DDR Projects’ Inaugural show makes it up to the little pachyderm no one loved

“SKUMBO” AT DDR PROJECTS

The vinyl toy revolution of seven/eight years ago, which convinced adults to start collecting action figures, is not without its flaming wreckage. For every Camille Rose Garcia creepy-little-girl-doll we love, for every adorably pitiable Hunchy hunchback-Charlie-Brown figure, for every series of Mars-1 Invisible Plan aliens that rules us, there are a few sad little toys no one loves.

Meet Skumbo, a vinyl, horned toy elephant clutching a spear who stands about five or six inches tall—resident of the elephant toy graveyard (population: 1).

“This figure, designed by Tristan Eaton and manufactured by urban toy giant Kidrobot, didn’t sell well,” says vinyl toy authority Juxtapoz magazine. (Named Skumbo? Didn’t sell? Amazing!)

“They didn’t sell for anyone,” says DDR Projects art gallery owner John Geldbach. So Geldbach shipped the remainders to his crack squadron of lowbrow, album-cover, and graffiti artists you’re not familiar with and gave them a do-over.

“We said to five artists, ‘Why don’t you decorate these, and we’ll sell them online,’” Geldbach says. This was the better part of two years ago, when Geldbach ran Devil Doll Records and an online toy Website. And it’s not a new idea: Kidrobot makes other successful vinyl figures—rabbits and such—designed in translucent, unpainted “blank” form to be decorated. But really, you can repaint anything; and slowly, five Skumbos turned into 25, turned into 56 (57 counting Morpheus, who ruined his own toy and had to buy a new one). A gallery and a show, “Hijacked” (subtitle: “Because homage is just another word for stealing”), were born.

Except.

“I don’t want to create a lowbrow [art] gallery. I don’t want to sound uptight. I kind of think there’s too many of them,” Geldbach says of his new art gallery—and wisely: the East Village’s Alpha Cult toy store/art gallery is 10 minutes away. “Quality and diversity were always the thing with my record label, and I kind of want this to be the same way.” So the next show, he says, will be artier art. But for now: a toy art show with toy elephant monsters. And quite a good one, at that.

There’s no real beginning. “Hijacked” is just a stream-of-consciousness blurt of elephants on parade around the room on eye-level shelves, so start at the center, where a few examples are scattered on a table, and Rob Ames of Triclops Studio serves up Skumbo.wl as a cereal bowl. He chops off the elephant’s head, paints it high-gloss white, balances it on its ears, and serves what looks like Cheerios in it. With milk. That’s good elephant head. The milk carton’s real but empty. The cereal box nearby is empty but fake: it’s Corn Fakes cereal, and Ames did all the graphics for that, too. Skumbo originally sold for $49, then $18 or $19 on markdown. Skumbo.wl is $300—which presumably buys you the cereal, the box, and the carton. But could you make one yourself? Would you?

Could you do what Morpheus (a.k.a. Ali Coleman) did: turn Skum into Skummoth, a tiny woolly mammoth with brown-spotted black fuzzy fur and long yaller clay tusks and horns? On deadline?

“He hit us up—he was like, ‘I messed mine up,’” Geldbach says. “And we didn’t have any more. So he found another one somewhere. This was all in about a week. I was really impressed.” Yep, just like a teeny woolly mammoth—but cute, with Pac-Man eyes.

Almost as cuddly, Kenn Munk delivers Skumask, just Skumbo’s face carved off or used as a mold for an elephant’s gas mask. Joe Ferstl adds a cape and wings to give us a bat-lephant, the vampire-y Gopper. David Krys turns Skumbo into a red devil (an easy natural, given the horns)—but he adds electricity and a bulb coming out of the elephant’s tiny trunk, making him a lamp. Artist Upso riffs on all the long-legged robot toys of yore with Day Glow Effigy, a matte fluorescent Skumbo with legs all the way up to here.

And perhaps the best, Roy Wasson Valle gives us Lady Friend, tucked in the corner—the show’s only other mechanized Skumbo. Lady is bright pink and smiley, and his/her eyes are closed in bliss. Why? Push that button on the back, and he/she vibrates. Now, there’s an adult vinyl toy everyone can get behind. This Skumbo might even sell.

HIJACKED DDR PROJECTS | 1532 EAST BROADWAY | LONG BEACH 90802 | 562.590.9030 | DDRPROJECTS.COM | WED-FRI 11AM-7PM; SAT 11AM-6PM; SUN 11AM-5PM | THROUGH SEPT 30 | FREE

Tags: ddr projects, elephants, skumbo, vinyl toys