Urban vinyl

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Urban vinyl is an art form featuring action figures (often made of vinyl) of original designs usually produced in small runs (between 500 and 2,000). Artist Michael Lau is credited with starting the trend in Hong Kong in the late 1990s.^[1]

The design of the toys is mainly done by graffiti artists, musicians, DJs, illustrators, and comic-book artists from places like Hong Kong, Japan, New York and San Francisco.^{[citation needed]} Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist and designer, has had his art in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and now he has urban vinyl toys. Frank Kozik of San Francisco, a rock poster artist, has begun creating a series of toys in Japan and the United States. Another producer of urban vinyl is friends with you, who have done a great deal to bring urban vinyl to the mainstream. (NB, their work 'The Good Wood Gang' is a good example of urban vinyl toys which are not actually made of vinyl.)

Sometimes a toy is designed completely by an artist, including the body, clothes, accessories and paint. At other times the artist designs the shape and then another artist paints it. Some toys were created by as many as 12 different artists.^{[citation needed]} Urban vinyl figures have become collector's items, sometimes selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.^[1][2]

Spawned by the incorporation of hip hop into Asian and American popular culture, urban vinyl also very often depicts figures from the genre (such as Lau's depiction of the LMF rappers from Hong Kong) or other facets of youth-oriented, urban pop culture.^{[citation needed]}

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