Plastic and Plush | Archive

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Plastic Toy Of The Year

Our final category for the 2012 Plastic and Plush Awards is the Plastic Toy Of The Year. Since resin has become just as popular as rotocast vinyl, they're all included in here (ABS, PVC, and any other kind of plastic as well). Whittling down to five pieces here was the most difficult of any category... [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Plush Toy Of The Year

We resume our 2013 Plastic and Plush Awards with the last two categories. The Plush Toy of the Year category has been pared down to the top 5 releases of 2012. So here you have them... 5. Skell and Covers (Gravescabs - Sharkchild) The Gravescabs feature a "base" Skell plush, which you can then customize [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best Functional Toy

This is a new category for us. What's a functional toy? Well, pretty much everything that doesn't fit in the other categories. It's a toy that can often be passed off for something else, whether it's a puzzle, USBflash memory, or one of these... 5. Chuppi (Mathmos) Part nightlight, part designer toy. This light up [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Sixth Scale Toy of the Year

We're back, taking a look at the final four categories in our 2012 Plastic and Plush Awards. Today, I'm taking a look at the best sixth scale (or highly articulated) figures from last year. 5. The Shadow (Go Hero) After being teased for a few years, we saw the pulp character, originally appearing in 1930's, [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best Toy Line

In what is probably the most competitive category of the PAPAs, we remember the year that was in toy lines. There were a number of deserving line, so whittling it down to only five was a little difficult. Nonetheless...here they are: 5. Glyos System Series (Onell Design) Onell continued to expand the Glyos line with [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best New Line

With toy companies and toy lines constantly entering and exiting the marketplace, finding five new toy lines to feature is a fairly simple task. We saw new things from well-known companies and stuff from some artists we had not yet encountered, but here are my top 5... 5. Gravescabs (Sharkchild) The only plush line on [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best Blind Box Series

It seems like the blind box craze sort of slowed down in 2012. We didn't review nearly the amount as previous years. And some series that were previously released blind-boxed have recently gone to the open front model. Nonetheless, here are five of our favorite blind box series of 2012... 5. The Big Bang (Dudebox) [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best Sculpting

Covering so many different figure platforms and types, the sculpting work is likely to vary dramatically. For example, sixth-scale collectibles often have very important face sculpts when they are an authorized likeness of an actor. With vinyl, it's often how close the toy is to the (illustrated) basis...and, hopefully, it doesn't fall over. With resin and [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Best Packaging

What might be only a barrier to some folks might be a work of art to others. I'm talking about toy packaging. Some people keep their collectibles mint in box...others tear that stuff up and toss it to the garbage man. But sometimes the packaging, or the art on the packaging, is just as impressive [...]

2012 Toy Awards

2012 PAPAs: Artist of the Year

Like Customizer of the Year, choosing a quintet of artists that excelled over the past year is a difficult task. (Finding photos of them on Facebook pages and their personal blogs is even more difficult) So here are my choices for the top 5 artists of 2012... 5. Bryan Green (Paper Foldables) I think it's [...]