Review – Jesse DeStasio’s SoundDave

Jesse DeStasio (website, Twitter) recently joined forces with TheGodBeast (website, Twitter) to bring us SoundDave, a 2 1/2-inch tall resin toy that blends different parts together to create unusual, army man-like toys. Out of translucent plastic. And yes, these are strange toys.

Packaging

Bag with header card, so nothing out of the ordinary or exciting here. What is cool, though, is the artwork on the header card which is by Nathan Newell of Dork Dimension. I’ve mentioned before how I’d love to get Nate to illustrate one of my own resin toy projects and all this art does is reinforce that thought. A fantastic illustration of the SoundDave — the Transformers Soundwave design blended with a normal guy holding a beer — concept by Jesse.

Tiny Art Objects

One of the things we’ve often seen here at battlegrip.com is art as toys and toys as art, and SoundDave here firmly lands in the “toys as art” category of Toyville. I can’t say I completely understand Jesse’s social commentary, but I can say that the mash-up of regular dude with outlandish parts — I’ve got the Soundwave head figure and a figure with spaceman helmet and forearms (and even a gun) — is weird enough to make me smile. I couldn’t tell you where the spaceman head and arms came from, but I strongly suspect that the Soundwave head is straight from the 1986 Transformers Decoys series (information at Teletraan I). Is it a dumb idea? Sure, but it’s also a fun idea. And it’s a weird art object that I’m fairly certain none of my friends own.

Is That All There Is?

Yep. These tiny collectible art toys are not elaborate or fancy, but they’re cute and available in a variety of different colors (Jesse’s store) and just the sort of thing that fans of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men, Battle Beasts, Monster in My Pocket, and other toys that are loved over at the Little Rubber Guys forum will likely find enjoyable additions to their collections of tiny toys.

As with most limited run resin toys these aren’t for everyone, and as with most weird art these will leave a lot of people scratching their heads. As I mentioned already I don’t understand what social commentary Jesse was making with these — and there’s a great chance all he was thinking was something along the lines of “this would be odd and cool” — but what we got here are two well-executed resin toys that are unlike anything else in my collection.

And that’s good enough for me.

Philip Reed is fully expecting to be asked about these two little guys for many years to come. After all, who could resist saying “what the hell is that pink toy?” when looking at Phil’s collection of common, uncommon, and completely bizarre toys?