Artist and Stanford University professor Grace Hawthorne is behind Paper Punk, a unique building block system made of paper for creating design objects or toys. Fab currently has Paper Punk products available to purchase. Additional designs are available at the Paper Punk store.

With a few simple folds, colorful 2D flat shapes transform into bold 3D geometric pieces to create spectacular looking paper toys and art forms. It was founded with a simple ambition – to enable people to exercise their creativity and make things with their hands.

Paper Punk was a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign in 2011. Here is the video from that campaign:

via Fab

Actor and musician Lance Reddick plays a very intense small business owner in Toys R Me from Funny or Die.

A heartfelt exploration of the life of a small business owner.

Marilyn Dyptich recreated by Jocelyne Grivaud. Original by Andy Warhol.

Portrait de Mona Lisa, dit La Joconde recreated by Jocelyne Grivaud. Original by Leonardo da Vinci.

L’evidence Eternelle recreated by Jocelyne Grivaud. Original by Rene Magritte.

Poupée Barbie is the 2009 art series from French artist Jocelyne Grivaud where she recreated images from classic art works (as well as famous photographs and films) using a Barbie doll. She created the images to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the world-famous doll.

This design needed time to take root, as often. The whole story began one day, in November 1967, with a present, all tenderness.
It was pink, vaporous and extremely delicate. With the patience of an angel, my mother had secretly knitted a dressing gown and tiny bootees for my Barbie. It seems to me there were more clothes, but these bootees, with their little pink knots on top totally fascinated me.

Then I grew up. The doll vanished, but I kept in mind the elegance and grace of my Barbie as well as a little bootee deep down my secret box.

One day, the idea of extending the happy part of my childhood through pictures I love took shape. Barbie is often criticized for being too blonde, too superficial, too skinny, too “ideal marketing”, too “this” and too “that”…. My aim was to adjust this so famous profile to different emblematic representations.

via designboom

images via designboom, Jocelyne Grivaud, The Menil Collection, Wikipedia, and Art History Archive

The Just-Us League of Stupid Heroes is a set of collectible action figures where MAD Magazine character Alfred E. Neuman is creepily mashed-up with familiar superheroes from DC Comics, like Batman, Superman and Aquaman. The figure’s Series 1 will be available to purchase at DC Direct starting on April 4, 2012.

The dumb just keeps getting dumber with the return of the Just-Us-League of Stupid Heroes, featuring Mad Magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman in classic Justice League costumes! Timed to coincide with Mad’s historic 60th anniversary, each figure features multiple points of articulation and stands 6″ tall.

via Nerdcore

Ron English has created a Fat Tony vinyl toy figure that satirizes Kellogg’s iconic mascot, Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes cereal. You may remember recently when a series of English’s parody cereal boxes were placed on a shelf at a grocery store in California. One of those boxes was labelled “Sugar Frosted Fat” from “Killikids” and featured an image of Fat Tony. According to Clutter, this toy will soon be available in very limited quantities at your local toy store.

UPDATE: Fat Tony is now available for pre-order at BigBadToyStore.

via Popaganda

images via Clutter

Cubelets is a modular robot construction system that is simple enough for children to enjoy (video). The system is based around single function cubes that act, sense, or think. The cubes can be snapped together magnetically to create functioning robots. Cubelets is by Modular Robotics, a new company founded by Carnegie Mellon University researchers.

via Hizook

This highly detailed Steve Jobs action figure is by toy company in icons. It features interchangeable hands so that Steve can hold a 1/6th scale iPhone (not included) or clasp his chin thoughtfully. The action figure is not authorized by the Jobs camp so it is unlikely to survive the imminent legal barrage (and the site is currently down due, presumably, to overwhelming traffic). The figure is scheduled for release in February.

via The Next Web

Partially inspired by the reality television show Hoarders, artist and photographer Carrie M. Becker has imagined “a more ‘current’ view of Barbie’s lifestyle” in the image set, Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse. She created these amazingly detailed 1/6th scale models of various “dreamhouse” rooms lying in squalor as part of her artist-in-residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina using “repurposed generic barbie toys” and other small doll pieces, in addition to many handmade items.

The Riney Fine Arts Center Gallery at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas will show Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse in September 2012.

From the artist’s statement:

As ridiculous as it would sound, in light of my many-year obsession with the Japanese culture of the small, Kawaii is a relatively new term to me. At it’s core, the word means “childlike”, “sweet”, and “innocent”, with darker connotations such as “vulnerable”, “weak” and “socially inexperienced”.

Why should this matter? I’ve been trying to justify my collection and the time “wasted” setting up scenes to shoot them. I make haste to liken this process to one I knew more formally during the time spent photographing room scenes for commercial purposes. I am doing the same thing, albeit on a smaller (literally!) scale. But where does the drive stem from? Why miniature? Why small things associated with my youth? Why now? I have been temped by a growing subculture.

via Super Punch

photos by Carrie M. Becker

The Plush Easter Island Moai is a mini soft version of the iconic stone giants of Rapa Nui. It is available at Myriah’s Polynesian Bazaar.

Here’s an Easter Island Moai that will stand guard over your bed or provide a soft pillow for your neck! He has “Rapa Nui” embroidered on his back and measures about 11-1/2″ tall x 5″ wide.

via Tiki Talk

Riley, the young girl in the video Riley on Marketing, delivers an exasperated rant directed to the marketing department of toy manufacturers on the wrongs of segregated gender-based packaging. Standing in an aisle full of pink toys marketed to girls, she says, “Girls want superheroes AND the boys want superheroes!…Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses…”

via Felicia Day

London-based artist David T Waller created Car Atlas – Rainbow, a beautiful art installation using nearly 2,500 toy cars arranged in a giant circular rainbow pattern. In 2010, it was displayed at Artsdepot’s Apthorp Gallery and “received the highest number of votes for people`s favourite artwork”.

via Colossal and Jessica Pierce

photos by David T Waller

Air Swimmers are huge helium-filled flying remote control sea life. The “high-quality nylon” Air Swimmers come in either the shape of either a vicious shark or a clownfish.

RC flying sea creatures are perfect for doling out justice to fish-stalking kitties or just scaring the pants off the guy in the next cube over. (If you wear headphones and have your backs to us, you’re just asking to get pranked.)

The Air Swimmers RC flying sea creatures stalk through the air with incredibly smooth and life-like motion.

via ThinkGeek

If you enjoyed these scans, the folks at WishbookWeb have posted several collections of wish book images issued by different companies over a variety of years.

via Modern Kiddo

images via Wishbook and Enniskillen

Clothing brand Johnny Cupcakes has just released Johnny Cupcakes Vinyl Toys, their first collection of vinyl toys. The toys come in a choice of either Crossbones, their scented crossbone & cupcake logo or a rounded child figure named Big Kid. The toys were first shown at New York Comic Con 2011 but just now available for purchase. The retro-style packaging was created by design studio, Pilot.

Kyle Bean and Thomas Forsyth handmade the Wooden Smartphone, a toy smartphone with removable blocks that represent apps. It was used for the December 2011 cover and inside spread of Computer Arts magazine for an article titled Design Brilliant Apps.

A note about the project from Kyle Bean:

…I decided to create a wooden toy style phone where the apps are represented as wooden blocks than can slot in and out and be repositioned. I worked with the very talented Thomas Forsyth who helped me construct the wooden phone frame at his workshop.

via Super Punch

images via Kyle Bean and Computer Arts

The 1960s Sixfinger from Topper Toys was a clever toy for kids (marketed to boys) that provided an extra finger for fun. The commercial for it is a hoot and shows off its many features, such as writing with its hidden ballpoint pen, shooting off cap bombs at your pals and more. Ignore the obvious phallic shape and revel in its singing ad that will make you wonder “how you ever got along with five”.

via Boing Boing

image via Sam’s Toy Box

Zombie Attack Barbie by Sarah Anne Langton

From the 1950s onwards girls were encouraged to hone their zombie slaughtering skills in preparation for the inevitable apocalypse. Though young ladies dispose of the undead with ease today, toys such as Mattel’s 1962 ‘Zombie Attack Barbie’ were instrumental in helping to habituate girls to a new social norm where zombie disposal would become a very necessary life skill.

Now a collectors item ‘Zombie Attack Barbie’ played a salient role in ensuring the survival of countless young girls who grew up ready and willing to slaughter the zombie menace. This much loved toy still holds fond memories for so many of the lovely ladies from our Zombie Clearance Squads today.

As part of the huge 40th anniversary celebration for their instant noodle soup product, Cup Noodle, Nissin created the the limited edition transformable Robo Cup Noodle Timer. This Cup Noodle-shaped toy transforms into a blinking and talking robot with a 3-minute timer for prepping a real Cup Noodle. The timer was developed by Japanese robotics company Vstone and is only available in a lottery sponsored by Nissin.

via Technabob

images via Vstone

Tom Jenkins of film and production company, The Theory, created Address is Approximate as a personal stop-motion animation project. This beautifully made film short uses images from Google Maps with Street View to follow the automobile adventures of a toy figure with a bad case of wanderlust.

A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

via Doobybrain.com

PhD candidate Jun Axup has created a series of plush DNA molecule dolls (that magnetically-interact where they naturally hydrogen bond) called Biochemies as a way to promote science education, “especially to bring more girls into science & technology”. She has launched a campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds for the project.

Jun describes her inspiration for Biochemies:

“The best way to capture girls’ attention is plushies!” I said during a car ride in January of this year.

Something sparked. Two weeks later, this was made.

I’ve never sewed anything before, but with a trip to the fabric store and some googling, Bio+chemies is now a plush toy!

HEXBUG Larva is a miniature autonomous robot that wriggles about rather like a bug larva (video). When sensors on the Larva detect an obstacle, the robot changes direction. HEXBUG produces a variety of insect-inspired robot toys.

via Technabob

Check out this LEGO Systems television ad from 1960 uncovered from archivist Ira Gallen of TVDays.

via How to be a Retronaut

The Doctor Who Ride-In Dalek inflatable riding toy is made for young children 65 lbs. and under (sorry grown-ups!). Not only does this toy Dalek whiz around at speeds up to 2 mph but is equipped with a steering wheel that “has buttons which trigger ten authentic Dalek phrases so your wee geek can let people know that their extermination is at hand”.

via ThinkGeek

Romanian-born Ioan Veniamin Oprea created a very unique one-person act in the shape of a rainbow Human Slinky costume. The costume, and a five-year contract to perform in it, is currently for sale on Ebay for $1 million dollars with the tagline: “The stuff that nightmares are made of”.

The most unusual, astonishing, unique and creative act of its kind in the world to have graced these pages…Almost beyond description. People ask….what is it? What are we watching?….Absolutely fascinating to say the least… People everywhere are completely astonished and baffled at the act… Veniamin’s his name…comes from Romania and live in Orlando Florida. With appearances on TV Shows all over the World and mystifying audiences everywhere you just have to see him perform….

via Doobybrain.com

image via Veniamin Shows

The Lean Mean Green Machine is a nine foot long big wheel tricycle that uses a Harley-Davidson engine to propel it to 50 mph. It’s inspired by the original Green Machine, a pedaled toy tricycle released by Huffy in 1975. Just in time for the Christmas season, The Lean Mean Green Machine is available at Hammacher Schlemmer for just $75,000.

via Jalopnik