Review – Kill!’s Godamnit

“Godamnit! – the blasphemous kaiju of atheism, devourer of outrageous religious beliefs.”
— from the front of the card

I’m not quite sure what I think of this tiny plastic toy from Kill! (website, Twitter). On the one hand, this is a crude, ugly piece of work that feels more like an over-sized gumball toy . . . but on the other hand the screwy little guy looks like a fun little art project that found its way from a clay design to a plastic toy, which is kinda neat.

A Rough Sculpt

The photo below gives you a good look at the toy’s basic sculpt. Standing roughly 4-inches tall, this one-piece design is (as I mentioned) crude, roughly shaped and formed with shallow, uneven lines giving the toy a little bit of surface detail. Unlike a lot of designer toys on the market — which feature clean, machine-quality surfaces and lines — Kill!’s Godamnit toy is proudly a work of human hands that didn’t bother to spend hundreds of hours smoothing and shaping the figure.

I’m not sure if I love this approach, or if I see it as a lazy way to design toys. Seriously, this little plastic chunk has me torn in two; I can really appreciate the rough, primitive-like design of the toy but I also wish that it weren’t quite so rough in some places. The face, for example, is little more than some crude teeth carved in and two massive depressions — the deepest parts on the toy — mashed in for eyes. This kinda feels like something I would create if I was left to design a similar, tiny toy. I don’t have the patience or skill to sand away for hours, and maybe it’s my own frustration with my lack of patience that has me so unsure of my feelings about this toy.

Simple Paint App

I’ve got two versions of this toy, the basic black and one that Kill! applied some paint to. As you can see in the photos, the paint is nothing more than a quick spray across the body with the horns painted silver. It’s nowhere near as cool as some of the spray effects we’ve seen on the toys often displayed over at toybot studios, but it’s not terrible or anything. In fact, it again feels like exactly the sort of thing I would do if I found myself spraying 10 or 20 toys at once.

No, the Head Doesn’t Twist

This guy has absolutely no articulation at all, even if the photo above does make it look like his head can twist left to right. And it isn’t that he was cast as two parts and then glued together, since I can feel inside the toy and it’s completely smooth. Was Kill! planning a cut neck joint, or did he just try to give the toy a little definition on the back?

Closing Thoughts

Maybe it’s just me, but this toy feels a hell of a lot like a mirror. I can see a lot of what I would do in it — from the rough sculpt to the simple spray paint application — and that’s kinda bugging me since I would like to do better than this. Kill!’s Godamnit isn’t the neatest toy on my shelves, but it’s something I’m gonna keep and study.

And I may just have to paint that blank black one. But if I do then it’s gonna get more than a basic spray app.

Philip Reed now wants to create a toy cooler than this and go the full distance, taking it all the way to vinyl production, just so that he can prove to himself that he can do better than this. Philip is also very, very dumb if he thinks he has time for creating a vinyl toy.