Vinyl Countdown

Dreamland Toyworks Hoodiez ain't nothing to play with.

by Brian Howard

You've got Scrapz, a runt with braids pulled back and lips pursed into a pucker. There's Flip, his oversized hat pulled down over his eyes (and nose). Jazz's got a big red hoodie, shades and geometric beard. Noc sports giant sneaks, headphones and droopy-ass drawers. Boogie is all massive arms, tiny head and sleeveless sweatshirt.

'HOODRATS: Carl Jones' art toys Jazz, Boogie, Flip, Noc and Scrapz (from left). (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

They could be the cast of a new show on Adult Swim, maybe a modern-day reimagining of the Cosby Kids. But they're not. These are Hoodiez, a new series of 4- to 8-inch vinyl toys, or "art toys" — the product of Boondocks producer Carl Jones' imagination and David Fiorito's Philly-based Dreamland Toyworks.

Jones' Hoodiez are one of two debut lines for Dreamland. (The other is My Little Cthulhu dreamed up by Dork Tower comic creator John Kovalic.) And the story behind the collaboration is pure serendipity.

Fiorito had a small toy-importing company devoted to models and "garage kits" for things like Spawn and The Crow that went belly-up in the mid 1990s. "It was an example of why friends shouldn't go into business together," explains Fiorito, dryly, clad in jeans, black T-shirt and a beat-up Eagles cap at South 15th Street's Rarebreed. Since then, he's been in the information architecture field (he presently works for Comcast). While on a trip to New Mexico to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary last year, he started thinking about toys seriously again. He wanted to do it for his wife, who suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and as such has only a few good hours a day.

"A big motivation is to work from home," says the King of Prussia native and Temple alum. So he spent a good chunk of his downtime on that trip researching toy manufacturers.

"Aaron McGruder was my first thought," says Fiorito, 39. "Boondocks the series had just come on and my first thought was to do licensed Boondocks toys."

But contacting the creator of the comic strip/TV series through his agent proved fruitless. "One day I was on MySpace and I found McGruder's page," remembers Fiorito. "I looked at his friends and saw Carl did artwork for the show. Carl's page had images of these characters for a show called The Playpen — a Beanie Sigel thing, a total Philly connection. I sent him a message and said, 'Do you want to design toys?'"

Turns out Jones, who'd lived in Philadelphia for about three years in the early '90s, had already been approached by a few people about it not long before Fiorito's inquiry.

"David was the most organized and had everything planned out," explains Jones, 34, on the phone from Los Angeles. "He put a little fire under my feet."

Though The Playpen never aired, the characters were copyrighted. "I told him I could look through my sketchbook, do some turns and make some interesting toys," recalls Jones. "I sent him some rough sketches. He really liked them."

If an art toy seems antithetical, Fiorito explains: "Some people buy a print from an artist they like; some people buy toys by artists they like."

The idea, says Fiorito, is to keep production low — "200 or 500 or 1,000. You're staying away from the mass market."

In other words, these aren't toys you'd play with so much as ones you'd put on a shelf; they're almost collectibles — Hummels for hipsters. Before the toys even hit the warehouse, Dreamland had received pre-orders for a good chunk of the proposed run of both lines. (The Hoodiez sell for $25 to $35; My Little Cthulhu sells for $29.99.)

While the concept of the art toy certainly owes a bit to the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired model kits you'll find at comic book stores, Fiorito says art toys originated when an Asian clothing company hired artists to design toys wearing their clothes. He sees more recent phenomena as Sun-Min Kim's Uglydolls — an actual toy line that started as art toys — as evolutionarily important.

The Peter Pan principle is certainly at play here. "I've been into toys ever since Lucas came up with Star Wars figures," says Jones. "When I discovered art toys, it blew my mind. I came across Kid Robot's Web site (www.kidrobot.com) a while back. I saw all these crazy toys. They just blew my mind. I never took it seriously until a couple of weeks before [Fiorito] contacted me."

With his first two lines off the ground, Fiorito is focusing next on Philly. He's working with the local, anonymous street artists behind the ubiquitous El Toro, Bob and Nose sticker/tags to make vinyl art likenesses. Fiorito expects them to be ready in the fall.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

A Hoodiez launch party will take place Sat., April 28, 6-10 p.m. at Rarebreed, 530 S. 15th St., 215-545-1807, www.rarebreed215.com. For information on Dreamland Toyworks, visit www.dreamlandtoyworks.com.