Platform toys are a key part of the designer toy world. The best ones offer shapes that are simple and versatile but yet evocative. Perhaps because of the difficulty of hitting the sweet spot, only a few platform toys have lasted for more than a year or two. Sometimes it feels that there isn’t anything truly new or innovative in the world of platform toys.
I’ve recently had a chance to play with a platform toy rarely seen in the USA — CE (“Zee”), the first designer toy designed and manufactured in Thailand, and it definitely offers an innovative alternative to the usual suspects. Produced by Mafia Factory and EPI, the 3” CE has a futuristic shape based loosely on an astronaut concept with its large helmet and inner rotating head. What really sets CE apart is its unexpected versatility as a canvas.
Part of that comes from the ability to design two or more graphics or faces to be revealed through the front of the helmet as one turns the inner head. More impressively, CE is transformable due to its precise ABS body and parts which are produced in an automobile parts factory. Through clever design work, it’s possible to use CE to offer multiple characters or variations of a character in one figure. It’s easy to remove the whole head and then open the helmet to get to access the circular head within. From there you can reconfigure the head into several alternate positions including one that exposes only the lower-half of the ‘face’ in the front and the upper half in the rear. My favorite configuration though, involves completely re-orienting CE so that the bottom half of the helmet actually becomes the toy’s new face with part of its neck stem becoming a nose of sorts. It’s alot of fun to tear the toy apart and then reassemble it in a completely unexpected way with everything just snapping back into place. Hit the jump for a look at the smiley face configuration of the special GID crossover salamander CE done with Thailand’s LoveiS band to see exactly what I mean (photos ftw!).
First released in 2010, CE has been offered in Asia in several DIY editions, as well as numerous special crossover editions involving corporate brands (AXE deodorant), several bands and most recently a three-artist series showcasing CE’s promise as a designer toy platform with the complex pad printing artists expect. Mafia Factory is interested in bringing CE to the states perhaps with a new artist series featuring Western artist. Hopefully that’ll become a reality as a wider choice of platform toys would be quite welcome.
