Most Wanted behind the Hype interview...

Most Wanted(a collection of designer vinyl figures) is dropping their latest figures on Saturday February 19th, 12noon PST here. For a list of artists be sure to look at the right hand side on the blog. But before you go over to see what fantastic pieces you might want, I thought it might be nice to take a moment and talk to one of guys behind the scenes that makes it all happen. So I asked Manne if he'd be up for a interview and the result is below, so CLICK THROUGH for the full interview.

So Manny tell me how the idea for most wanted came about?
In June of '09, after finishing up a small custom trade on the Kidrobot boards, Tim, Igor, and myself started chatting about doing something similar to a trade, but on a larger scale. Even before we could individually blurt it out, we pretty much said at the same time, "What about a custom Dunny series?!?". We noticed all the constant trades going on, and the occasional custom blind box series by individual artists, but nothing to the effect of a blind box series which was driven by fellow boardies and board customizers and artists. Plus, it would be a great way to pay tribute to Kidrobot for breaking most of us into the urban vinyl scene via one of the best platforms out there (at least in our opinion), the Dunny

This is your first major project you've organized right? How was it? Do you have another planned?
Word. MW was the very first large scale project I've personally been involved in as far as custom vinyl and art is concerned. MW Series 2, or MWII as we like to call it, is (obviously) the sequel to MWI, our first series which dropped back in November of '09 and sold out in just under a minute

It has been one hell of a ride. Even with all the long nights chatting over skype till like 5 in the morning trying to hammer out specifics, it was worth it, and hitting the hay was the last thing on our minds. Talking to and becoming friends with all these amazing artists has been an absolute pleasure. And our hope is that we were able to represent their work in the best possible way.

I think that's a definite yes Just as long as the fans digg whatever project we got going on next, we'll keep right on doing what we're doing.

So how many artists are there for this series?
This time around we had 14 artists doing about 20 some odd designs, which includes variants and chases. For MWI we had about 17 artists doing a crap load of variants and chases, haha.

What is your favorites of this set so far?
That's probably the toughest question to answer. Come to think of it, I don't think I can give you a straight answer. I think every design is straight up awesome, no b.s.! But just to name a few, Chuaskoski's clown "Birro" with ingenious use of the ears, Sergio's hilarious charlatan character "Quack", and Tim's "Agony" bear who snipped his own tongue out in protest of government and social censorship, haha. But each one is as great as the next in my book.

Where do you see the future of vinyl toys going?
I think the vinyl scene is only going to get stronger as we start to see more of a participation between the community and the vinyl toy companies. There are so many more talented up and coming artists today as compared to 3-4yrs back, and online communities like the Kidrobot boards are bringing attention to that by allowing them to share their work and build up a fan base. I know several toy companies have started to take notice, and I can only imagine all the great things to come of that in the near future.

What do you collect? and do you do any art customs?
At the moment, I'm mainly focusing on my threeA collection. What can I say, Ashley Wood is the man, haha. Aside from that I'm trying to build up my small collection of customs. Hopefully in a few years, I'll have as many custom pieces as I do production pieces.

Nope, not at the moment, but I'd love to find the time to test out my art skills on vinyl someday. Actually, I'm going to be a part of a little custom trade my friend Tim Munz is putting together for his birthday, so we'll see how that turns out

Big ups to Spanky Stokes and to James for the interview, it was fun. And if I can ramble on for another minute, big thanks to my homies Tim and Igor for co-founding the series, and picking up the slack when I was being lazy, lol, jk. And Jared for doing an amazing job with all the graphics for the series, the boxes came out stellar! Rhiannon for being my right hand through all the not so fun parts, haha, and of course, the fans for trusting and supporting all our efforts, you guys and girls are what's up!

Thanks again Manne for the interview.

For those interested this series will be blindbox and sold online individually for $60 USD [plus shipping]