Tag Archives: toy

Chinese New Year 2013 Android Mini Collectible!

Happy Year of the Snake!
But wait! That’s a.. Lion? Holding salad?

No matter the representative animal of the yearly zodiac, you’ll always find a Dancing Lion at any good Chinese New Year festival! While traditionally Chinese, the famous Dancing Lion even spans cultures with Korean and Japanese equivalents.

Each Dancing Lion Android includes one of 7 different auspicious scrolls and a head of green lettuce. The scrolls are wrapped, so you don’t know what message you get until you open it up!

If you’re not familiar with the traditions, then a couple of guys in a brightly colored furry lion suit lobbing heads of lettuce at you might be a bit alarming.. may we suggest you read more about the tradition of the dancing lion over on Wikipedia?

This year’s Special Edition release is once again primarily for our Asian retail partners including HypePulse in China, City Super in Hong Kong, Android Fan store in Taiwan and Droidstore in Singapore. If you are in or near these areas, please check your local retailers for availability. They should be available for sale soon!

However, we will have a very limited stock  available in the Dead Zebra, Inc shop for $10 (plus shipping). There will be only one release time. These are limited to one per household / card holder / person / etc.. you get the idea!

Available in the Dead Zebra Shop starting Thursday, January 24th at 11AM Eastern Standard Time. They will start shipping the week after that.

We reserve the right to cancel any orders for any reason. If there is remaining stock after the initial releases we will put them back online for further orders, (unlikely in this case, so get in early)! As usual you might want to brush up on the Limited Edition release FAQ!

Frankie Frost flies high for the 2012 Holiday Special Edition Android mini!

Look up! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s ..suddenly really cold and snowing. Must be Frankie Frost flaunting his frozen flakes in your face! Seasoned Android artist Scott Tolleson brings us this cool new holiday special edition modeled after the classic stop motion characters of yesteryear.

Frankie starts flying next week from the Dead Zebra Shop starting at 11AM (EST) on Thursday, December 6th and again that evening at 11PM (EST) for $10. Limit is two per customer so you can keep one and gift another!

Shipping out starts December 10th, non-US customers who want to guarantee holiday arrival should select Priority Mail International shipping method, as First Class International can take 2-5+ weeks to arrive.

Bonus! Click and drag on the image below to see a 360 view (requires javascript). Not working in your browser? Try this direct link.

Android Special Edition : Big Android BBQ Blue

It’s been a busy month for Android and mini collectible fans as many of you rip into your S3 cases! The fun continues with the Big Android BBQ taking place in Dallas, Texas next week!

Big Android BBQ Androids
This was originally slated for a late summer release for people who couldn’t grab the red SDCC edition but when we confirmed that we could make it to this year’s Big Android BBQ this year we knew it would be a perfect release to have there!

The Androids comes together in a case style window box ready to enjoy the day with camera, spatula and bbq accessories.

They’ll be available for $20/set in person throughout the BBQ weekend, late-registration tickets are still available! For those of you who sadly can’t make it, we’ll have them up online in the Dead Zebra Shop on the 20th at 11am EDT, get your appetite ready!

Meet the Androids: Series 03 Preview (pt6)

Our S3 shipment is in and delivered to the magical toy cave, where distribution will begin shortly! S3 should start popping up in retailers very soon, and I’ll post the Dead Zebra Shop release schedule / information tomorrow!

But we’ve still got some previews to get through! Rack a can of this awesome “cry-on” design by MAD. 1/16 ratio.

Of course we have a little extra for you. Turn your sound on for shake rattle and..roid. Always wear your respirator, kids.

Meet the Androids: Series 03 Preview (pt3)

This is one of those designs that needs to be seen in person to fully appreciate! Nexus sports a smokey dark translucent body and carries the latest generation flagship 4G LTE GSM dual band tri force quadruple card 5GHz 5″ HD* completely non-functional miniature Nexus phone accessory.

Android mini collectible series 3 - Nexus by Google

Set him up near a light source for maximum effect! 2/16 ratio.
*note: phone specs may be slightly exaggerated, phone is a small piece of solid plastic.

Bonus! Click and drag on the image below to see a 360 view (requires javascript). Not working in your browser? Try this direct link.


Don Pablo Calaveroid – Day of the Dead Android

Halloween is so October 31st… We’re all about Dia de los Muertos now! This year we asked our friends Ernesto and Carlos East, aka the Beast Brothers to lend their Mexican flair to a Special Edition Android mini collectible!

The result is the beautiful and colorful “Calaveroid”! This limited special edition figure will be available at the Dead Zebra Shop starting on the Day of the Dead, November 1st, 2011 at 11am (EST) and again at 11pm (EST). In order to make it available to the most people, sales will be initially limited to 1 per person for the first few stock periods, and after we catch up we’ll let the rest out for doubles or re-orders! There will also be a few available via select Asia retailers.


 

Oh, and who wouldn’t want to don some Don Pablo? Delicious skull T’s on both black and limited run purple will be making an appearance as well!

Adios!

Special editions coming soon!

Thanks to everyone who made it out to San Diego for this years Comic-Con! We blew through some Blue Fin Sashimi at Dumbrella, while the special edition Hero and Villain Android mini collectibles battled it out over at the DKE booth. We even won an award somewhere in there, it’s still a bit of a blur..

If you missed out on the comic-con madness, the special edition Androids will be available in the Dead Zebra Shop starting August 1st, and they’ll be hitting some of our Asian retailers shortly. A smaller quantity of Blue Fin Sashimi figures will also be available! Details and times to follow shortly after I recover from the convention and fly back to New York!

Android Mini Collectible Summer special editions!

Making their debut at the 2011 International Comic-Con in San Diego, this limited special edition set of Android mini figures designed by Andrew Bell is sure to please the summer movie and comic loving crowd. One design will be available per day  for 4 days starting on Wednesday July 20th at the booth of our distributor, DKE Toys (#4728)!

Got stuck in your man-sized sexy fox costume zipper and are bleeding on the hotel room floor unable to make it to the convention that day (or maybe you’re just not going to the con)? Fear not caped crusader, as we will be making a number of sets available online shortly after the con at the Dead Zebra Shop and via several of our partner shops in Asia. Specifics to follow later!


The Hidden Task

El Poderoso


Greentooth

Cycle-On

We’ll be back with a bunch more photos and some profile information soon!

Something fishy this way smells…

Once again the international comic-con in San Diego is almost upon us! You know what that means, a solid week of pain and suffering fun new stuff!

O-No Sashimi (based on the popular Never Look Back II print) makes its delicious vinyl debut at the show, complete with blue special edition. I know the show sold out very early this year, and a lot of people can’t make it, so we’ll be holding a number of these for online sales in the dead zebra shop!

We’ll also be serving up a few of the standard Green editions, these will be hitting toy and specialty shops worldwide shortly after the convention. The standard edition will retail for around $35 US and includes all delicious fish bits, two sets of eyes and a bowl in a supermarket fresh display tray!

The blue edition is limited to 250pcs and will retail for $40 US.

Here is O-No Sashimi compared in size to the original O-No Sushi!

A few more pics are up on Flickr! Nom nom nom..

O-No Freshness

We first previewed the painted master resin sculpt of O-No Sashimi in San Diego last summer at International Comic Con… then we got a little distracted by some Androids! Well, we’re back on track, and these guys are set to be swimming(?) over the ocean soon. Currently scheduled for a 2011 International Comic Con debut along with a special edition perhaps?

Can’t make it to San Diego this year? We’ll have some fresh green fish online and in shops as well!

Meet the Androids: Series 02 Preview (pt5)

The time is upon us! Series 02 will start arriving shops this week  (it will take a little longer for them to arrive at their European retailers). Here is a list of a few of the retailers that will be carrying them. Check out the last two standard editions!

Name: Iceberg
Artist: Andrew Bell
Ratio: 2/16

Name: Noogler
Artist: Jeff Yaksick for Google
Ratio: 1/16
(Yes, the propeller spins!)

If you want to try your luck at the Dead Zebra Shop, we’ll be putting some of our stock up starting this Thursday night at 11pm EST (4 GMT) and again on Friday at 11am EST (16 GMT). Limited to 16 total pieces (1 case) per household for at least the first few releases. We’ll have some more after that, but we’ll need a week or so to catch up!  It’s a good time to brush up on the Limited Edition release FAQ.

Meet the Androids: Series 02 Preview (pt3)

A few lucky people managed to get their hands on some Series 02 figures at Google’s amazing Android “booth” at this years Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (check out Phandroid’s short video of the amazing display)

Only a few more weeks before Series 02 hits shops both online and off! Look for them to start popping up stateside and Asia around the second week of March, and hitting Europe shortly thereafter. I’ll put together a list of some of the shops that will be carrying them.

Name: Bernard
Artist: Scott Tolleson
Ratio: 1/16

Name: GD-927
Artist: Andrew Bell
Ratio: 1/16

Each box includes a little folding flyer checklist with figure names and artist information.

Meet the Androids: Series 02 Preview (pt2)

Three more for you, and a little tidbit: in Series 02 there are only four 2/16 ratio designs. That means that in any full case you’ll end up with 12 different designs in total, unlike Series 01 where you would end up with only 10!

Name: Bluebot
Artist: Google, Inc
Ratio: 2/16

Name: Racer
Artist: Jeff Yaksick for the Android Team
Ratio: 1/16

Name: Rupture
Artist: Doktor A
Ratio: 1/16

Meet the Androids: Series 02 Preview (pt1)

Just a little over a year after the debut of Android Mini Collecibles Series 01, we’re showing off some sneak previews of Series 02! Many thanks to the fans, collectors, shops and most of all Google for making the first series such a success.

Name: Hexcode
Artist: Andrew Bell
Ratio: 2/16

Name: Cupcake
Artist: Gary Ham
Ratio: 1/16

Name: Greeneon
Artist: Google, Inc
Ratio: 2/16

Each of these three have a little surprise of their own, but I’ll leave that up to you to find out when they arrive!

Series 02 will be hitting the dead zebra shop and dozens of stores both online and in meatspace in early March! More details and previews as we get closer to release!

While you wait, you should see what Android fan Carsten did with one of his figures!

Good news everyone! Androids will be in shops!

I‘ve had a talk with the G–men, and we are clear to open up Android minis to wholesale customers once again! What does this mean? More Androids, more places, making them easier to get in the future. You’ll be able to find future releases in toy, tech and specialty shops, both online and in meatspace!

While there will be a few editions that remain exclusive to the Dead Zebra shop and Google, Inc, you’ll be able to find Standard Androids, Do It Yourself Androids (a new and improved version) and Series 02 at shops across the world!

Series 02 is in the works and is due out Q1 2011 along with an easier to disassemble version of the Do It Yourself Androids! Look for some Standard Androids in a new standalone box (not marked series 01) at select shops this fall.

If you are a merchant and you have been in touch about wholesale distribution, we’ll add you to the list when reservation information goes out. If you have a shop and haven’t been in touch, you can e-mail our distributor DKE Toys with your business information at dkelemer@aol.com with the subject “Android Wholesale” to get on their offering list!

Do-It-Yourself Androids coming soon / SDCC update!

We take a break from our regularly scheduled production party to bring word that pure white blank Do-It-Yourself Androids will be coming soon! We’ll be bringing a small number of them to the International Comic-Con this week, along with several cases of Series 1. Blanks will be available for $6 each, with Series 1 at $7 and cases at $110, we will be limiting the number of sales each day to give more attendees a chance!

Can’t make it to Comic-Con? D-I-Y and Series 1 will be available again online shortly after our return from sunny California! We will be doing some shop beta testing sales the last week of July, and hope to be open for business the first week of August. Want to help beta test the shop and guarantee yourself some sweet vinyl love? Leave a comment with your e-mail address and country (it will not be published to the public) and we will randomly select participants from those comments!

One more thing…

Copperbot Android t-shirts! With metallic copper ink! Available at the booth for $20 (or $17 in a 3 pack with other shirts), and available online along with the toys once the shop relaunches!

Android mini production – Part 1: groundwork

While we all sit quietly and wait patiently for the next shipment of Android Series 1 mini figures to arrive, I thought I would entertain / inform you with a series of posts chronicling the creation of these little guys from start to finish!

It all started with this logo and a couple of designers working on the Android platform. Like many designers these days, they had become fans of the growing genre of limited edition vinyl figures created by artists specifically for an art-collecting adult audience. With a great mascot, a love of all things collectible, and a desire to do something cool, they set about to bring their idea to life.

Luckily another friend of theirs at Android happened to know someone with experience in vinyl collectible production, which is where I came in!

At the end of 2008 we started talking about the best way to go from logo to collectible. Could we adjust Android to an existing platform? Should we do a large expensive collectible? Can they all have different heads? Would a mini series be cool? Is blind box a fun format for tech centric people who may not be as familiar with the concept as traditional toy collectors? During the course of our discussions I threw together this mock-up of what a figure of the logo could actually look like.

It seemed that we were heading in the right direction with a multiple design mini series. I quickly created a set of simple concepts to illustrate that a series would give us the opportunity to create a variety of designs and showcase the versatility of their deceptively simple mascot. Even though these were early concepts, you can see that a few of the ideas and design elements made it all the way to the final products. Some designs (such as BSOD-BOT shown here) were scrapped for pretty obvious PR / legal reasons. Still, it was worth a shot!

With the concept hammered out and an OK from the big Android himself Andy Rubin, the project was a go! We were all set to create a mini series with a relatively small budget for a small quantity of figures destined for internal promotions and giveaways. Yes, originally these guys were not necessarily going to find their way into the hands of fans and collectors (and some of you would argue that they still haven’t!). This was shaping up to be a fun project, and I knew it would have some appeal in the world at large, although how much appeal was hard to judge. Selling collectibles based on mobile operating systems was an untested market to say the least. Thanks to the enthusiasm (and legal wrangling) of the guys at Android, we were able to work out a deal wherein I could produce a few more units to be sold directly to fans and shops.

Next Installment: Getting down to business on design.