KidRobot Report from Tokyo Toy Fair 2002 Day 2 pt. 1

KIDROBOT TOKYO TOY FAIR REPORT day 2 pt. 1
by Gregory B

Tokyo, May 10 2002 -- I finally was able to wander just about every square foot of the Tokyo Toy Show 2002, and I came upon quite a variety of figures worth reporting and probably quite a few worth collecting! I was able to get more photos than yesterday, but was still prohibited from shooting a lot of stuff I would have liked to post on this report.

One notable exception: Medicom! I met up with a few of the good folks from Figures.com, and was formally introduced to the Medicom crew. After convincing them that I wouldn’t even point my camera in the direction of the Star Wars Kubricks (a shame, indeed), I was allowed to shoot a fair amount of the products on display.

I got some more specific information on many of the block figures I reported about yesterday. Here goes...

KAWS Kubricks will be available in the US soon. We are really hot to get our hands on these, so hopefully you will be able to find them on our website in the coming months. I personally can’t wait!

Marvel Characters Kubricks will be available in the US for sure. They are expected to ship early/mid summer.

There may be some US licensing issues with some of the Be@rbrick series 4 designs, and certainly will be with the Star Wars, Disney and Sesame Street Kubricks. This doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually be officially imported, but we can’t say for sure. There is no doubt that they will find their way over the Pacific at least through secondary distributors as soon as they are released here, but that means they will be a bit pricey. Kidrobot, as always, will be doing it's best with these.

The Special Forces Truck and Cosmonaut Space Capsule are only production samples. May not be produced, but they looked production-ready to me. I can see that these would probably knock Kubrick sets into a different price range as well as beyond the traditional block-figure scope, so I understand Medicom’s hesitation.

The Monster’s Inc. Kubricks were indeed prototypes. You might be able to make out signs of the hand sculpt and paint from the photos. I really do hope these make it to production, as they are fantastic figures, regardless of whether or not you liked the movie.

Finally, the Pantone Kubricks are available in 40 colors initially, but the sky’s the limit. For those unfamiliar, Pantone is a company that has pretty much cornered the market for accurate color matching in both the digital and print graphics world. Their color system is used in all sorts of other trades as well, including textile and industrial design, cumulatively representing literally THOUSANDS of discreet colors. If these Kubricks catch on, it could be the biggest dream and/or nightmare come true for the comprehensive block figure collector.