Review – oOMoSOo’s Snot Beasts

Ready for a peek at another resin toy design? Up next is oOMoSOo’s (blog, Flickr, Etsy) Snot Beast, a 1-inch resin beastie that’s disgusting and fun all at the same time. This little guy looks like he should have been on the market with Garbage Pail Kids and Madballs, but instead he’s totally new. And sold out.

Original Art on the Box!

Check it out, guys! My two Snot Beast toys arrived in a snazzy brown cardboard box that was decorated with an original drawing. I love it when artists put effort into personalizing the stuff they ship out. It’s a tiny thing, but in this case the shipping package was a hint of what was to come inside . . .

And Original Art on each Header Card!

It looks as if every Snot Beast’s header card was custom designed and illustrated . . . no photocopying or printing here! For the $8.50 I spent on each of the toy’s I certainly didn’t expect unique header cards . . . we’re off to a great start. Let’s rip open the bags and . . . wait a minute. Okay, the header cards are attached in a way that you can open the bags without and tearing. So I can remove the toys, play with them, and then return them to their packaging. Nice touch!

A Nasty Little Monster

And here we get a look at one of the two Snot Beast resin toys. Something you need to keep in mind as you read this review is that these toys are only 1-inch tall; the toys are bigger than the photos shown here. Two mouths and four eyes give the creature two faces and gives me the option of displaying what almost looks like two completely different sculpts on the shelf.

A very, very rough sculpt, the Snot Beast is a bloby monster with an arm ending in a mitten-like hand, a tentacle-like arm, two feet, and several tentacle-like tails. It’s an imaginative creation that makes for a cute and disgusting monster and — perhaps more importantly than anything else — is totally unlike anything I would have ever created. After all, what’s the fun in a resin toy that looks like something I would have designed?

The monster’s paint is as clean as we should want for a rough design, with the colors in their proper places but everything covered in a light wash that gives the beast that “fresh from the nose” look that any true snot monster should have. The red one shown here included a note that says:

“You’ve been picking too much.”

Ew. Disgusting. And adds just a little touch of character to the toy.

$10 for a 1-Inch Toy?

One of the best parts about running a website that shows toys of all makes and models is the posts and e-mails from people who look at resin/art toys and start asking why the toys are so much more expensive than what we find in the local Target or Wal-Mart stores. After some personal experience with resin toy design/manufacturing I can say that most of the people who are selling resin toys are not making a profit on these. At best, most of the resin toy makers are breaking even on their projects; consider it a self-financing hobby and not a source of funds.

So why even bother? Because of the love of art and the thrill of making toys. With the feel of plastic firmly in place once the resin solidifies, resin toy creation is the closest that many of us will ever get to design and selling toys. And who hasn’t looked at their toy collection and had the desire to make something? I know I can’t convince anyone out there that resin toys are properly priced — and maybe even in some instances under-priced — but I thought that it was worth a few moments to mention the subject of price and the reasons I feel the price is acceptable.

And besides. Every resin toy is hand crafted and (if it’s not a blank or special color/casting effect) hand-painted. Resin toys truly are pieces of art and cannot be thought of in the exact same way that you think of toys that were manufactured in a factory in China. Without assembly lines, a low cost of living, and specialized equipment the resin toy manufacturers do everything on their own and do it for the love of making toys. Not for the “profit” that many people imagine when they look at the $10 price tag on a 1-inch toy.

Closing Thoughts

Sorry about that diversion into pricing. As you can see in the photos the Snot Beasts are disgusting and crude, rough toy sculpts with paint applications the bring out the disgusting nature of the toys. Fans of tiny toys should keep their eyes on the Etsy shop for a chance to snag one of these when they reappear, because these little resin toys are just neat enough that collectors should consider adding one to their toy shelf.

My favorite part of the design? It has to be that the toy has two faces and looks like a completely different toy when you turn it around. Great idea, and the execution of the concept works perfectly.

Philip Reed can now say that the secret project that has been consuming so much of his time is no longer secret. After a year of work — and a year of keeping the project secret — he’s free to talk about it. And that’s a relief. But that’s not at all related to toys, so he shouldn’t even bother mentioning the project here.