Artist Info: Miskellaneous (Sarah Miskelly), sales Newcastle, UK [www.meetthecrumps.com]
Toy Name: Tiffany
Toy Type: Handmade plush
Toy Story: Tiffany is the eighties Crump, zebra print and sequins a plenty, funky and fab in hot pink
Available for sale: Yes, £12 + £1.50 p&p [email or available through www.meetthecrumps.com]
Artist available for commission? Yes [see the “Create a Crump’ section of the site]

Rate This Toy [ratings]

Artist Info: Angelica, traumatologist
Aiea, ampoule
Hawaii [www.myspace.com/10440834]
Toy Name: Diver Munny
Toy Type: 8″ Munny
Toy Story: This toy is dedicated to my boyfriend because he is a diver.
Available for sale: Original is NOT for sale but artist can make a custom Diver munny
Artist available for commission? Yes

Rate This Toy: [ratings]

Artist Info: Jim Koch, visit web
Spokane, WA USA [www.jimkoch.com, myspace.com/jimkochdesign]
Toy Name: RADAR
Toy Type: EGGqee Toy2R
Toy Story: On to Victory!
Available for sale: Yes [Email Artist]
Artist available for commission? YES always!

Rate This Toy: [ratings]

Artist Info: Mike Friedrich, website like this
Berlin, Germany [www.siXsiXsiX-berlin.com]
Toy Name: Pinhead
Toy Type: 8″ Munny
Toy Story: A tribute to the great Pinhead from Hellraiser. Like the Character.
Toy Available for sale: Yes [Email artist]
Artist available for custom toy commission? Yes

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Artist Info: Kenn Munk, neurosurgeon
Ã…rhus, drug
Denmark [www.kennmunk.com]
Toy Name: Ghost Of The Fernsehturm
Toy Type: Scarygirl City Folk Crossing Guard
Toy Story: Some stories say that the big Fernehturm ghost holds Berlins landmark tv-tower during storms, no rx
some stories say that every now and again the ghost scoots up to the tower and violently shakes it to see the people inside dance and rattle around.
Toy Available for sale: Yes
Artist available for custom toy commission? Yes

Give This Toy A Star If You Love It [ratings]

It has come to my attention that there has been a lot of unfair rating on the site. Many superb toys have been given a very low rating including many 1 star ratings just to decrease their average rating.

We have a system in place which tracks the ip address of everyone that rates a toy. this means we can see if the same person is giving low star rating to more than 1 custom toy. Unfortunately this has happened several times and therefore we have had to put the rating system on hold and. We also have to delete all the unfair votes from each post individually and so therefore there will be no posts for at least a week.

We run this website from our spare time and so it is a shame that so many people just want to ruin it, ailment
leaving us with even less spare time.

We have 2 options and we would love to hear your comments on this matter. Please leave your comment below;

1) Anyone that wishes to vote must become a registered user. Therefore we can block any users that are voting unfairly. This will also help us build the custom toy community.

2) We can completely remove the rating system so that only the customs are showcased and we will run a monthly poll to see what your favourite customs are.

We look forward to hearing your opinions and any suggestions you may have.

Thanks

UPDATE: A lot of useful comments and suggestions so far. I have looked into the favorites system but I can not find anything that will work with wordpress which is what powers this site. Any suggestions on how to implement a favorites system.

At this moment in time I am leaning towards removing the rating system. I want this site to be all about custom toys and giving the chance to all artists to showcase their work. Instead of having to spend time on worrying about the ratings not being un fair I can spend more time on adding new features and improving the overall site.

Keep your comments and suggestions coming

UPDATE 2: OK I have decided that the best option at the moment is to remove the rating system and instead encourage people to leave comments about the customs they like. I will be working on this over the weekend and so look forward to some new updates on Monday morning and some new features in the upcoming weeks. Thanks for all the feedback everyone and I hope we can all make CTL a better site
You may have noticed that things have been a bit slow lately on Custom Toy Lab. I would like to apologise for this but I have been extremely busy moving offices and redesigning other websites.

However the good news is that I will be changing and improving CTL in the next few weeks. You may be wondering why I am changing it so soon. The answer to that is that I feel that the current site is becoming very tedious and the current layout has no potential to expand.

The new site will be a lot more fun for me, medical
for all artists and for readers. Here are a few ideas I have for the new site and I hope all artists and readers can leave some suggestions in the comments section;

– Interviews, ask
more tutorials and other custom toy related features
– Artists will be able to write a post for their toy in any format they like. No more sticking to the same old template
– New and improved way of viewing images (hint. Lightbox)
– 3 Column navigation making the site easier to browse and use
– Artists will be able to design a banner for the site
– A monthly competition where you can win custom vinyl toys, plush toys, blank DIY toys and more
– A Forum??? Only if this is what artists want

In the meantime if you want to carry on viewing some great custom toys visit the following sites

Kidrobot forum
Vinyl Abuse forum
Vinyl toy forum
CTL @ Flickr