In this interview, visual artist Quiccs and creative director at Kidrobot, Frank Kozik, sit down with Kidrobot community manager, Steven Gates to discuss toys, their inspiration for designing toys, and the growing movement of toy sculptures becoming an evolutionary art of its own.

Juanito Maiquez, also known as Quiccs, is known for his incredible robot toys inspired by his love for hip-hop, graffiti, and Japanese robot culture. With legendary figures like TEQ63 and the Ghost of Kurosawa, Quiccs has an awesome line of highly detailed robot toys attracting collectors across the globe.

Frank Kozik, Creative Director at Kidrobot, also has an eclectic funhouse style when creating art, posters, and toys, with his signature unshaven cigarette-smoking bunny “Labbit” character taking the world by storm ever since its creation in 1996. Over twenty years later, and the Labbit is still hopping around in different variations today.

In this creative interview, Steven Gates speaks with both the legendary visual artist Quiccs, as well as Kidrobots’ Frank Kozik, to dive a little bit deeper into their creative process and perspective on toy-making. Together, Quiccs and Frank discuss the growing wave of toys now moving into the category of true art, where figures are becoming immortalized much like an ancient painting you may find in a museum.

Both artists discuss how the toy-making scene today parallels the punk scene, in that it’s all inclusive and everybody is welcome, no matter your gender, ethnicity, age, etc. In this video, the allure of “limited edition” collector’s items are also discussed, with Frank sharing how these ‘rare’ and ‘difficult to get’ items can really anchor a collection for a collector and are worth the extra mile and money it takes to get your hands on one.

Closing out the interview, the artists discuss how toy sculptures are not just “toys,” but are experimental forms of new art. In the toy-making world, new genres of art are coming to life each and every day, which is part of what makes Quiccs and Frank Kozik so happy to do the work they do each day.

Read Full Transcription Below: 

Steven: Welcome Haulathoners! My name is Steven, I’m the community manager here at Kidrobot and today I have the pleasure of interviewing two amazing artists. One of which is the creative director here at Kidrobot, Frank Kozik. And the other is an amazing talented artist, Quiccs.

Frank: So I think it’s really great, man. You know, Quiccs is a superstar these days and he’s done it with his own bones, man. Like, you know, here this rando comes out of nowhere in Manila and suddenly he’s like, you know, the best one. And that I think is what I love about the toy scene. Because for me it parallels the punk scene. You know, the designer toy scene is very punk in a very great way.

Steven: Yeah, I never even thought about it like that before, that’s actually a very good point. It’s got like that grassroots, hit-the-ground-running kind of mentality, you know, that build-it-from-the-bottom kinda thing. 

Frank: It also accepts everybody. It doesn’t exclude. Oh, you know, you’re from here - no. You’re a girl - no. Everybody is included and the mix is completely, truly international.

Quiccs: I was definitely inspired by the earlier works of Michael Lau back in the early 2000s. That’s the point that triggered me into aspiring to be a toy designer someday. But I had to wait for twelve years since 2000, for me to know people that knew how to do toys. But there’s a store here called the Secret Fresh, Bigboy Cheng owns it. As early as 2009-2010 they’re already carrying Kidrobot stuff. So that was kind of a dream for me to be able to fulfill, I wanted to be a Dunny artist someday as well.

Steven: Would you say there’s any other sources of inspiration within your artwork?

Quiccs: Japanese robots, hip-hop culture, and graffiti culture. All three of those cultures are the main influences for everything I do. With my toy brand, Quicss, style of toys.

Steven: But what about you Frank, what are some sources for your inspiration on what brought you to your style?

Frank: Well, I’ve always tried not to have a style, and to be able to sort of run with any random thing. I mean for me, it’s a widespread culture. My early influences were a mixture of American shit - right, like American comics, American satire magazines. And like, this really beautiful, high end, European graphic-novel style. My work is like an iminium of trying to copy all these styles that I liked, and then re-interpreting it, because I start out doing a collage, right? And then trying to put some kind of, inject some kind of idea component to it via the vehicle of irony or humor. And it worked for me. You know, I became known for doing the opposite thing of what was expected. If it was a really heavy band, I’d do a happy goofy thing. If it was a happy band, I’d do an evil thing, and it kind of worked, right? And I’d just run with that but to this day, I get interested in new stuff, and I’m like, well I wanna give it a shot, and I’d try doing my version of whatever. So I don’t have this, my own thing. My trick with design is making a fun house version of what I see around me, if that makes any sense. It’s always kind of been my jam. And the big thing at Kidrobot is the Labbit toys, the Labbit toys are basically… Years ago I was in Japan hanging out with these fashion people, and they couldn’t understand why I loved Sanrio so much. And I was like, look there’s this whole thing of animism and mascots, right. And personalities and how you create a really potent symbol that could be anything to anyone, kind of like how Hello Kitty is. And they’re like, you should try doing your thing so, I set out to make like Hello Kitty’s secret sleazy boyfriend character, and that was the Labbit. He's the couch surfer boyfriend. And it worked. And so for a designer, that was a big challenge. How do you create a mascot or icon that will kind of have legs for a long time? And you know, the Labbit has been going strong for almost 25 years.

Steven: Yeah, The Labbit might be one of the more iconic things out there.

Frank: So for me, it’s about re-interpreting what I see around me.

Steven: Recently, Kidrobot has actually collaborated with you on the Ukami Hitsuju art figures, the Hell Bots Mega Tech, and the Red Nakai OG Baby TEQ resign baby tech dunny. Which all sold out in minutes. And what does this tell you? Our fans do want more. But Frank, we’re curious, what is the thought process behind limited runs?

Frank: So we provide, you know, a type of toy where it’s like - it costs a lot of money, and not that easy to get. But if you get it, you know, as a collector it’s a grail piece. It’s a centerpiece. It's big and anchors a collection of smaller pieces, or whatever. So, you know, like the Warhol Bust, right behind you. We’ve been doing a ton of Andy Warhol stuff over the years. It’s all little stuff, it’s affordable. But now it’s like, OK here’s a piece that actually, that can be in Architectural Digest, right? So I like to always have a couple pieces a year, and I love them to be artist figures. We did a thing with Candie Bolton a couple years ago with a Sanrio collab, where it’s just a beautiful sculpture. And so that’s always kind of like, that’s our fashion show. It’s like Chanel has the crazy stuff at the fashion show in Paris, that nobody really buys, or the rich people have. And then there’s the stuff at the outlet mall. So we try to provide that runway edition, that crazy dress, once or twice a year for some of our artists. For Quiccs collectors, we come out with the fiberglass art giant or the really nice 20’ piece. So it’s a nice centerpiece. And then you know that people are willing to go the extra mile to get it because like, there’s only 500 in the whole world. Designer toys are an interesting art form, a new art form. I mean, they came out in the last 20 years, but it never existed. Popular sculptural art only existed as kitsch, like souvenir stuff, or you were like a pope and commissioned a statue. It was really hard to actually get three-dimensional art. So I do think it’s a new form of the arts, and it’s permanent. The genre is valid and exists. So I think like, in years to come, I mean it’s happened with the KAWS pieces, you know. I have a 4’ KAWS piece I bought for $3,000, that thing is worth a half million dollars now. It’s become a real art piece. And I think that for a certain amount of these larger, nicer pieces, they’re destined for that. Because they are important, socially, and culturally in a lot of ways. So we try to provide that for the customers and the artists when possible. And people are like, well they’re just toys, but you know what, man. Quiccs is into graffiti, 30 years ago graffiti was like vandalism, now graffiti it’s in Sotheby’s for Christ’s sake. New art can happen, new genres of art are valid. This is one of them.

Steven: So Quiccs, can you tell us a little bit more about your 20” Voltec Dunny, now available for pre-sale only at Haulathon.com.

Quiccs: As far as the design, it’s obviously inspired by one of the Japanese robots. Super mecha designs that I grew up with. The GoLion. From what you guys know in the States, in the Philippines it’s called Voltron: Defender of the Universe. I first did this design hand painted on one of our friends from Korea’s platform AniToys. I painted this maybe four years ago. It’s the defender of the Dunnys, created by artists, kinda, if I can say that. I’m pretty much excited about this release, and taking one for the team, for the artists like me to be able to be back with Kidrobot to do more collaborations with independent artists such as myself.