Uglydoll

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Logo from Uglydoll
David Horvath with Uglydolls at Free Comic Book Day 2012

Uglydoll or Ugly Doll (literally translated: ugly doll ) is an American label that began as a designer toy and has been in the regular toy market since 2001. Company founders and inventors of the Uglydolls are David Horvath and Kim Sun-Min .

The core of the Uglydoll product range is a series of plush dolls that have a specific, unmistakable appearance. The Uglydolls are a mixture of doll and cuddly toy. Their appearance deliberately contradicts classic cuteness and beauty ideals.

history

David Horvath met his later wife Sun Min Kim while studying in the USA. After her student visa expired, the Korean woman had to leave the country. David Horvath wrote her a letter in which he reminded her of the dream they shared and decorated it with a caricature at the end. The motto for the coming years was recorded in the speech bubble above the drawing: "Work hard to make our dreams come true so that we can soon be together again."

The common dream of the two was to invent and tell stories for children with the help of dolls and toys - and with the letter the dream had already started to come true. The cartoon under the letter became the prototype of the Uglydolls. Inspired by the drawing, Sun Min Kim sewed a doll and named it Wage. David Horvath was so enthusiastic about Wage that he showed it to his friend Eric Nakamura. The publisher of Giant Robot magazine immediately discovered a potentially successful product in the doll and ordered a small edition of Wage specimens for his Giant Robot store . Sun Min Kim sewed, and Horvath began to invent the first Wage stories. In addition to Wage, the first generation of Uglydolls includes the dolls Babo and Ice-Bat, who share adventures in the story of Chilly Chilly Ice-Bat .

Product world

The creators of the Uglydolls Sun-Min Kim and David Horvath with some articles at Free Comic Book Day 2012

Typical features of all Uglydolls dolls are brightly colored, round eyes and a wide stick mouth. Each doll has a rather misshapen, flat and soft body with large ears, protruding arms and short legs. Each Uglydolls doll has a name and represents its own character. The basic range of Uglydolls is being expanded to include more and more characters and figures and includes an extensive range of dolls, but also merchandising products for everything to do with plush dolls.

In 2006 the dolls received the "Toy of the Year" award, which is awarded annually by the American Toy Industry Association.

Meanwhile there is a diverse group of Uglydolls dolls not only made of plush, but also as action figures, as ceramic and tin toys. Uglydolls can be found on accessories and bags and on covers for iPads and iPhones. The dolls are also widely used in multimedia: there are Ugly books and Ugly comics of their own, Ugly dolls appear more and more frequently in films and television productions. Sasha Obama, daughter of the American President Barack Obama , is also one of the prominent fans of the Uglydolls. A photo of her attracted public attention, showing that an Uglydoll Babo's Bird key chain is attached to her school backpack. The photo was featured in many newspapers and magazines around the world.

From the USA, the Uglydolls have also conquered the European markets. Uglydoll is now a brand that is not only present in online shops, but also in many toy chains such as Toys'r'us .

Uglydolls in film, television and comic strips

In the 2007 film Mr. Magoriums Wunderladen , the Uglydolls Wage, Ice Bat, and Tray can be seen in the shop and are shown dancing as animated characters at the end of the film. A IceBat meets twice a Disney movie Enchanted in 2007 before where it sits alongside other stuffed animals in the bedroom. A Coldy-Holdy Ice Bat is featured in the 2011 movie The Smurfs . An IceBat appears in some scenes in the film Zathura - An Adventure in Space . Uglydoll action figures can be seen in the background on book shelves in the English television series The IT Crowd . A Wippy Uglydoll was featured in the Get Fuzzy comic strip on January 23, 2013 . With the imperfect cuddly toys as the main characters, the computer-animated musical UglyDolls was released in 2019 , but it was unable to recoup its production costs.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sandra Stöckl: Nice, hideous and cozy , nordbayern.de, May 9, 2013
  2. ↑ Alex Pham: Ugly Dolls were a labor of love , Los Angeles Times , August 18, 2009, accessed October 30, 2013
  3. ↑ Quoted from Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia , p. 327
  4. ↑ Get Fuzzy, January 23, 2013
  5. ↑ Box Office Mojo by IMDb Pro