How does toy feel about sofubi
the culture/community surrounding them is fucking annoying but the toys are neat
The community is bunch of grown autist with great eye for good looking toys>thread
currently trying to make these myself
I love them visually but would never pay the prices they command.
i collect but only for things that arent an arm and a leg. Wtf do i look like paying anything over 150 bucks.sure they are "art" pieces but like lets be fucking foreal
>>10985755The one in your OP retailed for like $4000 and goes for 15k on the secondary market through private trades only. I hate them because of stuff like this. There's really no in between. Either something has no market, so it sells a little when it first comes out, and if you have it and decide you want to sell it you never can recoup your money- whether it's $40 or $400- and if you find out about it after the fact, you'll never find one for sale. Or they become super popular and have their prices inflated to ridiculous amounts, in which case you also can't buy it because it's hundreds if not thousands of dollars. And most of them that might be affordable are just fucking shitty.
>>10986060This is how I feel too. Which sucks because I would love to collect these but no way I’m forking over thousands for a toy
I think they're cool as hell, and I love that many of them look like monsters from pulp sci-fi and horror B movies from the 1950s and 60s and/or Toku villains, but as >>10986060 and >>10986285 have said, I'll never own any because of the price and the limited nature.
>>10986285You gotta go to shows or buy them on Japanese auction sites, they’re adorable but can be incredibly expensive,
>>10985755I don't get the appeal but they're a million times better than funkoshit.
Funko POPs for rich hipsters.
>>10985796This, the price of admission is too high for the curious. I stratch yhe itch by buying bandai mms, not the same thing but yknow. I do have a tiny bulmark hedorah im proud of.
>>10985755they shouldn't be as much as they are. this kind of toy was common but hard to get when I was a kid and they were common because I had no money, now that I have money they're too much to even try for. I fucking loved badly spray painted dinosaurs and godzillas then, its not fair. its depressing.
there's something funny to me about how these vinyls are all based off the cheapest, inaccurate kid's toys yet cost hundreds. I get that most are small run pieces but holy shit.
>>10986060This. I like them, but they're too $$$ to buy out of curiosity, and hard to get. I want a chill and relaxing hobby, not something that makes me feel like I'm getting cutthroat over a toy.
>>10986500I think it's worth keeping in mind that these artists have to spend years of time/money building their skills in the first place, then account for the overhead costs in producing the sculpt, the mold/s, the outsourced manufacturing cost on a low MOQ, then again the time/cost of painting them. The only reason that any other toys (or plastic products in general) are so cheap p/unit is because of third world mass-manufacturing, and we all know that already.
>>10986768I dunno, I just feel like small artists/craftsmen deserve to charge enough to cover the cover of manufacture AND provide themselves a living wage for their time. It's more tangibly important work than coffee runs and sitting in Zoom meetings all day.
>>10986332Literally why I got into them. Again only buying stuff I can afford lmao>>10986335
The way I see these are how I see legos desuOnly get what you really want and can afford. Like another annon said , going to toy shows will save you some money. Just bought this one for 80 bucks on preorder
i only buy cheaper yet neat looking aliens from japan that were mass producedthe "art toy" angle made these too expensive
i think they're neat, but i think collecting them at an elevated level is silly because at the end of the day they're very simple products. You could fill your house with them and still experience no joy. They're nice as accents to a collection, but their stylization relegates them to a fairly uniform aesthetic overall
also, OP toy, they didn't even highlight the rivets. I just don't understand the appeal of a toy that's been vaguely airbrushed , albeit painstakingly sculpted and casted, but still. It's a bit excessive insofar as hype and price goes. Like, if you see a shelf full of these what do you even look at? It all just looks the same to me
>>10986964>>10986960>but i think collecting them at an elevated level is silly because at the end of the day they're very simple products. You could fill your house with them and still experience no joy. They're nice as accents to a collection, but their stylization relegates them to a fairly uniform aesthetic overall>Like, if you see a shelf full of these what do you even look at? It all just looks the same to meIn the end you have a rag tag group of based looking retards.I enjoy the simple and primitive look and feel of them. Especially if they have metallic paints. The best ones have this both nostalgic yet strange and otherworldy. A bit scary and offputting but still cute.They scale well next to my heman figures (wich i like for similar resons) or japanese imports like figma. But I guess I have always had a weird taste in toys and liked mix and matching stuff.People who only like toys for max posability mixed with brand/media/character recognition will probably be less likely to be into them.Huge toys can be fun but are less my bag. They often feel more like dedicated artpieces or sculptures than toys. These figures get bonus points if they atleast can move the arms.
>>10986768I get that, of course, but I think the maddening thing is knowing some company could, theoretically, mass produce any of these and charge no more than $20-40. I'm also a bit biased because I remember the collector scene HATING it when vinyls got a bit popular from bigger companies and they would make mass produced ones. I think it came to a head with the Taco Bell ones. don't get me wrong, these aren't great, but I liked the idea of being able to get toys like this for cheap- but there's collectors who will always shit on them on principle because the mass produced ones aren't art toys.
>>10986960You can say this about anything toy collects and buys.I’m pretty sure 99 percent you guys don’t “play” with your toys lmaoWe collect and buy because we have unresolved childhood trauma and like shit that looks cool.
>>10986960It's weird that you're so opinionated about these while not seeming to realize that your post applies to a broad swath of the lines collected here
>>10986977I mean, this is already happening. The special thing about Japanese vinyl used to be the high quality, like for example, nobody could pull clears as clean and crystalline. But now China has learned to. And their vinyl industry is EXPLODING. Just look at what Popmart is doing, they operate at such volume that they can sell pretty big, complex blindboxed sofubi for just $10-20 apiece. And best of all, nobody is fussy about it like they were with the Taco Bell ones. Everyone I know loves Popmart, they make great stuff and do a lot of fun collabs. And they don't feel like some obvious cashgrab corporate thing like Taco Bell did.
>>10986500>>10986977One thing you should keep in mind too is that these guys are operating at a REALLY high level to accurately emulate that aesthetic. Even though they may look bad or inaccurate or "cheap" to you, it takes a shitload of skill to reproduce a look convincingly. One could liken it to emulation, where you need magnitudes more power to emulate a given console, than the console itself has.That "bootleg" look is something many people are very fond and nostalgic for, and it takes a lot of study and practice to achieve.
>>10985755love it.
>>10987115nah, it's weird that people pay 4k for a lightly airbrushed and slightly better sculpted MMS bandai vinyl don't @ me idgaf
>>10987275>4kmaybe in yen
>>10986285the originals are expensive but repros are very affordable. I actually have a couple from that bandai/popy line you posted including the that exact one for all $30-50.
>>10987275Bandai MMS vinyl is nothing to sneeze at. Lots of great sculpts there. Low price does not automatically equal bad.
Sofubi falls into two categories and two categories only:Toys you don't like at all but are availableToys you do like but are impossible to getAnd for that reason, I'm out
>>10991620This is kind of by design thoughAlmost all sofubi has such a tiny market, it's all super niche stuff or experimental toys by artists. For a lot of them you'd be hard pressed to find 100 people interested in buying. So yeah, they make them in batches of 10 or whatever to sell to whom they can. Lots of people that dip their toes into sofubi making never make more than their initial 1 or 2 figures because they literally can't sell them, even a few dozen of them, to recoup their costs and make it worthwhile to make more. It does mean that when someone comes out with something awesome that demand is going to outpace supply. The guys that choose to hypebeast instead of scaling up their operation accordingly can be frustrating, but I'd say only a very small handful of sofubi makers are truly unattainable, and of those only a small amount are actually making cool toys.
>>10986768Also worth noting the actual process of making them is EXTREMELY technical, time consuming, expensive and has to be done by hand. It involves some black magic with making a mold by electroplating a master sculpt, various dips in hot chemical baths (with the chemical formula being a closely-guarded secret) and then meticulously painting everything with special paint. It's not like they're just making a silicone mold and pouring resin (which itself is an expensive process)- sofubi production is an art form.
>>10992400There is a good documentary about this on youtube. Very cool shit.
>>10991620painfully true
>>10985755I like them for what they are, especially the indie ones, but some of them can get really prohibitively expensive.Moreover the highly commercialized ones (KAWS, those ugly funko pop type ones with their arms tucked into their hoodies or whatever) are just ugly to look at. They're not interesting, they're just plain hipster garbage that people flock to because they're limited or are collabing with some hypebeast nonsense.
Sofubi has become a good chunk of my collection over the last 4-6 years. I appreciated from afar for the longest time, but the prices and availability are huge barriers to entry. I finally decided to just buy one I really liked and that led to following a bunch of the people and businesses that produce this stuff. Have a quick pic of one of my sofubis.
>>10998209Yes, I still consider myself a beginner as well. I only have one or two "pricey" pieces (which to me, as a beginner, means $100+). I also have a bunch of smaller, cheaper stuff that is actually equally as cool as the big ones.
trying to find a set of Food Fighters is harder than i thought
>>10985800>>10987162Name of those sofubi?
>>10985755I like their designs but the price is insane, though I found some in flea markets for quite cheap compared to the usual cost.
>>10999959>the price is insane>the usual costsofubi is just a generic term for soft vinyl toys. it encompasses cheap $10 Godzilla vinyls sold in major retail outlets, as well as $900 tiny run lottery pieces.
>>10985755I really like the cryptid and kaiju ones from Marmit/M1Go/Marusan/Gigabrain/etc. Western "art" toys, not so much
>>11000022Well shit, I wish I knew how to differentiate them.
>>11000768There is no difference. The expensive ones are just made by one or two people in a "factory" thats usually a garage. They make like 20 and need to sell them at high enough prices to cover the costs of making them and still make some profit. The ones that are $10 and mass produced are made by basically the same exact process, but in an actual factory and sent all over the place.
