-up content from the
Ugly Guides! Go Chip! Go Chip!
Eh, but the Random House logo
looks kinda a little like the
Illuminati triangle, so they need to
work on that one.
No no. Ok ok.


Quote:
Censorship—the suppression of ideas or other information that a portion of the population finds objectionable—is an abrogation of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It is this amendment that guarantees us the right to free speech, and by extension, freedom to read. When censorship is applied to what our children read, even for what appears to be the noblest of motives, we teach the young a far more harmful lesson than any work of literature ever could. We teach that the few can disrupt the rights of all. We teach our children that they are not capable of learning to think for themselves, to make considered and thought-out decisions. We teach that conformity is worth more than true learning.

LAND OF THE FREE

Free stickers! Want some free
stickers from Bossy Bear 2?
Email your name and an address
(no PO boxes) to: UGLYDOLLS@ME.COM
by Friday Sept. 19th , 12 noon Pacific time.
USA addresses only, sorry about that.
Disney will send a sticker sheet
out to you. After the dealine passes,
there's nothing I can do as I am
not actually handling this promo
at all. Also, the sticker sheet is
a post card, so it may show up
totally mangled. So if you want,
send your work and home
address to get 2. Just make
sure the names are different,
as it's one per address/per person.

MUST PUT "FREE STICKERS" in
EMAIL TOPIC HEADING AREA to ensure
your request gets forwarded to
Disney.

Lots of rules for stickers, huh!

GARGAMEL X SUN-MIN + DAVID

SUPER PUNCHER by GARGAMEL
Super Puncher 1994 style super robot monster yokai!
We are very happy to announce our
collaboration project with our
favorite figure makers, GARGAMEL.
This pocket kaiju will be released at
Uglycon Tokyo on October 10th.
Lonely Otaku collected too many used
Super Puncher Robot toys. He made weekly
trips to Akihabara and bought at least one
used Super Puncher robot toy on each visit!
This was unhealthy, so he died.
He came back as Super Puncher Yokai
Robot ghost!
Now he can't buy anything.

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR LARGER SIZE POSTER
We can't tell you how excited we are for this one.
This captures the very essence of why we
love toys, and why we love doing what we do.
Gargamel is freakin rad, and they are our
heroes. We hope you enjoy Super Puncher!
Check out Koji Harmon's blog HERE
and the Gargamel blog HERE
It's an honor.


The lonely Otaku.
He can live on ramen.
No problem, right?


Super Puncher DX was released in 1994
by the largest toy company in the world.
He was the most awesome robot toy
on the planet, and if you had one of
these, you were THE kid on the block.
And almost every kid on every block
had one. Some kids even had two.


But what happened to the kids who
couldn't have one?


What became of them?


Where are they today?...


...you'll see.

MUTEKI SHOGUN CARRIER

OK, can anyone out there translate these?
Muteki Shogun is our favorite consumer
product of all time. We have many of him
and will bring home many more.
It's just beautiful.
But we always wondered
why the Kakuranger series didn't have a
giant final robot at the end of the toy run
as most sentai toy lines do.


Aha! It looks like one was planned!
And it was the wind illusion castle!
Ahhhh! So what does the above say?


It even fits Muteki Shogun inside.
So sad.
BAN DAI! If you ever give
Muteki Shogun the Soul of Chogokin
treatment, please give him a wind castle
carrier case like this. If you don't,
someone may make a boot leg of this
based on the blue prints. Who?
I dunno. Whistle.


This is also odd.
We have 4 Gunmazins from Ohranger
and we finally decided to open them
just to take a peak.
One of them has a different head.
So this must explain why?
Aaaahhh!
EDIT: The awesome YUUKI has answered our questions!
He's the guy in those ninja attack photos from a
few months ago. Thanks Yuuki!

GARGAMEL

Woah, 2 boxes from the Gargamel guys
in one week. It's like Xmas twice a year.
We're very happy to have them contribute
to Uglycon Tokyo. These are the most
beautiful inanimate objects
we have ever seen. It's going
to be that much harder to get
work done with all these toys
around the office, but maybe not as
we are inspired and draw creative
energy from pure genius like this.
Beautiful. So happy these exist.
Here's their web site:
http://www.gargamel.jp/

UGLYCON GUEST STARS

UGLYCON TOKYO is coming up soon.
October 10, 2008 at STITCH
We were going to wait on releasing the
guest stars list, because I didn't want to use
these names as a way to get everyone to
come to our thing....but it's not our thing...
it's YOUR thing! And it's pretty close now.
So here they are!
We're so very honored to have these guys
contribute. We've been huge fans for years.
GARGAMEL
DEHARA
TOUMA
MORI CHACK
T9G
DEVILROBOTS
MAD BARBARIANS
NAO (WRECKS)
MOGRAPHIXX
MAEDA
BUCH
HERVEST
TOMONARI KAWANO
TOUGOU








Oh and the images here were stolen off the
internet for my little blog here without me asking if it was ok.
We'll have a much better "poster" or something
soon, I guess? I just wanted to get this out
before the weekend.
We hope to see you there!

LONELY OTAKU

The lonely Otaku would wake up
every Thursday at 10am and take the JR
from Shibuya station to Akihabara.
After spending several hours pressing
against the glass cases found
within the monolithic toy shop
specializing in used items, he would
do as he has done for years and years...
grab the used Super Puncher robot
in stock and pay any price for it.
If the robot was in great condition,
the price was high.
No problem.
Ramen is not expensive.
When did his obsession begin?
Way back on October 10th, 2008.

KAIJU SHOW

Stop by the Harold Golen Gallery
on December 3rd to see the big Kaiju show!
We'll have 2 one of kind Kaiju pieces
in there. Not customs, but actual
factory made one offs done just for
this show. We can't be there in person
as we have Uglycon in NYC around
the same time, but if you're in
Florida, check it out!
http://haroldgolengallery.com/


Oh by the way. If we know you, bye bye.
And many of your emails will go unanswered for quite some time.
It's go go go time. Sorry about that.

UGLYCON TOKYO NEWS

UGLYCON JAPAN opens October 10th 2008.
The show will feature plush, paintings,
prints, drawings, show exclusive items,
and best of all: Ugly guest star art from
an incredible list of our favorite
artists from Japan. Oh man,
that's the best part for us.
We can't wait for this one. So happy.
Who are the guest stars?
If you read Giant Robot
magazine, you know many of
them well!


The event will be held at STITCH, located in
Tokyo at Daikanyama. Here's the link to
a map showing the location.
The show opens when STITCH opens
in the morning. The STITCH web site
displays it's opening time as 11am
but we'll confirm this time on this
blog soon. There will be an opening
party starting around 5pm at which
time we'll be on hand to sign anything
but you can view the art as soon
as the doors open. For those interested
in purchasing art up on the wall,
or exclusive items, sales begin
when the doors open in the morning.
They do indeed take phone orders.
The phone number is
03-6415-6622
If you call them, please
keep in mind that calling Japan
from your home phone or cel phone
may cost you a zillion dollars,
so watch that one.

We hope to see you there!
More info soon.