Exclusive look at Mari Inukai's 'Hone Marilla' GID Sekaiseifukudan variant and other figures.

About a month ago I met up with Mike and Rachel, owners of Inner Sanctum, a California based company with quite an optimistic look at the designer toy culture. During our meetup they were pleased to share some awesome figures designed by LA artist Mari Inukai as they helped bring her magical world of cutesy traditional Japanese characters to life in the first series of 'Sekaiseifukudan'. Mari has been working with Inner Sanctum for over 9 months now to make sure all things were in order... and if you think about it... 9 months seems like a pretty quick turnaround!

These figures were created in a very peculiar process as they have the outer shell of hard vinyl, then the inside is filled with a vinyl, silicone, hard plastic mixture making a polysynthetic material that not only binds to the vinyl shell but dries rock hard and crystal clear. Which is important because in each figure this solution holds a sculpted heart in place, a featured aspect in this series that all the characters contain. All of this, Mike from Inner Sanctum says, he owes to the manufacturing company Heroine International Ltd. where Mike states that "They are utterly amazing and we owe everything to these people."

This first series will have 7 characters in it which include: Akamarilla, Aomarilla, Honemarilla, Nekomitaina, Nekomitainahone, Usagiman, and Obakeman... all of which stand over 6" tall and come with clear circular display base, a must because these are pretty hefty. These are set to release in 3 certain ways... the Standard, GID, and DIY which is what we are featuring today, that awesome GID version of the "Hone Marilla" figure above. These are slated to drop at the end of March/early April and they are looking at a $100 price tag each (still needs to be confirmed). Rumor has it that there will be a limited amount of 12 of each figure set to release in a few weeks so keep your eyes peeled for that.