If you don't know Frank Kozik by name, you at least know his work. The prolific toymaker has produced over 800 toys in the last eight years, most notably his signature Smorkin' Labbit for Kidrobot, among a slew of other cult-favorite toy designs. Formerly known for creating iconic poster and album artwork for bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden -- along with managing his own Man's Ruin record label -- Kozik put aside the music business to make a constant stream of highly coveted art toys.

StreetLevel tracked down the San Francisco-based artist at the recent Harley-Davidson "Art of Rebellion" show in New York, where his artwork was featured on an entire Harley bike. The toyman discussed his obsession with Mao Tse-tung, the politics of the art scene, why it's hard to make money in toys and more.


You're also known for your poster art. What made you want to do toys as your primary means of artistic expression?

I got obsessed. I was sick of doing music stuff. I had been doing music stuff forever, and I was just f**king tired of it. I got old. I don't want to go to a punk club anymore and be the oldest guy there, f**k that sh*t. I got married, I grew up. I was just not into it anymore.

I know you're anti-revolution now, but were you into that idea at all back then during your punk rock days?

Back in those days, I was just having a good time. It wasn't about politics or art, we were just partying. It was completely meaningless. Towards the end of the '90s, I was going to Japan a lot. I had stayed over there for a while, I had made a bunch of friends. I was over there and doing a lot of artwork. I'd go over there and do ads and stuff. I knew all these fashion label guys in Tokyo. And all those guys collected these company mascots. They were like, "Oh, we want a mascot for our company," so they started making those first few little toys for their clothing companies. And they were f**king cool and everybody was like, "I want to buy that! F**k your shirt, I want one of those things!"

And it wasn't a Michael Lau thing, I didn't know anything about that. I was like, this is really cool because I collect junk. This is perfect; it's like a nostalgic mascot but it's punk rock. This is really rad. So I got really obsessed and Medicom started doing the Bearbricks. ... I did a toy. Medicom was like, "Hey, you can do a toy with us." I was like, "This is what I want to do. This is really, really cool." I came back over here, and there's nothing going on. I did a show in L.A. I brought over all my Medicom stuff, I did paintings on Kubricks -- nobody cared.

Everyone was like, "Okay, what's this?" I was like, "You'll see." And I just kept doing it. I learned how to do stuff like manufacturing. Kidrobot started up [in 2002], I started buying sh*t from them on their website. And then on the third purchase, [Kidrobot founder] Paul [Budnitz] called me up. He's like, "Hey, I recognize your name from the credit card transactions. Were you the guy that did the Medicom stuff? Do you want to do a toy with us?" And I was like, "I'm ready."



I sent him 50 designs. Because I just knew, I knew it was going to happen. It was just too cool. And it's great, because the benefit of it is -- like all those years I did music stuff, the problem is, it's not just you. It's the band. Most of the stuff is because people are into that band. You're like an appendage, so there's always, "Well, is it me or the band? It is me or the band? Is it me or the band?" With the toys, it's just me. So the toys were successful, because most of the people that bought the toys had no idea that I did that other sh*t, which I never talked about. It wasn't characters from the past. It was all new sh*t. It's been more popular than the posters, so I really feel vindicated in my design abilities. It makes me really happy.

Another benefit, for whatever reason in the music business, nobody has their sh*t together. It was a f**king nightmare getting paid, it was horrible. The toy business, man, most of these guys who have small companies, it's a different generation. They have their sh*t together. Their companies function; you get paid. They're very effective in using the internet for promotion. Kidrobot's genius. The stores are nice. It's all nice. And I can just sit by myself in the studio and do it myself, I don't have to have employees, I don't have to run a print shop, none of that sh*t. So I can make more products, I can make more money, and my costs went to zero. So for me, my ego's all happy because people actually like my designs. It's not because it's got Pearl Jam on it or whatever.



You recently opened your solo "Hubris" exhibit in L.A. Can you talk about the work there? What's with Mao?

A lot of Mao stuff. I have a big obsession with Mao. Mao was all about Communism but he basically made himself the emperor. And once he was in charge, he lived good. He had the naked peasant girls, four at a time, following him around with a special watermelon truck. I'm into Mao because he had the giant revolution that benefited himself. [laughs] But he did get China to become unified and internalize itself. Even though it was such a horrible thing and tens of millions of people died, in a weird way he made China super strong, and now China is going to dominate the planet for a long time. They could've always, but they never cared to. So Mao did sort of get that country's sh*t together. So was it worth all those lives? Who knows.

I'm super interested in Mao. Here's a guy who was a farmer's son. He was like from Alabama, basically. He was from nowhere China, and he ended up ruling like a third of the planet population-wise. He was a gifted poet, and he was a very brilliant military and political strategist. Interesting guy, he bears studying. So I like to do a lot of Mao stuff. Plus, he looks cool. He's Mao.



Can you talk about the specific Mao piece you did, with the Mickey Mouse ears?

Basically, that's a statement about myself. I do really well with the toys with the toys these days, really well. And they're all made in China. All my production toys were made in China because they're set up to do it and the price is right. And so I think it's really interesting that China, the Maoist, Communist country is now basically the most capitalist country ever, in the pure sense of the word. It's unfettered, and I make my living because of it. And so the Mickey Mao thing to me is what's actually happening personally in my life. Here I am, this Western cartoony artist guy, so here's your Mickey Mouse thing -- the most Western thing you can be -- being made in China. So that's kind of the thing, and it looks cool.

It's interesting because I've had a lot of conversations with Chinese people from China, they're either pro-Mao or they're rabidly anti-Mao, and they get really offended right away. They're like, "I can't believe you're f**king doing this Mao sh*t." I talk to them about it, and then they go, "Oh ok, I get it." So whatever level -- it looks cool or you can write a whole f**king thing about it, but it's basically mirroring what's going on with me. It's actually kind of a personal thing.

With your toys, you're really prolific...

I think I'm on my 800th release in like eight years. I do a lot of toys. You have to though.

Why?

Because the money is so little. When you license, you're only getting 10 percent, sometimes only five. If you can sell 500 units that's a lot. I like to get paid, so what I do is I release sh*tloads of releases. So cumulatively, I make a living. You can't just do one toy a year and live off of it. It's impossible. That's what I want to do. I don't want to do commercial work anymore. I do it once in a while. I do fine art, but you can't ever expect to sell a piece. So it's silly to count on that. That's just a bonus when it happens. And I don't do music work anymore, toys are my thing now. So I've structured my thing where I license all the companies, I have my own company [Ultraviolence]; everything is coordinated, so I can do 50 or 60 releases a year. And I'm only making a little bit from each release, but if you combine it all, it's good. That's why I'm prolific, because the market will bear it. And it's the only way to really earn a living off of it because you don't make that much money.

So that's why you started Ultraviolence?

With Ultraviolence, those are like fantasy pieces that I want to do that don't make a lot of economic sense for a small toy company.

What about Kidrobot?

The problem with Kidrobot is, they have to do volume. They'll buy colorways now. It's expensive to make that sh*t, dude. Sculpting, I gotta pay a sculptor like eight grand. If you only sell 500 pieces, the sculpting alone is a lot. And you gotta understand, everything's gotta make sense at the wholesale level. Because Kidrobot is primarily wholesale, and I'm primarily wholesale. So Ultraviolence -- I got to the point where I could afford to do it. I can risk the money without compromising my clients.



I'm not going to go to Kidrobot and go, "F**k you no more rabbits, you have to make this art stuff!" It just wouldn't work. No, you guys can make rabbits [Smorkin' Labbits], you're able to sell a million of them, that's awesome. They'll do the rabbits, I'll do the weird sh*t. If you want to buy a run, you can have it. So it works out perfect. They can get the run and help me promote it. They don't bear a risk. And then, like I said, I have enough money now to where if I lose out on that deal, I don't care. It's more like prestige.

And also, I'm doing the bronzes [statues and busts] now. There's no way [Kidrobot] can do that because there's almost no profit on the bronzes, but they have a big impact. I get taken a lot more seriously. Because you have to do these political things in the art scene. So now I can bust out a bronze twice a year and people are like, "Whoa, he's doing bronzes?" And they actually sell for quite a bit. But do you understand, when I sell a bronze I only make like $200 on a $4,000 item because they're so expensive to make. It's really labor-intensive to make bronzes. They make them in pieces, and there's like a whole building full of dudes putting it back together and welding it and polishing it. It's a big deal.

Can you explain more about it being a political thing?

It's an artistic statement but it's also a political move within the realm of representing my brand in the marketplace. I don't just want to make $5 rabbit toys. So when I can do that same toy basically as a $4,000 bronze, then suddenly it makes the little toy a little bit more important, in a way. It keeps you in the public eye.

Do you think designer toys aren't taken seriously?

They have their niche, but the thing is that I also do fine art. I don't want to churn out a million rabbits, that would be easy. But I like to see what I can do. And of course, like anybody, I crave higher status all the time. So for me, as an independent outsider artist, to consistently sell out editions of bronzes, it's kind of a big deal to me. You're a journalist, right? It's like hey, you want a Pulitzer? You'd like to be published on a regular basis. But you can write a million articles for porno mags and make a ton of money, but there's no respect.

But then if you write one article for Rolling Stone...

Right, so the bronze is like that. I'm not making an money off of it, but a couple of times of year, it's like I'm seriously stepping up to the plate. Here's an actual piece of real pop art that's not like a plastic thing, if that makes sense. I mean, I like the plastic stuff though. ...



Being so prolific, how do you decide what themes to go with? What gets the "Smorkin'" treatment or the "Anarchy" treatment?

With the toys, the way it works -- I try to stay away from sh*t other people are doing. I'm never gonna do a graffiti hip-hop moneky, you now what I'm saying? And also, while the toys are designed to be their own thing, they also have to reflect a little bit about me and my personal background. So it's a way of combining some larger themes that people are going to gravitate to. People like to collect the Anarchy toys. It's easy for me because I can do everybody in the world's figure with my little Anarchy thing, and they'll all sell because there's people that just live for that.

So the themes are just whatever I feel like doing. I like them to be really simple, easy to produce, and usually it looks better. I mean, if you want to do really complicated sh*t, it only looks really good like this [up close]. But over there, it disappears. So I design most of my toys so they look good if they're over there [far away] or if there's over here [up close]. So really simple designs, bright colors. I try to pay a lot of attention to the sculpts. The toy thing, it's an inifinite conversation, but the themes... I've got a few standard ones now, and I'm always doing weird new things or whatever. But basically, it's got to be something that's fun. I try to make them all fun.

I love doing the Mongers because they're just absurd. And they actually look cool. Because I buy weird sh*t I see. Like the lighter with the pig that shoots the fire, I bought one of those. I love that kind of sh*t. To me, the Mongers are kind of like that stuff.

But with 800 toys in eight years, do you worry about crowding the marketpace with your toys?

No, not really. What I've found out is, there's three levels of buyers for toys. There are people that are just like your friends that saw the Mongers at your house and bought them. So I have whole lines of toys that are $25 or less. And that's painless. And the big Mongers, they're a lot for just 25 bucks. Those are the fun toys. I call them the candy toys. Those, they just sell no matter what, it doesn't matter how the economy is doing, because that's just like buying a candy bar. So I really pay a lot of attention to that market. A lot of mini series with unique characters. Even the big ones are cheap.

And then the Ultraviolence level stuff, stuff that's like 150 bucks and up, they always sell out because there's a certain level of people, they've got money. And they want tasteful sh*t. Higher-end stuff, so it always sells. What I knew was going to die, and I saw this coming a long time ago, is that person who gets into the toy scene, becomes that abid collector, and they're using their credit cards. They're buying $80 Qees. Well, eventually after a while, your un out of shelf space and your credit cards are maxed out. And 60 or 80 bucks, that's really money. It's not just funny five bucks, and it's not like, "Yes, I must have these [thousand-dollar] Maos for my office." That's like a normal person and that's who's getting f**ked right now, financially.

And it was happening anyways, especially in the Kaiju market. They released all this Kaiju, and they all put it on credit cards. I'm part of the business; I see how they pay. And the big group of people that are really active on the forums, that are collecting all that stuff, they really can't afford them. And I knew that market was going to die anyways -- it was just accelerated by the recession -- so I stopped making stuff for that market like two years ago. So when yoiu look at my releases -- that $85 just-another-Qee or whatever-the-f**k Dr. Bomb or whatever -- I stopped making those because I saw it coming.

So I pushed Kidrobot, and I said we got to be able to make big toys cheap, and that's why we made the [$25] Mongers and it worked. That would've been a $100-toy two or three years ago. But they've got it dialed in, we can sell those for 25 bucks. And I think that's good. Because I think it's cruel... for someone who's a collector, they have to cough up 500 bucks just to get basically eight variants. This is no good. This is what all these toy companies do. And a lot of them are gone. Which is good for me, because I'm making this sh*t right now for two years from now when it comes back. I'm going to fill these empty shelves with my stuff. I have all these new characters coming out.

Also, it's just shelf space man. An eight-inch Qee is a big figure. Sure, you'll buy a hundred of them but after that what the f**k? It's like there's no more room to put them anywhere. So I'm not going to gamble on always doing these 20-inch Dunnys. That's why I push the really low end and the high end. And my sales have actually have gone up during the recession, revenue-wise. But it's a different spread of products, if that makes sense.

I ran a silkscreen business. I had a record label. I think it's applied common sense. I think a lot of artist guys, they don't do math. And you gotta do the math if you want to make a living. It sounds pretty unromantic but it's the truth. And I keep trying to do different stuff.

How do you feel when you see your toys on eBay?

I think it's great. Inflated aftermarket value guarantees that I'll get to do another toy. I love flippers. Please buy them all, flip 'em all.

What do you think of the art toy scene in general and its boom in popularity over the last few years? Even Taco Bell is in on it.

Yeah, and I saw that Cartoon Network has got their fake little Munny-looking dudes. The deal is that this is how it's going to happen. It's not going to intrude on our sales, because I see a permanent niche market. I know all the retailers, the people who actually went to the trouble of opening a real store. Most of them started years ago, and they're all still in business. It's a little rough, but they're doing okay.

My theory is -- I'm older, so I can remember in the '70s, when you're a young person and you want to get the cool sh*t, you had to go to a head shop or like Spencer's Gifts in the mall. Those places are still around. Then in the '80s, it was the independent record stores. You want to get your cool sh*t? You go to an independent record store. They have clothes and records and magazines. Those places soared. In the '90s it was like weird surf and skateboard shops. They're still around. Now in the 2000's or whatever this is, there's all these cool little boutique stores everywhere, like Giant Robot, Kidrobot and Rotofugi, where you go in there and there's toys, clocks, clothes, backpacks and little books. I think it's a permanent little kind of store, that 30 years from now will still be around.



Also, the thing is, more and more and more, I'm selling to younger and younger people. I'm selling sh*t to 12 year-olds that write me fan letters, and that's awesome. Because that 12 year-old is going to grow up and will still be interested in my art, so I'm really lucky. I got people that buy me because of the old stuff that I did. They're in their 40s and 50s now. I'm 47, they're my age, and they're still buying sh*t. They can afford the high-end stuff. But I also now have the 12-year-old kids, so I got everybody.

And what's really great about the toys -- the music scene was almost exclusively 50,000 white dudes that went to college. With the toy scene, it's people all over the world, it's every racial group. It's female, it's male. The spread of people that are interested in it is enormous. And because it's hooked in with fashion, and fashion is really international. It's awesome because there's so much, it's open. I was really successful in the music business for what it was. But all we ever got was more of the same. I started doing the toys and all this cool sh*t started going on, and I was like, "This is how it should be."

Here's the other thing -- most of the people that I've personally met that are interested in toy culture, are by and large, nicer and more intelligent and open-minded than all the cool rocker f**kers I ever hung out with. Honestly, it's weird. All the rock 'n roll guys -- douches. All the skateboard culture dudes -- douches. Toy people? They're really modern, and they're really open-minded. And that's a really refreshing change because rock 'n roll is now full of close-minded, cliched-out f**king people. It got weird. I love [the toy business]. And I collect toys. Always have.

What's your favorite toy piece you've done?

That's hard to say. On the cute level, I really like the Labbit, and I really like the Smoking Cigarette. I like Bob the Slug a lot. On the higher end, I really like all the political busts. I mean, that's the stuff I actually have in my house. So I'm really into the busts. The Ultraviolence stuff, that's like my dream sh*t. It's getting bigger all the time, larger scale.



What can we expect from you in the future?

There is a quite a bit. I mean specifically, there's going to be lots of the five-inch Labbits with special-themed paint jobs and weird accessories. More of the big Mongers. I got this new line I'm doing, it's like an Asian street market, so it's all like animals in the street market and they're all obsessed with food. A hippo with Strangekiss. A lot of plushes coming out, just did a whole ton of plush designs for Kidrobot. I've got jewelry coming out, ceramic stuff. Giant ice cream cones and giant cigarette lighters -- 20-inchers. Tons of new clothes. All of this in the next two years. I'm already working on the next Mongers and the next Labbits, so those are ongoing. There's like a hundred things right now in the pipeline, and they want more all the time.

How do you keep track of it all?

I really don't. I just make lists for these projects, and then I forget about them. They come out and I'm like, "Oh okay, rad, I forgot about that one." Because it takes like two years for something to come out. There's a lot of sh*t coming out.

Do you think you'll ever run out of ideas?

No, it's impossible because anything in the world can be a Monger. Thank God. [laughs]

[Top photo by JesseAngelo.com]