'Giant Robot: Asian Pop Culture and Beyond" is a magazine that documents the movement of Asian music, movies, art and toys into American pop culture. Their latest issue features interviews with Chinese movie star Gong Li, the Japanese toy designer Mori Chack, and Korean-American ice cream entrepeneur Tai Kim, among many others.

What readers such as myself may be struck by while reading this magazine are the continual advertisements for toys. Most of these are small figurines from the Urban Vinyl movement; lately, 2-D graphic designers have been producing 3-D plastic models of their characters. The trend started in Hong Kong, with artist Michael Lau. However, the movement has spread beyond China to Japan, and now American graphic artists are designing their own vinyl figurines. While proponents of the movement claim that their creations are art objects, to the unaware consumer (like me), they look like toys. Specifically, they look like children's toys, but they are marketed for adult collectors.

These vinyl figures are featured throughout the pages of Giant Robot. Figures produced by artists from many countries are available on the Giant Robot website, and advertisements are many.

The interview with Toshio Sakai, founder of Cube-Works Co., was particularly telling regarding its products and marketing strategies. Sakai emphasizes that he sells toys, but not for children. The focus of is company is the adult market; they sell miniature robots, plush animals, and vinyl figurines, many of which are invented and produced in Japan. He does so because there is a growing market for these products in America.

The phenomenon of the adult collector of miniature vinyl figurines is reminiscent of the 1950's curio cabinet collector, but instead of glass birdhouses and imitation faberge eggs, think spheroid monsters with detailed personal histories and plastic milk cartons with smiling faces and horns.

Take, for example, the vinyl creation Treeson Urban of Hong Kong artist Bubi Au Yeung, a black egg-shaped creation with a branch sticking out of his side and a crying face. He comes with his own story: "he is a cute animal who lost his tree parents to loggers".

Endowing a plastic object with a semi-human biography speaks to Jean Baudrillard's work "The System of Collecting": he asserts that collection is the "reciprocal integration of object with person...it is essentially oneself that one collects" (62).

The collector's tendency to endow personal history upon each object is encouraged by the miniature monsters of the Urban Vinyl movement, and the japanophile that collects miniature monsters affirms his or her connection to Japan through the objects that he or she collects.