# Toy Syndicate

> A community-built catalogue of designer toys, art toys and collectibles: 303,486 catalogued items, 1,709 makers, 17,574 artists and 18,949 platforms, plus a member-written glossary of the field.

Item, artist, maker, platform and glossary pages are public. Member areas (collections, wishlists, feed, messages, settings) require an account and are excluded from crawling.

## Core pages
- [Database](https://www.toysyndicate.app/database): search and filter the full catalogue
- [Glossary](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary): 147 definitions of designer-toy terms, written by members
- [Guide](https://www.toysyndicate.app/tutorial): how the catalogue and contribution flow work
- [About](https://www.toysyndicate.app/about): what Toy Syndicate is and who runs it
- [Help](https://www.toysyndicate.app/help): frequently asked questions

## Glossary
- [ABS and hard plastic](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/abs-and-hard-plastic): ABS — acrylonitrile butadiene styrene — is the rigid, injection-moulded plastic behind most mass-produced figures, and it appears in designer toys wherever a pa
- [Acrylic](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/acrylic): Acrylic — PMMA, often called by the trade name Perspex — is the rigid clear plastic used for stands, bases, display cases and laser-cut flat figures and charms.
- [Airbrushing and masking](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/airbrushing-and-masking): Airbrushing is the default paint method for vinyl and resin figures: atomised paint sprayed in thin, controllable coats that build gradients no brush can match.
- [Art toy](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/art-toy): Art toy emphasises the object as artwork. It is the preferred term when a piece is closer to sculpture than to a toy — hand-finished, produced in very small num
- [Art Toy Culture](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/art-toy-culture): Art Toy Culture is Seoul's annual art-toy fair, and the anchor event of a Korean scene that has grown substantially — heavy on illustration-led characters, plus
- [Articulation](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/articulation): Articulation is how a figure moves, counted in points of articulation — each joint that rotates or bends. Designer toys sit at the low end deliberately. Most so
- [Artist proof (AP)](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/artist-proof-ap): An artist proof, marked AP, is an example held back outside the numbered edition — a convention inherited from printmaking, where proofs pulled during approval 
- [Artist series](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/artist-series): An artist series is one release umbrella under which many artists each interpret the same platform or sculpt. What it is It is the organising idea behind most p
- [Ball joint](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/ball-joint): A ball joint is a spherical peg in a socket, allowing rotation on more than one axis. In soft vinyl it is not engineered hardware — it is simply a ball moulded 
- [Blank](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/blank): A blank is an unpainted, undecorated figure sold as raw material for customising. Same casting, same assembly, no paint. Blanks come in two flavours worth disti
- [Blind box](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/blind-box): A blind box is sealed, opaque packaging that hides which figure from a series is inside. You buy the series; the box picks the figure. What it is The format con
- [Blister packs and vacuum forming](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/blister-packs-and-vacuum-forming): Vacuum forming heats a plastic sheet until pliable and pulls it down over a mould with suction. In collecting it shows up mostly as blister packaging — the clea
- [Bootleg](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/bootleg): Bootleg carries two nearly opposite meanings in this hobby, and confusing them causes real problems. 1. An unauthorised copy A counterfeit: someone moulds an ex
- [Ceramic and porcelain](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/ceramic-and-porcelain): Ceramic designer toys are slip-cast and kiln-fired, which puts them closer to studio pottery than to toy production, and gives them a surface no other material 
- [Certificate of authenticity](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/certificate-of-authenticity): A COA is a card or slip issued with a piece stating the edition, number, date and often the artist's signature. Its value depends entirely on who issued it. A C
- [Chase](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/chase): A chase is a deliberately scarce variant seeded into a blind-box case at a published or rumoured ratio — 1 in 24 and 1 in 48 are common. The key thing about a c
- [Cleaning and dusting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/cleaning-and-dusting): Most cleaning damage in a collection is done by people trying to clean it. Safe defaults: dust with a soft brush or compressed air rather than a cloth; if wipin
- [Clear coat](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/clear-coat): A clear coat or topcoat is the transparent layer sprayed over finished paint to protect it and set the final sheen. Sheen is a real design decision, not an afte
- [CNC machining](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/cnc-machining): CNC machining cuts a shape out of solid stock under computer control, and in this hobby it is mostly invisible because it happens one step back — it is how the 
- [Colorway](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/colorway): A colorway is one specific paint and material treatment of a sculpt. One sculpt, many colorways — and in this hobby the colorway usually matters more to value t
- [Comic-con exclusives](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/comic-con-exclusives): General comic conventions — SDCC, NYCC, and their international equivalents — are not designer-toy shows, but they matter to collectors because of the volume of
- [Comps](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/comps): Comps — comparables — are the recent sold prices for the same piece, and they are the only honest basis for valuing anything in this hobby. The discipline is to
- [Condition grading](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/condition-grading): Designer toys have no single agreed grading standard, and pretending otherwise causes most condition disputes. What exists is two borrowed vocabularies and a st
- [Convention culture](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/convention-culture): Conventions do something for this hobby that online retail does not, and understanding the mechanics helps a lot when planning a year of collecting. What actual
- [Convention exclusive](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/convention-exclusive): A convention exclusive is a colorway or release sold only at a specific event, and usually only for its duration. Two things make these consistently scarce: the
- [Custom](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/custom): A custom is a production figure reworked by hand into a new piece — repainted, resculpted, kitbashed, or all three. The base figure supplies the armature; the c
- [Custom shows](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/custom-shows): A custom show invites many artists each to rework the same base figure, then exhibits and sells the results together. It is the gallery counterpart to the artis
- [Deadstock](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/deadstock): Deadstock is old unsold retail stock that never reached a collector — still sealed, still carded, sitting in a warehouse or a shop's back room until it surfaces
- [Decals and waterslides](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/decals-and-waterslides): A waterslide decal is printed film on a backing sheet that releases in water and slides onto the part, then conforms to the surface as it dries. It is the model
- [Designer toy](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/designer-toy): A designer toy is a collectible figure whose author is the point. The sculpt originates with a named artist or studio rather than a licensing department, runs a
- [DesignerCon](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/designercon): DesignerCon — DCon — is the largest annual designer-toy convention in North America, and the anchor event of the Western calendar. It began in the mid-2000s as 
- [Die-cast and cast metal](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/die-cast-and-cast-metal): Metal appears in designer toys as a deliberate statement of weight and permanence: die-cast zinc alloy for production pieces, and bronze, brass or pewter for ga
- [Digital sculpting and 3D printing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/digital-sculpting-and-3d-printing): Digital sculpting and resin 3D printing have quietly replaced clay for a large share of masters, without changing what the finished collectable is made of. The 
- [Discord and community drops](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/discord-and-community-drops): Much of the trading and release activity that used to live on forums now runs in Discord servers — maker channels, regional collector groups, and marketplace se
- [Display and UV](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/display-and-uv): Light is the single biggest preventable threat to a vinyl collection, and the damage is cumulative and permanent. See Yellowing. Practical measures, in rough or
- [Drop](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/drop): A drop is a release at an announced date and time, usually in a small quantity, usually on the maker's own webshop. The mechanics are deliberate. A short, well-
- [Dry brushing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/dry-brushing): Dry brushing loads a brush with paint, wipes almost all of it off, then drags the near-dry bristles across the surface so pigment catches only on raised detail.
- [Edition size](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/edition-size): Edition size is the number of examples a release was made in. It is the single most useful number in a designer-toy record and the one most often missing. Sizes
- [Enamel pins](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/enamel-pins): Enamel pins are die-struck metal badges with colour filled into recessed cells, and they are a category of their own in this scene — cheap to produce, easy to s
- [Epoxy putty](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/epoxy-putty): Epoxy putty is the workhorse of custom sculpting: two components kneaded together, workable for a short window, then cured rock-hard without heat. Because it cu
- [Five Points Festival](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/five-points-festival): Five Points Festival is New York's designer-toy and art convention, launched in the late 2010s, and the main East Coast counterpart to DesignerCon. It leans del
- [Flash](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/flash): Flash is the thin skirt of excess material squeezed into the gap between mould halves. It is trimmed off before a piece ships, and how cleanly is another maker'
- [Flipper](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/flipper): A flipper buys a release to resell immediately at a markup rather than to keep it. The friction is real and structural, not just cultural: makers price for coll
- [Flocking](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/flocking): Flocking gives a figure a velvet or fuzzy surface by bonding very short fibres to it — adhesive on the part, then fibres applied by gravity, air or electrostati
- [Foil stamping](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/foil-stamping): Foil stamping presses metallic or pigmented foil onto card with a heated die, leaving a bright reflective mark that ink cannot reproduce. On toy packaging it ma
- [Franken-figure](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/franken-figure): A franken-figure is a piece assembled from mismatched parts and presented — deliberately or otherwise — as a single original figure. The distinction from a kitb
- [Fukubukuro](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/fukubukuro): A fukubukuro — lucky bag — is a sealed grab bag sold at a fixed price containing unspecified stock worth more than the price, a Japanese New Year retail traditi
- [Gacha / gashapon](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/gacha-gashapon): Gacha is the Japanese capsule-vending format: coins in, a plastic capsule out, contents unknown until it opens. What it is The name is onomatopoeic — gasha or g
- [Gallery shows](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/gallery-shows): A substantial part of the art-toy world operates on gallery terms rather than retail ones — solo shows, curated group shows, and custom shows where many artists
- [Garage kit](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/garage-kit): A garage kit is an assembly model kit produced in tiny numbers by an individual or small studio rather than a manufacturer — most commonly cast in polyurethane 
- [Giclée printing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/gicl-e-printing): Giclée is fine-art inkjet printing — pigment inks on archival paper or canvas, at high resolution. The word is a coined French term from gicler, to squirt. It i
- [Glitter vinyl](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/glitter-vinyl): Glitter vinyl carries flakes suspended through the material rather than sprinkled on the surface, so the sparkle sits at every depth of a translucent cast and c
- [Glow in the dark (GID)](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/glow-in-the-dark-gid): GID figures are cast in or painted with phosphorescent pigment that absorbs light and re-emits it slowly in the dark. It is one of the most sought-after treatme
- [Grail](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/grail): A grail is the piece a particular collector has decided to chase above everything else. The word is personal, not objective: it describes a place in someone's w
- [Group order](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/group-order): A group order — GO — is several collectors combining into one purchase, usually to reach a maker's minimum, split international shipping, or get around a per-pe
- [Guest artist](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/guest-artist): A guest artist paints, and sometimes reworks, another maker's sculpt for an official release. It is a defining practice in sofubi and follows directly from the 
- [Hydro dipping](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/hydro-dipping): Hydro dipping — water transfer printing — floats a printed film on water, activates it with a solvent so the ink releases, and wraps that ink around a part as i
- [Ichiban Kuji](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/ichiban-kuji): Ichiban Kuji is a Japanese paid-lottery format run in convenience stores and hobby shops: buy a ticket, receive a prize from a ranked tier — A prize down throug
- [Import duties and customs](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/import-duties-and-customs): Almost every serious collector buys internationally, so customs is part of the real price of a piece. What tends to catch people out: duty and import tax are ch
- [Injection moulding](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/injection-moulding): Injection moulding forces molten thermoplastic into a closed steel mould under high pressure, producing rigid, dimensionally precise parts in very large numbers
- [Instagram as the marketplace](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/instagram-as-the-marketplace): For most of the last decade, Instagram has functioned as the primary marketplace, catalogue and social space for this hobby simultaneously. It works because the
- [Japanese kaiju sofubi lineage](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/japanese-kaiju-sofubi-lineage): Japan's soft-vinyl tradition runs continuously from the 1960s to now, and it is the deepest root system in the hobby. Vinyl monster figures arrived with the pos
- [Kaiju](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/kaiju): Kaiju 怪獣 literally means "strange beast". It is the genre term for the Japanese giant-monster tradition, and for collectors it names both a film lineage and the
- [Kaiyodo and the resin boom](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/kaiyodo-and-the-resin-boom): Kaiyodo grew from a small Osaka hobby shop into one of the most influential figure producers in Japan, and its role in the garage-kit era is hard to overstate —
- [Keshi](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/keshi): Keshi is short for keshigomu 消しゴム, Japanese for eraser — the small, unpainted, solid rubber or PVC figures sold in vending machines and sweet shops from the 197
- [Kidrobot and the American scene](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/kidrobot-and-the-american-scene): Kidrobot, founded in the early 2000s, is the company that translated Hong Kong and Japanese vinyl into an American retail proposition, and built the model most 
- [Kitbash](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/kitbash): A kitbash combines parts from multiple figures into a new one — a head from one, a body from another, limbs from a third. Soft vinyl is unusually suited to it, 
- [Laser cutting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/laser-cutting): Laser cutting burns through sheet material along a vector path, producing exact repeatable shapes with a characteristic slightly darkened edge on wood and a pol
- [Latex](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/latex): Latex — natural rubber — appears in toys mainly in older squeeze figures, masks and some art pieces. It is flexible, matte and takes paint poorly. Collectors mo
- [Lenticular](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/lenticular): Lenticular printing puts an array of tiny cylindrical lenses over interlaced images so the picture changes or appears to move as the viewing angle shifts. It sh
- [Licensing and collaborations](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/licensing-and-collaborations): Most designer toys are the artist's own characters, but a large and visible slice of the market runs on licensed and collaborative work, and the distinction bet
- [Live painting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/live-painting): Live painting is an artist working on a blank in public at a show, with the finished piece sold or raffled at the end. It is part performance and part productio
- [Loose](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/loose): Loose means the figure without its packaging — out of the box, off the card, no insert. For most designer toys this is a real price band of its own, because pac
- [Magnets](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/magnets): Small neodymium magnets are set into parts so accessories, heads or effect pieces attach cleanly without visible pegs. They allow swappable elements with no soc
- [Maker stamps and copyright marks](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/maker-stamps-and-copyright-marks): Most production figures carry moulded-in identification, and it is the first place to look when identifying or authenticating a piece. Typical marks are the mak
- [Marbled vinyl](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/marbled-vinyl): Marbled vinyl — also called swirl — mixes two or more pigmented plastisols incompletely before casting, so the colours streak and fold through the material itse
- [Master](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/master): The master is the original physical object a mould is taken from — sculpted in clay or putty, or 3D printed and finished by hand. It is the highest-fidelity ver
- [Mould making](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/mould-making): Mould making is the step between the master and the multiple, and most of the craft in small-run production lives here rather than in the pour. The decisions th
- [Oil-based clay](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/oil-based-clay): Oil-based clay — non-drying, non-hardening, wax and oil based — never cures at all. Brands like Monster Clay and the Chavant range soften with gentle heat and f
- [One-off / OOAK](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/one-off-ooak): One-off — abbreviated OOAK, "one of a kind" — is a piece that exists exactly once. Every hand-painted custom is a one-off. So is a hand-sculpted original that w
- [Original character (OC)](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/original-character-oc): An original character is one the artist invented and owns, as opposed to a licensed property. Most of the designer-toy world runs on OCs, and that is the struct
- [Pad printing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/pad-printing): Pad printing — also called tampo — transfers ink from an etched plate to a curved surface with a soft silicone pad. It is how small, crisp graphics get onto pro
- [Pearl and metallic pigments](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/pearl-and-metallic-pigments): Pearl and metallic effects come from platelet-shaped particles mixed into the vinyl or the paint — mica coated with metal oxide for pearl, aluminium flake for m
- [Photographing your collection](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/photographing-your-collection): Good photographs are the single most useful thing a collector can produce, both for selling and because they are often the only surviving record of a release. W
- [Pigment vs dye](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/pigment-vs-dye): Colour gets into vinyl two ways, and the difference shows up years later. Pigment is solid particles suspended in the material. It is opaque, lightfast and stab
- [Plastisol](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/plastisol): Plastisol is the liquid form soft vinyl arrives in: PVC resin particles suspended in plasticiser, with pigment and stabilisers mixed in. It is a thick cream at 
- [Platform toy](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/platform-toy): A platform toy is a deliberately generic base form, released so that many different artists can decorate the same silhouette. The shape stays constant; the surf
- [Plush and minky](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/plush-and-minky): Plush designer toys are sewn rather than cast, and the whole vocabulary changes: fabric, pattern, stitch, stuffing and embroidery replace mould, pull, seam and 
- [Polymer clay](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/polymer-clay): Polymer clay is a PVC-based modelling clay that stays workable indefinitely at room temperature and hardens permanently when baked in a domestic oven at low hea
- [Polystone](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/polystone): Polystone is polyurethane resin heavily loaded with powdered stone. The filler makes it dense, cold to the touch and convincingly stone-like — which is why it i
- [Polyurethane resin](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/polyurethane-resin): Polyurethane resin is the two-part casting plastic behind garage kits, small-run art toys and most independent Western production. Mix part A and part B, pour i
- [Pop surrealism and lowbrow](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/pop-surrealism-and-lowbrow): Lowbrow, later softened to pop surrealism, is the gallery movement designer toys grew up alongside — figurative, technically polished painting drawing on comics
- [Preorder](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/preorder): A preorder takes payment before production, so the maker can fund tooling and materials against confirmed demand. Windows are typically open for weeks and the r
- [Primer](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/primer): Primer is the first coat, laid down to give paint something to grip and to unify the surface colour underneath. It matters more on toys than people expect. Soft
- [Prize figure](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/prize-figure): A prize figure is made for arcade cranes, lotteries and redemption machines rather than for retail sale. They are produced in large numbers at low cost, which m
- [Prototype](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/prototype): A prototype is a pre-production example made to check the sculpt, the fit and the paint before a run is committed. It may differ from the final release in colou
- [Provenance](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/provenance): Provenance is the documented history of a specific piece — who made it, when, where it was bought, and who has owned it. For production releases it barely matte
- [Proxy service](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/proxy-service): A proxy service buys on a collector's behalf in a market they cannot access directly — overwhelmingly Japan, where many makers, lotteries and auction platforms 
- [Real-cloth costume](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/real-cloth-costume): A real-cloth or soft-goods costume is fabric clothing on a figure rather than sculpted and painted clothing. It brings scale problems with it — ordinary fabric 
- [Reissue](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/reissue): A reissue is a later production run from an existing mould — same sculpt, new run, usually new colour. Reissues are routine in sofubi because the mould is the e
- [Release lottery](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/release-lottery): A release lottery allocates a scarce release by random draw instead of by speed. Collectors register during an entry window, winners are drawn, and only winners
- [Repro parts](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/repro-parts): Repro — reproduction — parts are newly made replacements for missing or damaged components: a lost weapon, a snapped tail, a missing accessory. They keep incomp
- [Resin casting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/resin-casting): Resin casting is the backbone of small-run production: a silicone mould, two-part polyurethane resin, and a workflow an artist can run alone. The workflow 1. A 
- [Restock](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/restock): A restock is a further batch of a release that had already sold out. It is worth knowing whether a restock is identical to the first run or subtly different — v
- [Restoration ethics](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/restoration-ethics): Repairing a collectable is a legitimate craft; failing to disclose the repair is not. The working standard in this hobby is straightforward: disclose everything
- [Risograph](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/risograph): Risograph printing pushes soy-based ink through a stencil drum, one spot colour per pass, on a machine originally built for cheap office duplication. Artists us
- [Rooted hair](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/rooted-hair): Rooted hair is fibre punched or sewn individually into a figure's head rather than moulded as part of the sculpt. It is rare in designer toys and common in the 
- [Rotocasting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/rotocasting): Rotocasting — rotational moulding, or rotomoulding — is how soft-vinyl figures are made, and it explains nearly everything about how sofubi looks, weighs and be
- [Rub 'n Buff](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/rub-n-buff): Rub 'n Buff is a wax-based metallic paste, applied with a fingertip or cloth and burnished to a metal sheen. The brand name has become the generic term for the 
- [Sanding and finishing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/sanding-and-finishing): Finishing is the unglamorous work between a raw cast and a paintable surface: cutting off sprues, trimming flash, filling pinholes, sanding through grits, and p
- [Scale](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/scale): Scale expresses a figure's size as a fraction of life size: 1/6 is roughly 30 cm for an adult human figure, 1/12 roughly 15 cm. Designer toys use it inconsisten
- [Screen printing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/screen-printing): Screen printing — silkscreen, or serigraphy when it is sold as fine art — pushes ink through a mesh stencil onto paper, board or fabric. One screen per colour, 
- [Sculpt](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/sculpt): The sculpt is the form itself — the three-dimensional design, independent of what colour it was cast in or how it was painted. It is the unit of authorship. One
- [Seam line](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/seam-line): A seam line is the ridge left where two halves of a mould met. Every cast part has one somewhere. How it is treated is a real quality signal. Some makers trim a
- [Secondary market](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/secondary-market): The secondary market is everything after the first sale: collector-to-collector trades, auctions, marketplace listings and dealer stock. For most designer toys 
- [Seiri-ken](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/seiri-ken): A seiri-ken 整理券 is a numbered ticket handed out to manage a queue — standard practice at Japanese toy events and shop releases. Rather than rewarding whoever qu
- [Silicone mould rubber](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/silicone-mould-rubber): Silicone rubber is the two-part liquid that cures into the flexible moulds nearly all small-run casting depends on. It captures fine detail, releases without mu
- [Slush casting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/slush-casting): Slush casting pours liquid material into a mould, lets a skin set against the cold mould wall, then tips the still-liquid centre back out, leaving a hollow shel
- [Soft vinyl (PVC)](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/soft-vinyl-pvc): Soft vinyl is a plasticised PVC compound — often supplied as a liquid plastisol — that cures into a flexible, hollow shell. It is the defining material of Japan
- [Sofubi](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/sofubi): Sofubi ソフビ is a contraction of the Japanese pronunciation of soft vinyl — sofuto biniiru. It names both the material, a flexible PVC compound, and the whole Jap
- [Spin casting](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/spin-casting): Spin casting — centrifugal casting — pours metal or resin into a disc-shaped vulcanised rubber mould spinning at speed, so centrifugal force drives material int
- [Spotting a bootleg](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/spotting-a-bootleg): This is about unauthorised recasts — copies moulded from someone else's figure and sold as genuine. For the deliberate parody genre also called bootleg, see the
- [Steel moulds and sofubi tooling](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/steel-moulds-and-sofubi-tooling): The metal mould is the single most important economic fact in sofubi. Cutting one is the real cost of a release, and it dictates edition sizes, prices and how t
- [Storage](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/storage): Storage is where slow, invisible damage happens, and a few habits prevent most of it. Keep pieces cool, dark and dry, and stable rather than cycling between ext
- [Streetwear crossover](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/streetwear-crossover): Designer toys and streetwear share an audience, a release model and often the same shops, and the overlap is historical rather than incidental. Both came out of
- [Superfestival](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/superfestival): Superfestival is a long-running Tokyo event centred on soft vinyl and kaiju figures, held several times a year, and it is the closest thing the sofubi world has
- [Taipei Toy Festival](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/taipei-toy-festival): Taipei Toy Festival TTF is Taiwan's major annual designer-toy show and one of the most important events in the Asian calendar. Taiwan has a dense concentration 
- [Test shot](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/test-shot): A test shot is an early pull from a new mould, taken to check that the tooling works — usually unpainted, often in whatever material was loaded at the time. The
- [The blind-box boom](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-blind-box-boom): From the mid-2010s, blind-box collectables scaled from a hobbyist format into a mass-market industry, driven largely by Chinese companies — Pop Mart most visibl
- [The garage kit movement](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-garage-kit-movement): Japan's garage kit culture, which took shape through the 1980s, is the direct ancestor of independent toy making everywhere. The premise was that an individual 
- [The Greater China market](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-greater-china-market): Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China together form the scene's largest production base and, increasingly, its largest consumer market. Hong Kong supplied the mo
- [The Hong Kong vinyl movement](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-hong-kong-vinyl-movement): Hong Kong in the late 1990s is where the designer toy became a recognisable category rather than a scattering of one-offs. Artists working out of the city's gra
- [The Japanese market](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-japanese-market): Japan is the deepest market in this hobby and the hardest for outsiders to buy in. Characteristics: many makers sell domestically only; releases are allocated b
- [The sofubi renaissance](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/the-sofubi-renaissance): From roughly the late 2000s onward, Japanese soft vinyl went through a revival driven not by companies but by independent makers — small operations with a handf
- [Trading figure](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/trading-figure): A trading figure is a small figure sold in a sealed box as part of a numbered set — the format that blind boxes grew out of. The distinction from a blind box is
- [Undercut](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/undercut): An undercut is any part of a shape that would lock the cast into the mould — an overhang, a recess, anything narrower at its opening than behind it. Undercuts d
- [Urban vinyl](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/urban-vinyl): Urban vinyl names the streetwear-inflected vinyl figures that came out of Hong Kong from the late 1990s, and the wave of work they inspired. What it is A subcat
- [Vacuum metalizing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/vacuum-metalizing): Vacuum metalizing is how a plastic figure gets a genuine mirror-chrome surface. Aluminium is vaporised inside a vacuum chamber and condenses onto the part as an
- [Vent hole](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/vent-hole): A vent hole is a small opening in a hollow cast part that lets air move. On sofubi it serves an assembly purpose: when a limb is squeezed to push its ball into 
- [Vinyl bloom](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/vinyl-bloom): Bloom is the hazy, whitish or slightly greasy film that develops on ageing soft vinyl. It is plasticiser migrating out of the PVC to the surface — the material 
- [Wash](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/wash): A wash is heavily thinned paint flowed over a surface so it runs into recesses and settles there, darkening the crevices and increasing apparent depth. It is th
- [Weathering](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/weathering): Weathering is deliberate simulated wear — rust, grime, chipped paint, dust, oil streaks — applied to make a clean cast look used. Techniques include sponge chip
- [Western markets](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/western-markets): North America and Europe are primarily consumer markets for designer toys, with production concentrated elsewhere — though independent resin and 3D-printed work
- [Wonder Festival](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/wonder-festival): Wonder Festival — Wonfes — is Japan's central garage-kit event, held twice a year, and the most important single fixture in the independent-figure calendar. Its
- [Wood](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/wood): Wooden designer toys are turned, carved or laser-cut rather than cast, and each piece carries grain that cannot be reproduced — no two are identical even within
- [WTB / WTS / WTT](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/wtb-wts-wtt): Standard collector shorthand: WTB want to buy, WTS want to sell, WTT want to trade. ISO in search of is used the same way as WTB. They come from forum culture a
- [Yellowing](https://www.toysyndicate.app/glossary/yellowing): Yellowing is the progressive ambering of plastic with light, oxygen and age. It is the single most common irreversible condition problem in a vinyl collection,