The Bootleg Bible

a guide to bootleg toymakers

The Bootleg Bible is a guide to bootleg toymakers from around the world. The book features interviews with a host of international toymakers including: Trap Toys, The Sucklord, Dano Brown, Obvious Plant, Marquee Marauders Club, Larbie World, RYCA, and Ben Gore. There's also a huge showcase of the work of other excellent artists from around the world. The book also features a bootlegging 101 guide, which takes the aspiring bootlegger through each step in the toy making process; from finding materials to sculpting to packaging. The book has over 100 pages of art and advice, and is independently published by Blue Monday Press.

Bootleg toys can be one of a kind or reproduced, but they’re all made in a low-tech, DIY, homemade way, without the need for them to be produced in bulk in factories. Because of this, artists are free to make whatever ideas drift into their head without the need for corporate approval, a manufacturing factory, or the large budgets and risks that go hand in hand with that process. Artists can use this freedom to make figures of anything they like and usually use it to celebrate cultural icons they believe deserve an action figure; whether that be their favourite films, tv shows, drag queens, artworks, musicians, or anything else they can think of.

Artists usually begin with an existing found figure then transform it and repackage it to turn it into something completely different. Parts might be taken from different figures and combined them, or sculpted ontop of, repainted and repackaged so that it holds an entirely new meaning. 

As well as the interviewed artists, the artist showcase shows handcrafted figures from around the world from the likes of: Debonairheads, Dystopian Customs, For The Love Of Old Toys, Hands of Doom, Jaiban Toys, KOS Toys, Lightning Boltz Action Figures, Mallow Toys, Mattachine Society, Medeuces Wild, MOC Toys, Mr Cooke Customz,  Nekosatsu Toys, Nostalgic Nez Toys, Pablo Perra, Pendragon, Plastik Cheez, Punk and Pop Toys, Raeburge, Rainbow Yawn, Rekall Toys, Sir Collect-a-Lot, Six Foot Turkey Toys, Slug Toys, Snapp Fink Toys, The Pocket Factory, Timebandits, Trillionaire Toys Club, Two Brothers 1979.