Happy New Year!

Dan and I were so busy this Holiday season that we were not able to get away for a vacation. We did go to Monkey House Toys to check out the Mr. Toast art show. The store is in an older section of Los Angeles where there is not much parking available. There were some construction trucks right out front so it was a little tricky to get there. The store is very small but has an eclectic array of toys including lots of monkeys! I purchased a Mr. Toast book, some Mr. Toast pin back buttons, and a couple of the 2010 Dunnys.

DesignerCon and the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Dan and I took a little time off and went to Pasadena on Saturday. The first stop was DesignerCon at the Pasadena Convention Center. DesignerCon (aka DCon) started out as the Vinyl Toy Network Show. The name was changed to cover all aspects of design including plush/fabric design, apparel, print media along with vinyl.


The show was much larger than the show in May of 2008 so there were more vendor and artist booths to see. We purchased a Domo Kun figure, Some Spider Booms as well as a couple of Do-It -Yourself Quees that I will eventually customize. We also purchased a set of small prints from Hyperactive Monkey and an original water color painting of Mr. Toast from Dan Godsell.

Here I am picking out some Spider Boom blind boxes.

Our last stop was the Custom Yoka Show, an exhibit of customized Yoka figurues. It was hard to see all of the designs as it was crowded and everyone was trying to take photos of the figures. Dan managed to take some photos before we left to get some lunch. Here are photos of one of my favorites that was painted to look like Edvard Munch's The Scream and Dan's favorite of the Pancake Yoka.

After Lunch we went to the Pasadena Museum of California Art to see the Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting exhibit. Thiebaud is one of my favorite artists so it was great to see so many of his paintings in person. Many of the paintings are quite large so I spent a a good while just looking and getting drawn into them. Naturally I bought the book on the exhibit!

There was also an exhibit of color block prints by Frances Gearhart which was excellent. It featured illustrations from a children's book, Let's Play, as well as many wonderful landscapes. The bookstore didn't have a book for the exhibit yet but will have one soon. I'll have to pick one up the next time we visit.

Vinyl Toy Network Show, Pasadena

Last weekend Dan, Mike, and I went to the Vinyl Toy Network show at the Pasadena Convention Center. It was very interesting and there were a lot of unusual vinyl toys there.

The first stop was the Mr. Toast table. I found out about this show from the blog a sampler of things. I met the creator, Dan Goodsell and purchased a Mr. Toast plush toy, a key chain, and Imaginary World Comics #2.

Next I found someone who was selling the Spider Baby Boom figures and purchased a couple. I got Daisyboom and Biingaboom (now Softyboom has some siblings!)

We also got some Sketbots, Sheep Dream Stars Dream (Zodiac sheep), Zipit and Muny zipper pulls, a Mint Chocolate Chip Buff Monster (in a very cool package), a weird Liberty Meadows cow keychain, and a very cool Dumb Dummies chase figure.

Mike bought a very cool Rement Donuts To Go set for me. It was the Coconut & Healthy Donuts set. It was really nice of him to do that (but he should have got the Homer as Mr. Sparkle tee shirt for himself instead.)

After overloading on vinyl toys, we decided to get some lunch at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy . They serve delicious hot dogs and deli sandwiches at their old time soda fountain.