A Big Saturday

Strangeco's King Ken Mini hits the streets tomorrow. 5 colours and a collectors chase. Personally I quite like the aqua blue Ken.

And, as previously mentioned, to celebrate JJ will be signing product from 4pm at Playlounge in London's Soho. Many have asked if he will sign items not purchased on the day. The answer is yes but in reason. Please don't bring armfuls of books and figures as it will not be fair to those waiting (and James gets tired). Please be reasonable and he will do his best. Right now there are no restrictions but if people ask too much we will have to limit each person to one product only.

Enough of that... looking forward to meeting people tomorrow.

Until then...

New 10k PB for JJ

I knocked off nearly 40 seconds off my PB on Sunday at the Brookes Brighton 10k, finishing 12th in 32:21. I've done a few smaller 10k races since I came back from my injury at the end of August but this was a much more competitive race. My next outing is the London Cross Country Championships on Parliament Hill which I will be doing just before my signing at Playlounge this coming  Saturday .

James Jarvis Signing at Playlounge

To celebrate the release of Strangeco's King Ken Mini Series 1
Saturday November 22, 4pm - 6pm
Exclusively at Playlounge, 19 Beak Street, London W1F 9RP.

Martin X SE

It is now common knowledge that we have collaborated with fashion brand Silas to celebrate their 10th anniversary and our 10 years of making toys. The red and grey Martin X figures are an update of the very first JJ vinyl figures we produced. But what has remained quiet, until now, is we are producing a third special edition colourway, available exclusively through the Amos online stores (with a handful on-sale at the original Silas store in Daikanyama, Tokyo).

Martin X SE is a tribute to Bounty Hunter who helped us produce the original Martin figures back in 1997/8. We collaborated with BxH earlier this year to produce King Kun, but this Martin X colourway is our personal tribute to them, in recognition of their unique place in the history of designer toy culture. Back in '97 Bounty Hunter's Kid Hunter was the first figure we saw from the new toy culture growing up in Japan. It inspired us to produce our first rotocast figure and with the help of BxH and One Gram, Martin born. So it seems fitting that our own Special Edition 10th anniversary version of Martin should be in the original style of Kid Hunter. And the Anarchy symbol on his hand is in tribute to the punk rock spirit of Hikaru and Taka, and our own D.I.Y. ethos. We hope the next 10 years will be equally creative.

Reviews

Seen a whole bunch of reviews for WWOA in mags and on the net. Here's a couple online we were quite fond of.

Pink Raygun

/Film

Also big thanks to Last Gasp Books in SF for making us last week's book of the week on their mailer.

King Ken Mini at Strangeco

Strangeco (our partners in the US) have announced the official worldwide release date for King Ken Mini.

This is Amos's first licensed figure collection and is intended for a wider audience than our in-house releases.

For more information click here for the Strangeco release info.

Where it all began...REALLY...

This was the first press we ever had for a soft vinyl figure. Seminal UK style mag "The Face" gave us a full page back in the very early days of Silas.

Martin was belatedly released in June 1998. He was the very first Silas product, style code S1000 otherwise listed as TOY.

We had actually originally conceived of Martin as a Holmes product (Slam City Skates's underground street-fashion label that predated Silas). Really Martin should have been released 6 months earlier (maybe at the end of 1997) but the demise of Holmes and the birth of Silas delayed the production. In fact, I would say that perhaps the most valuable of all Silas/Amos/James Jarvis linked paraphernalia would be the first wax mold of Martin, with the original Holmes logo inscribed on his sweatshirt. That piece is owned by a certain Mr Kenichi Omura of Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo, Japan. Offers anyone?

Many thanks to Gregory Holman for the scan.