GOT THE BUG :: COLLECTORS AND THEIR ADDICTIVE WAYS

By Stephanie Foo

Grubby fingernails, rampant cases of bacne, thick glasses, and shelves and shelves of best friends. It's simple word association. At the words, “toy collector,” this is the image that comes to mind—essentially, a geek. But that's beginning to change. A new generation of toy collectors is building around the art toy scene, and they are prepared to knock down stereotypes and change the way people look at collectors and toys.

Take, for example, collectors like Johnny Trouble and Paul Cruikshank, members of the new toy scene... which just so happens to overlap with the old punk scene—an absolutely contradictory image of the nerd. Cruikshank used to collect skateboards and a different sort of vinyl—punk and hardcore records. He sold them to finance his new love for toys about seven years ago. And Trouble's favorite toy still retains a punk rock edge.

“It's called a Wolf Gun, by a company called Tokyoguns, and it's a little punk rock wolf. He's got spiky hairs and he's got his ear pierced and a t-shirt that says, ‘Fuck Fakes.’ It's the first toy I ever saw that made me want to get into collecting. Retail price was almost $200, but I got it,” says Trouble.

Collector Glenn Pogue describes the scene as “married, without kids. Mostly, it's a bunch of people that just have a lot of disposable income and don't know what to do, so they waste their money on little bits of plastic.” Not that he has any problem with that—he has 500 bits of plastic himself.

A generation of punks are growing up, growing old, and needing a new hobby—so why not take up something that brings them back to their youth?

“It's so much better than collecting anything else,” explains Trouble. “It's just a great hobby. They're cool. They're not like clothes that get dirty and thrashed or things that you put around the house to decorate. They're not just a painting that sits on a wall. You can pick them up and look at them and play with them.”

When you think about it, it really is perfect punk rock sensibility. These toys are the rebellious, rock and roll answer to the ceramic Precious Moments figurines your mom had. They're sexy, pink, bat-winged ladies with pointy nipples, and bright red dinosaurs—in the china case or on the mantelpiece, as ever before. It's adorable, even surprisingly domestic. Not exactly the freak-show we've come to expect.

“All kinds of collectors are, to a degree, in their own little world,” says Cruikshank, whose love for toys led him to create his own line, appropriately dubbed Circus Punks. “Some of them probably think more about it than work or family. At least half the time they think about their collection. I know I do. Collectors generally can be strange people, myself included. But we're fairly normal in our everyday life. It seems that the definition of toy collector is what you saw in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Weird, over-the-top, mostly obsessive-compulsive. But that's not really true... it's just when you get to the completists. They have to get everything.”

Completists, maybe, like Ronnie Pirovino.

“I saw one of [Brooklyn graffiti artist and toy designer] KAWS' pieces in a museum. When I saw in a museum what I had at home, that's when I decided I was going to become one of the most important KAWS collectors in the world, because I wanted to be collecting something highly respected,” says Pirovino, whose KAWS collection is internationally renowned as one of the top five in the world.

Pirovino traveled the world for two years to curate KAWS' works and acquire them. He also takes it upon himself to release some of KAWS' work to the public via the Internet. KAWS toys are some of the rarest in the industry, and Pirovino’s goal is to make a very difficult-to-find toy easier to acquire for like-minded collectors. It may seem like a hassle, but Pirovino doesn't mind. He collects for art's sake.

“I collect KAWS... because it strikes a chord in me… I love his point of view. It's satirical, edgy, dark, and very open to interpretation,” he gushes. “I went to Northwestern for my undergraduate degree and studied pop culture, and art was something I was always interested in.”

But even though Pirovino is extremely passionate about spending time on his hobby, he is quick to differentiate himself from other brands of toy collectors.

“I see a big difference between people who collect Transformers, Star Wars—like pure, pure playthings and toys—and people who collect urban vinyl. People who collect urban vinyl are number one, urban, and number two, urbane. It takes a certain amount of sophistication culminated through living in an urban environment. We are offbeat people working in creative industries. We are generally college educated. I don't see many blue-collar high-school type people. Those people don't participate in the scene, there's a weird socio-economic thing. You must have disposable income for that.”

“And main toy collectors, like for Star Wars... are a bit older,” he continues. “More like in their forties and so on, and those pieces resonate to them because they grew up with those pieces. Star Wars people relish the fact that everyone knows about Star Wars, but urban vinyl people like that nobody knows about it—we enjoy the fact that it's sub-cultural.”

Pirovino especially loves this fact—the sub-cultural, underground aspect of urban vinyl, to the point where goes so far as to only collect, as he puts it, “the rare within the rare.” He sees himself as an elitist in the scene, priding himself in the fact that “mainstream” art toy collectors who have Dunnies or Qee Bears won't have expensive pieces like his KAWS. But collecting pieces that only release 500 items can be a very pricey habit. He once spent $5,000 on a KAWS painting.

“It's an excellent investment. I used to have most of my assets in a financial portfolio in the stock market and now I have a reasonable percentage in KAWS work. There is a large amount of value associated with his pieces… his original paintings range up to $20,000 a piece. My investment resources kind of were switched to bringing art as a substantial investment into my assets,” says Pirovino, sounding more like an H&R Block adviser than a toy collector.

Pirovino collects KAWS figures because he loves them, but he also knows their large demand and small supply will keep them valuable for a very long time. The fact of the matter is, these toys are expensive—the cheapest ones go for at least $20 for a three-inch tall piece of plastic. And while these small, colorful toys may be cute, they are also a carefully crafted sort of nest egg.

Perhaps these collectors are insane. They have a searing amount of passion and loyalty for tiny inanimate trinkets. They can pretend to be normal all they want, but they will always have some things in common with the stereotypical toy collectors.

But the main difference is they are not loyal to toys, they are loyal to art. They love their KAWS like an art director at the Met would give his life for his Van Goghs. And that might be crazy, but it's also kind of beautiful.