A SHIPMENT of toys is stuck in San Francisco while Cathay Pacific deals with 140 tonnes of backlog, but it’s the grown-up’s who are crying.
The toy in question is a “Dunny” – a figure produced by US-based art toy creator Kidrobot that functions as a generic model for commissioned designs from artists and designers. The figures come in three different sizes: three inches, eight inches, and 20 inches and retail from $5 to $25,000. The price depends on who has designed the Dunny.
Popup Gallery on Ghuznee Street is the sole stockist of the figures in all of Australasia and director Tony Stoddard was planning a big launch of the newly-released 2Tone series. Only he hadn’t told anyone about it, he’s been sworn to secrecy. The toys are so popular that the 2Tone series has had a top-secret release; Stoddard’s only advertising would have been a last-minute message on Twitter,and he says he would be guaranteed a full store that evening.
Stoddard says the Dunny-madness is, “Like nothing I’ve ever encountered in terms of the hype that goes with it”.
The majority of purchases are made from the three inch series which retail for $18. Like a lucky-dip for grown-ups, the toys come “blind boxed,” with no giveaway information on the packaging about what toy lies inside. The toys are wrapped in foil to prevent peeking and scanning with x-ray devices. On the side of the box are pictures with the corresponding odds of getting that specific toy. Toys with low odds are called Golden Ticket Dunnys, of which there are up to 400 in a set, and they are pictured in silhouette so as not to give the surprise away. Kidrobot has been known to throw one-off mystery designs into the mix as well.
Stoddard’s top Dunny customer is Jacob Haronga. Overall the Wellington-based Federated Farmers’ senior policy advisor has spent about $13,000 on his collection of almost 500 figures. Haronga’s reaction to each new series is, “I need that now”. He buys the figures on launch night by the 25-figure case, always opening them in-store with Stoddard and other gathered fans. Because friends and family have dealt him a bit of flack over the years, he has to sneak his Popup Gallery bags home, and one 20 inch figure was stashed at work for more than a month until the opportunity arose.
“I showed my workmates that one and they laughed manically,” he says. “I didn’t tell them how much it cost though.”
If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about, pop into Popup, or Te Papa, where more than a hundred of Tony Stoddard’s personal collection are housed.