Word: kidrobot
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They aren't robots, but they are all products sold by a four-year-old company called Kidrobot. With an aesthetic that might be termed cute with attitude, Kidrobot's toys have built a following among kids and adult collectors, with sales last year of $6.2 million. Founder Paul Budnitz is a bit of a misfit in toyland, but his outsider aesthetic won Kidrobot admirers from the worlds of art, fashion and nightlife. "Paul Budnitz is the Warhol of this generation," says Peter Gatien, a New York nightclub promoter whose new Toronto spot, Circa, will devote an entire floor...
...copy of Das Kapital will join such Dunnys as a smoking Mao Zedong and "Mrs. Mao" on April 27. Fastidious refrigerator natives, Ice-Bots use crampons and ice picks to navigate your freezer. "Purely happy is completely uninteresting," Budnitz says. "Cute and mad, cute and scary are interesting." At Kidrobot's three boutiques, the toys range in price from $6 to $2,000, but there's only one copy of each displayed, to prime a sense of exclusivity and ownership...
That combination is proving irresistible to creative types on the lookout for a collaborator who is utterly commercial without sacrificing cool. Japanese design icon Takashi Murakami and artists from Brooklyn to Hong Kong have designed toys sold by Kidrobot. Its vinyl characters have sported clothing by Marc Jacobs and Jil Sander, and New York City's Barneys sells an exclusive line of Kidrobot sneakers...
Budnitz's breakout deal, though, could be the one he just signed with the San Francisco digital-animation studio Wild Brain. It opens the arena of TV shows, animated shorts and feature films to Kidrobot's characters. "It's going to blow everything away," says Budnitz. Says Wild Brain CEO Charles Rivkins, former head of the Jim Henson Co.: "A portion of Paul's vision has been capital constrained...
That's about to change. The Kidrobot empire may soon include a "lifestyle store" in New York City, selling everything from large-scale art and clothing to, perhaps, furniture, as well as a new boutique in London or Paris. "We're kind of being set loose," says Budnitz--to wherever his imagination can take him. The doll business may never be the same...