About
"We will destroy you with Giant Robots Love!"You are here because you love the giant robot in all its forms and you know the truth of its utter dominance. You cannot restrain yourself from acquisition. Kanji scrawls its way across your forebrain when you sleep. Styrofoam boxes arouse you. You know your mail carrier by name. Ebay is your primary bookmark. You are barely tolerated by your spousal unit. You face the ridicule of the other villagers. For godsakes, you have a TOY SHELF.
Relax and put your guns down. This is your home.
Origins
It is 1998. From the smoldering wreckage of a brilliantly imploded gaming co, designer Alen Yen lashes his meager skills to the uncontrolled bucking of his giant lust to take a one-way suicide plunge into the sordid void of japanese robot collecting. Armed only with a rudimentary knowledge of HTML 2.0 and a throbbing desire for the Popy GA-05, he flings chunks of tawdry self-expression at the so-called internet, utterly shocked that the thing talks back.
TBDX HQ CIRCA 98
After months of weightless yammering, a serendipitous and historic transaction rattles the nascent market of international robot commerce as he docks with professional localization droid Matt Alt, forming feet and legs, forming arms and body, ultimately stopping the free-fall, but inadvertantly igniting a dubious collaborative that has pretty much blown up in their faces ever since.
Together, their utter lack of taste and porn-star-like predilections for extroversion buff disparate balls of "content" into the website known finally as ToyboxDX.
Team
On the way to Reflex Point, strange and wonderous heroes emerge:
- Roger Harkavy, master of mecha and connoisseur of rubber erasers, who conceives of the HCM Datafile, setting the stage for what will be our Gift to Humanity. He goes on to summon the first ever Chogokin Summit, often imitated and almost always certainly surpassed...
- Robert Duban, wise sage of the Datafiles and Everything and its Manufacturer and its Box, with his obsessive-compulsive passion for clarity and completion. He is the beacon under which the roaches of ignorance flame to nothingness.
- Tim Brisko, with his cybernetic eye and superlative skills, who sets the new standard for visualization, shaming us all into buying large pieces of colored paper which we hopeless slide beneath the feet of our chintzy little toys everytime we want to snap a Polaroid...
- David Seah, the analytical crushing machine, information designer extraordinaire, and the most loyal friend you could ever have. He is the technical bedrock upon which our shoddy structures pitifully sprawl...
Mission
It is 2006. The mission is obfuscated, thwarted, inebriated and frequently derailed, but it nonetheless remains unchanged and immutable:
- First and foremost self expression across all media
- Second, collaboration, openness, community, generosity
- Third, make a mess of it: pop the zit, soil the hands, schmear the funk
- Fourth, unrelenting unjustifiable acquisition of data
- Fifth and Forever, Purity of Heart, refusal to take it seriously, denial of convention, Win no win!
Heroes
And thus our heroes are, in no particular order:
Deep Thanks
This site is plastered together from the sweat and discharge of brave souls. Some served solely as inspiration, and others gave ToyboxDX their all. We honor and solute you!
- All the contributors who have graced us over the past decade, including: Chi Wah Louis Law, Josh "C-10" Fraser, COOP, Carlos Z, Harvey "H-man" Kung, Tom Floros, Michael Evans, August Ragone, Lemel, Marc Sparagen, Tom Vigneau, Ted Terranova, Mario...
- Dave Morton and John Eaton who launched the earliest documented sites on Godaikin and Shogun toys respectively...
- Tom Franck, the roto-molded towering Jumbo of our cult who broke ground on the Internet with CJT and showed us what it meant to be GOAL ORIENTED...
- Drifand for his always ass-kicking Rumbles and posts...
- Eric Andoyeap, and Darren Pierce, who took the simple idea of the Rumble and kneaded it into a mighty Loaf of Content, providing an awe-inspiring resource that shocked the world...
- Ed Armstrong, father of the Killfile, who graciously provided support on the Chatroom, Rumble and the BBS for years...
- Sean Bonner, Mr. Jumboland, who could not keep out of the news or out of trouble...
- Marc Raley, who's stint as webmaster saw the creation of the astonishing Popy Datafile...
- Warren Schwartz for showing us The Way...
- BBS regulars who have supported us during cryogenic stasis, including Josh Bernard at CollectionDX, Corey and his freakish head, Sjoen, Mason, Hillsy, Jerilock, Sanjeev, NekroDave...and YOU!
(And if we've forgotten you, it's because we're stupid, not ingrates. So tell us off...!)
