TRU T-Rex

Elaine and the Toys R Us T-Rex.

Elaine and Kurt went to Toys R Us for research. If you’ve been to the TRU in Manhattan you’ve seen this, but we are riveted by their Jurassic Park life-size T-Rex every time.

Monster book by colleague

My old art director, Timothy Young, from my first toy industry job at the bizarre and now defunct idea factory has just had his first book published! It is called I'm Looking for a Monster, published by Random House. Lift the flaps and pull the tabs to find the monsters. I will admit that I haven't seen it in person, yet, but I'm pretty sure that it will be awesome and maybe just a little bit SCARY!

Secret Lego Vault

I hope someday I get to work on a Lego design. I found this link with a video walk-thru of a vault where they keep almost every Lego set ever made at Gizmodo!

Check it!

Retro Toys

Many who are adults in the toy business today will remember most of these. I found this link to a slide show of old school toys. I didn’t personally have them all; but I have a big family, so most of these were in my house. There are only two we didn’t have — the Slip ‘N Slide and Lemon Twist. My favorites were Merlin (my brother’s), and the Big Wheel (also my brother’s). My “Big Wheel” was what we called the Little Wheel because it was a smaller knock-off. One of my other brothers had the Green Machine — the envy of the block.

Click for link.

Escalators for dummies

There are always unusual characters at the International Licensing Show at the Jabob Javits Center in NYC, but I thought this was pretty funny. I was eating lunch and watching the “…For Dummies” character doing stretching exercises after resting on the floor upstairs at the circle lounge. He must not be allowed to remove the mask in public.
I tried to get my camera out in time to make a video, but he’d gotten up already. I followed him down the escalator after finishing my lunch. He’d decided to dance up and down the escalators for some girls who were also having lunch. By the time I got my camera back out he was resting on the way down.

Millions of Monkeys

Because we have so much time to spare, and not enough to do, I started yet another blog. This was Elaine’s idea, and will be our shared “blog as art” project. She thought of it when I mentioned how much I love Skull-A-Day, a blog that collects images of skulls. Not what you expect. It’s actually fascinating how many different ways skulls can appear. I hope you’ll visit his blog because he sends lots of link to my GirlMonsters blogs.

Back to the Millions of Monkeys. Check it out, and help us out by emailing a monkey pic along with a little explanation of what it is. Send emails to webmonster at monkeydoodledandy dot com. Sorry, no email link. I don’t want junk mail spiders to find me.

Legos inspiration becomes Legos art

Legos always seem to be a very basic inspiration as they probably were early on for many modern day artists. New ideas are hard to come by, and seemingly rare, but sometimes with just the right garnish even Legos become art instead of just inspiring it.
Here are a couple of links I found this weekend.
Artist Group patching spaces in Italian brick walls with Legos here.

Photographer recreating famous photos using Legos here.

Paris loves Tara

One of our very first clients was Tara Toy Corp. in Hauppauge, NY. Elaine used to work there, so that’s where I got my first taste of freelancing in the toy industry.
Recently, we got an email from a friend at Tara who attached the above picture. Apparently Paris Hilton was photographed buying one of Tara’s items – the Barbie® Giant Activity Floor Pad. It was this email that got me thinking we need to start a blog. There’s always some goofy thrill that we’d love to share, but we don’t. We’re busy working, and by the time we get around to sharing stories with our families and friends we find ourselves acting like zombies with no interest in Paris Hilton. I guess that makes sense, though. She hasn’t any tasty brains to offer for a snack. Crayyons. Craaaayyyoooons!!!
We can’t necessarily claim with any certainty that we took part in any of the designs or illustrations in Paris’ particular choice of Barbie® Giant Activity Floor Pad, but we like to think that some pages we worked on may have made it in that one. Don’t worry about staying in the lines, Paris.