Review – Spencer Hibert’s Mini Miigii

NOTE: I know it’s not Monday, but I’ve been so messed up and slow on posting toy reviews that I wanted to get this online. Tomorrow is my last travel day so I hope to return to my regular schedule by Friday. Thanks for your patience, guys.

Back in July, while on vacation, Gina and I visited Red Hot Robot where we found a lot of cool toys (and even bought a few of them). One of the more unusual things we encountered had to be the Miigii capsule toys by artist Spencer Hibert. Local to the Arizona area, Hibert’s toys on display at the shop included some awesome rotocast resin pieces that were way outside of my budget . . . and these little blind box capsule toys that were priced at $10/box. Knowing I wasn’t likely to encounter these again I grabbed two boxes.

Wanna see what was inside?

Packaging

Packed in brown boxes with stickers applied to the outside, there’s no reason to save these boxes. The boxes are some generic item that was no doubt found in a supply catalog so I’m not gonna feel any guilt at all the moment I toss these in the trash.

Opening each box revealed a basic toy capsule; this is the sort of plastic container we’ve all seen before and, again, nothing really special. One of them had some paint splattered on it but nothing so exciting that I’ll keep the capsules.

Basically, the packaging is functional but disposable.

Miigii

Simple plastic toys, the Miigii — more details can be found at www.miigiiland.com — are roughly 1.5″ to 2″ tall and completely hollow. These are obviously inexpensively-produced toys — a seam runs down the center of each piece and the plastic feels very weak — and they’re much lighter than I expected when glancing at the samples at Red Hot Robot. I fully expected capsule toys in a designer toy store to be something more than you would ordinarily pull from a machine but I was wrong.

Each box includes two Miigii: one unpainted and one custom painted and signed by the artist. As you can see in the photos the paint jobs aren’t detailed or elaborate; they’re nice splatter and running paint effects but they’re nothing as nice as I’ve seen on many custom and resin toys that are out there. Unfortunately, these paint jobs feel like they were mass produced in one or two sittings and not work that was difficult for the artist to produce.

It’s not that these are bad or poorly-designed capsule toys. Not at all. The design is cute, the plastic and packaging feels perfectly acceptable for this type of toy (the box, in fact, is too much for something out of a capsule machine), and the packed in sticker sheets (I’m getting to that) are a great addition (if a little blurry). No, the problem with this toy concept has to be the $10 price.

I fully admit that I have no idea what these cost to produce, how many of them were made, or how much time the artist spent painting each one . . . but none of that really matters this time around because these feel like cheap toys that you expect to snag for $0.50 or $0.75 in a capsule machine. And maybe that’s what the blank ones cost out in the real world, but I paid $10 for a box of two and that’s just too high for what I got.

Stickers

Each capsule included a sticker sheet with three stickers that are designed to be applied to the toys. These wacky face designs are cute, the sticker sheets feel durable, and the entire concept is a great idea since it allows anyone to customize the included toys. If these sticker sheets are packed with the loose capsule toys that are out there in the world, and if a capsule with a toy costs under $1, then this is excellent.

The images below show the sticker sheets that were included in my packs. I have not yet applied these to my Miigii toys — and I may not, I still haven’t decided — but I have peeled the stickers up a little and they feel just fine.

Closing Thoughts

I’m very disappointed with these little toys. I was excited by the idea of designer capsule toys and I expected these to have wicked, wacky paint jobs with a lot of detail and crazy concepts. When I pulled toys with paint effects that felt like something I’ve seen over and over I felt let down by the concept of designer capsule toys.

I packed these for my recent trip because they are small, don’t weigh much, and I wanted to spend a little more time with them before finishing up this review. Unfortunately, I feel like I should have skipped these and added some more cash to the $20 in order to grab one of the resin pieces (like this one in his shop that is large, clear, and looks fantastic). My attempt to go cheap backfired on me and I now regret my purchase.

I may still buy one of Hibert’s resin pieces — the ones I saw at Red Hot Robot were amazing — but I’m going to be a lot more careful the next time I run across a designer capsule toy.

Philip Reed doesn’t typically buy “capsule” toys but then, to be fair, he doesn’t usually encounter capsule toys by an artist/designer. Now he’s wondering what it would take to design a neat, weird toy and get it picked up by a capsule toy manufacturer. Because, you know, he doesn’t have enough going on in his life.