We Love Odd

Those of you who know me are aware that I’m a bit of an anglophile. So when I heard about Weenicons, I thought to myself, well this is the dog’s bollocks on multiple levels! Here are intricately detailed toy effigies of pop culture characters AND they represent just one range among several even cheekier toy lines by the English company, OddCo. Are these art toys? Depends on your definition of both “art” and “toys” I suppose.

Here’s what I say: OddCo makes great figures with attitude and edge, like if Garbage Pail Kids were injected with a constant IV solution of TMZ. In a nutshell, a big difference between collectible toys in the UK and the US seems to be this: The UK’s “#1 Alternative Collectible Gift” is a line of toys that many of us (and by us, I mean you) have no doubt passed by while browsing for lava lamps or edible underwear at Spencer’s Gifts. Would you pose this Bears at Urinals diorama next to your Be@rbricks? You know what? I just might.

Today, OddCo took their pop culture paradigm-play even further with the launch of Popmash, a toy line that seeks to save us from ourselves.

Fame and pop culture are rapidly going out of control. Experts predict that at the current rate by the the year 2020 everybody on the planet will be famous. Economies will collapse. Society will be in disarray. Television will be really, really awful. We need a solution to this problem before it’s too late, Popmash is that solution. Popmash scientist reckon that by genetically combining two famous things we can reduce pop culture by 50% and save the planet for another 100 years.

While OddCo currently only distributes these new figures within the UK, we at Neon Monster hope this will change and that you’ll see Weenicons, Bad Taste Bears, Teeny Demons and Popmash figures stateside in the future. In the meantime, I’ve had a right proper chat with Mr. Paul Kell of OddCo on the topic of all things ODD. Got a short attention span? Follow OddCo on Twitter.

JB: How did Oddco begin?

PK: We have been trading as OddCo.Ltd for over a year now, but as a group of individuals (formerly Piranha Studios) we have been trading for over 10 years. Our ‘bread and butter’ collection is actually the ‘Bad Taste Bears’ which have been an extremely successful collectible brand in the UK, Europe and Worldwide; BTB’s have just celebrated their 10th Birthday!!!

The twisted creation of UK artist Peter Underhill, you may have seen Bad Taste Bears stateside in places like Spencer Gifts? Our MD, Sue Kell spotted Pete’s drawings over 10 years ago and presented the idea of a figurine range to a large retail group here in the UK. The 1st 6 figurines went into ‘The Gadget Shop’ at this stage the bears were being hand-cast and painted by home workers in Newcastle upon Tyne. Within the first year the range increased to twelve, and in the months that followed, due to increasing demand, production was moved to a factory and a collectors club was launched to provide a point of contact for the growing hoards of Bad Taste Bear fanatics…

Hundreds of collectibles and tens of thousands of collectors later and here we are, together, involved in something that we never thought would be such a phenomenon.

Although BTB’s have been a very successful line for us and we have a massive collector’s base, we want it to keep running for another 10 years and therefore in the last year or two, made the serious decision to start placing a few more ‘eggs in the basket,’ such as Weenicons, Popmash, Teeny Demons etc.

As we come into the 2nd generation of our company, we want to continue with this ethic of ‘collectibles with attitude’ but we are now looking to portray this through new ideas and materials, to new groups of customers, as well as protecting classic ideas and enthusiasts.

How many people are on the OddCo team?

About 11 at the moment… 2 directors, IT, web sales, retail sales, sculptors, model maker, graphic design, accounts and of course warehouse. Oh yeah… and me.

It seems like OddCo has several projects in the works. Do you have a favourite one right now?

It’s hard to place a favourite!? I suppose the newest project is always the most exciting. We have a new idea called ‘Rubber Garden’ which is like a Mr. Potato Head, vinyl plant? Sounds weird I know. It has been designed by one of our internal guys and we’re very proud of him. Watch this space as the whole project is shrouded in secrecy at the moment.

We’re also about to launch a BTB ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ range, which we are very excited about.

It also seems like you probably have a good deal of fun on the job. Can you describe a typical day at work?

Hehe. It’s funny, because from the outside our work looks like A LOT of fun and of course it can be, but it is after all a job, so we have good days and bad days here. I could be selling plumbing or insurance so of course I’m very happy where I am…

Just like most folks these days, a usual day here involves lots of coffee, computer screens and phone calls. I spend a lot of the time coordinating artist approvals, sculpting and production in the Far East, so I guess you could say that’s quite a fun job.

How do you choose which celebrities to Weeniconize? (And by celebrities, I of course merely mean, allusions to celebrities…)

The artist’s ethic is always to keep the characters ‘classic’ and ‘nostalgic’ which seems to work pretty well so far. He tries to stay away from ‘current’ celebs as they can be very much ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ and we’re not in this to make a quick buck fast? (Although it’s nice to make a living) We want the Weenies to last for a long time, not be an overnight success.

Is there one artist or a whole team behind the look of Weenicons and Popmash?

There’s a team behind Weenicons and one guy behind Popmash. They are all very nice, creative and anonymous gentlemen.

Talk to me about the decision to make Weenicons out of polystone.

Polystone is generally the material of choice for the ‘classic’ collectible figurines here in the UK. We’ve always made figurines from polystone in the past as it affords us to add more detail to the figure and the initial tooling for polystone as far cheaper than that of pvc or vinyl. This means that although the individual figurine price is slightly higher, it affords us to release small runs of figurines more frequently? We can then retire a piece when we want and not feel like we’ve wasted a tool.

The intention is definitely to move into vinyl, especially for the Weenicons, as we know this is the preferred choice of material. I can confirm that we are looking into factories to do this as we speak. If you can recommend any decent ones please let me know… hehe.

Could you describe how it is that Weenicons are OK to sell in the UK/Europe but not (yet) in America?

In the US the laws are slightly different to here in the UK, Australia and other parts of the world. The US artist has more rights than the UK. Basically, we sell cute characters dressed in certain outfits. The argument is ‘does the artist own the rights to those outfits?’ As soon as I have any more info on the US market, I will let you know. We are desperate to get our products into the US.

And we are desperate to have them! Until that time, find yourself a mule in the UK, check out their stockists or do some trades. The Weenicons are currently on Rotocasted.