Kidrobot - Marvel Labbits
The new blindbox phenomenon is a very interesting and dangerous fad specific to our generation. Overpaying for a small toy without even knowing which one you’ll get is an absolutely ridiculous concept to the average consumer. It’s easy to see this new fad and hearken back to the 90s collector mentality that led to the downfall of the comic and trading card industries, but I feel there is a bit of a difference this time around.
Unlike the comic book boom back in the 90s, I don’t feel that most people are buying the designer toys as an investment for future resale profits. Myself, I buy the blindbox toys for the sake of having and displaying them and I feel this is more the focus. Stemming from the DIY vinyl figures that encouraged people to create their own works, it’s clear to see that the vinyl toy movement is geared towards aesthetics and designers. Of course, the blind box movement is sure to die out eventually, but it has been going strong for quite a while now.
When I heard about the new line of ‘Marvel Labbits’, I was already shopping around for a blindbox set to collect. With the growing popularity, I wanted to be sure that I liked the line of toys before committing money to them. Even now, there are only a couple of blindbox figure sets that I have because I’d rather have more figures from one set than a few figures of a lot of sets.
The Marvel Labbits line is created by the king of vinyl Kidrobot is based on their DIY Labbit line. The artist Frank Kozik is a veteran in the Vinyl toy business, and has a long history of doing poster art for legendary bands. Unlike so many other blindbox lines, the Marvel Labbit series seems to be much more fair, and has a reasonable distribution of all the figures. This means that people won’t be buying box after box in an attempt to get that one ‘chase’ figure, and allows people to easily collect the full set without breaking their bank. I don’t intend on collecting the full set, but I always feel giddy when opening a new box. The moment of opening a new box is half the fun of buying the blindboxes and it’s great to have that child-like excitement of peeling back the cardboard lid.