I Am Plastic: the Designer Toy Explosion
by Van
I Am Plastic is a large format color photographic celebration of the new age of plastic toy figures.
I have wandered through the Vault of Midnight admiring the striking plastic toys that are clearly designed for a demographic of which I am not part. I have a plastic toy Tintin with Snowy under his arm in my office and a hundred Star Wars figures (my kids’) at home. The plastic toys in this book are different from them because they are generally not from anything. They were invented as toys and are very creative, clever, and provocative.
There is a four page introductory essay at the front of the book and fifteen very brief Q & A interviews with plastic toy designers at the back of the book. The interviews have answers to “What’s in your pocket?”, “What do you eat for breakfast?”, “What’s on your iPod?” and other more directly pertinent questions such as “If you could have invented a toy or character that someone else made, what would it be and why?”
The rest of the book is great color photographs of the plastic toys arranged on a white background with small captions giving the names of the toys and the year they were created. The book is organized by country (they originated in China and Japan though the U. S. is now a major creator), then by designer.
Take a look. Pretty weird and wonderful.
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