The 50 Greatest Designer Toys
By Complex Magazine | Nov 23, 2011 | 10:00 am | Permalink
Written by Gino Joukar, Owner of Toy Art Gallery.
When Complex asked me to come up with the 50 greatest designer toys, I was excited and thrilled at first. But, after reviewing all my options I realized that this was going to be more challenging than I thought. Since there are so many great designer toys out there, how do you narrow it down to just 50?
Going through all the designer toys out there and picking out the top 50 is harder than it seems, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of arguments over some of my choices here, but I tried to stay as non-judgmental about my choices and based my decisions on popularity, originality, rarity, impact in the scene, and overall great design.
I also didn’t narrow my choices to only western designer toys and I’ve included a few select kaiju toys here.
So without any further delay, and in no particular order, check out the 50 Greatest Designer Toys.
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UNCLE November 23rd, 2011 at 03:44 PM
Pretty sure the PAW! (#8) is produced by Mark and SVEN of Coarse, not Mark and Mike.
Zinc November 23rd, 2011 at 07:21 PM
Thanks for crediting me on my photo and the other 3 you took without permission.
BeardScience November 23rd, 2011 at 11:23 PM
Everything on this list definitely belongs on there but I think the order of these things is all kinds of wrong. As much as I love Flying Fortress, and believe me I do, placing Teddy Trooper at #1 seems insane when Dunny, Qee, Bearbrick and Kompanion were so low. I don't care for Kidrobot much but Dunny took this scene and medium from message boards to the mall. Love it or hate it, Dunny belongs much higher up on this list.
molaro November 24th, 2011 at 11:31 AM
I know you had to make selections from a ton of great toys, but I was pretty surprised to not see Alan Ng's General Zoo series on the list. It's a large piece, has magnetic parts, and the details are AMAZING. It's a very unique piece of all those I have Also, being a HUGE Sam Flores fan, I respect the choice to have Fatima, but was surprised you didn't choose the Kid Dragon. While I love all Sam' work, in comparison, the KD is more unique, and more detailed by far. In general, kudos on the list. For the most part I thinks it's really good. I just wanted to throw in som opinions og a few that I thought were missing.
Martin November 24th, 2011 at 05:27 PM
YHWH (#29) was not created by Mark Nagata. It was created by Mark Ryden. The "character" is taken from one of Ryden's paintings: http://www.markryden.com/paintings/bunnies/yhwh.html
Boris November 24th, 2011 at 08:09 PM
Nice! Love the list! Can't get enough of designer toys :D
Jeremy November 25th, 2011 at 06:01 PM
I think this is a solid list overall. I wrote a reaction to it here: http://www.jeremyriad.com/blog/editorials/concerning-complexs-50-greatest-designer-toys-list If any Complex editor is reading these comments, in addition to the above-mentioned typos, please fix the spelling of "Koibito". Need a future proofer? Holler at me.