Review – Jesse DeStasio’s GLYUTS

Line: Glyos * Year: 2010

Announced last month (mentioned here), Jesse DeStasio’s GLYUTS custom toys blend together Mattel’s old GUTS toy line (see millionaireplayboy.com) with Onell Design’s Glyos System series. GUTS was a series of “army men”-like toys and it took some real madness and creativity to look at two completely different toy lines and decide to combine them.

I love that kind of madness.

GLYUTS Reporting for Action!

Using Buildman, Phase Arm, and standard Glyos figure parts for the arms, the GLYUTS figure does an awesome job of almost seamlessly blending the GUTS toy with the Glyos parts. The colors are almost a perfect match — is that luck or was Matt (Onell Design) inspired by the older line? — and what’s even more shocking is that the Glyos pegs snapped perfectly into the GUTS shoulder sockets. I don’t have any GUTS toys to check, but it really looks like all Jesse had to do was pop off the GUTS arms and then snap on the Glyos arms.

That’s impressive as hell! And even if Jesse had to drill out the sockets a little, the overall effect looks like the two toy lines were designed to work together.

Actually, Not a Lot of “Customizing” Was Needed

Between the peg/socket fit and the colors, Jesse’s job creating these was pretty much limited to the concept — which was a great idea and something I never would have thought of — and a little green paint on the Glyos parts and GUTS body to give the toy a semi-camouflage effect. What really impresses me about this custom toy is just how much of the design was creativity and how little of it was actual assembly/construction.

I fully expect to see someone else find an old toy line from the eighties and combine it with Glyos. Especially if it’s an obscure, nearly unwanted, and cheap to grab eighties toy series. I mean, Battle Beasts would be a natural fit, but the Battle Beasts toys are way too expensive to use as a base for custom toys. Old Starcom toys (see Virtual Toy Chest), though, might work perfectly and be affordable.

Look, a Comic!

As if the figure design wasn’t a cool enough idea, Jesse called on the services of October Toys forum member Ralph (see his Flickr photostream here) to assist him in cranking the dial up from awesome to insanely amazing. How? By dropping in a fantastic comic book that showcases the GLYUTS toys. It’s short, shows how the soldiers acquire their Glyos parts, and leaves the story with “To be continued . . . ” I’m not sure if it’s really going to be continued, but the idea of including a comic with the custom toy is something I love and an idea I’ll have to steal one of these days.

Closing Thoughts

At $20 this was an expensive figure, but its oddity combined with its rarity and sheer insanity make it a fun Glyos custom for my toy collection. I wouldn’t buy another one of these if Jesse decided to release a second wave of GLYUTS toys, but I’m happy that I have one for my shelf of Glyos toys.

Hardcore Glyos fans who love custom toys will want one of these, but those of you who aren’t fans of the whole “art toy” movement will have absolutely no interest in this piece. You guys would be much better off hitting the Glyos Buildstation where you can grab five figures for the price of one GLYUTS figure.

Me, I’m crazy enough that I’ve chosen both the “buy customs” and the “buy Buildstation” options.

Philip Reed has been working on some different Glyos custom toys, and even started blending a fake Madball figure with a Glyos Armodoc, but he hasn’t tried tackling his own custom wave of toys. Maybe one of these days.