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How Superplastic built a celebrity toy empire from the internet up

When the Brooklyn outfit Superplastic first started releasing limited vinyl figures, few in the designer-toy world could have predicted that their roster of grinning, sharp-toothed mascots would end up collaborating with chart-topping musicians and reality TV icons. Founded by serial entrepreneur Paul Budnitz, the studio has spent the better part of a decade rewriting the rules for how collectible characters get made, marketed, and hyped online. A Superplastic drop now feels closer to a music-video rollout than a typical art-toy release.

Their celebrity partnership playbook is what really separates them from older labels like Kidrobot or Medicom. Rather than just licensing a likeness, Superplastic works with entertainers to build entire fictional universes around shared synthetic stars. The approach has turned artists such as Post Malone, Paris Hilton, and Steve Aoki into recurring characters in a long-running saga of digital and physical collectibles, blurring the line between toy release, animated short, and influencer campaign.

The origins of the brand and its synthetic stars

Paul Budnitz had already made his name in collectibles before Superplastic arrived. He had founded Kidrobot, the company that helped turn Dunny and Munny figures into a global phenomenon, and later spearheaded the relaunch of Garbage Pail Kids for Topps. By the time he started Superplastic in 2018 with longtime collaborator Alex Blehm, the designer-toy market had matured into something noticeably more internet-savvy. Fans expected backstory, lore, and a steady stream of content to justify the price tag on a small box of painted resin.

Superplastic's answer was a new kind of mythology. They introduced the concept of "synths," fictional humans engineered in a lab, and built a universe around two breakout characters: Janky, a wide-eyed mischief-maker with sharp fangs, and Guggimon, a carrot-wielding furred prankster who looks like a horror-cartoon vampire crossed with a streetwear mascot. These figures became recurring protagonists across Instagram, TikTok, animated shorts, and themed vinyl drops. Creating owned intellectual property first gave Budnitz a flexible framework that later made celebrity collaborations feel organic.

The retail model also shifted. Instead of pushing product through old-school hobby distributors, the studio leaned into direct-to-fan releases, livestreamed unboxings, and timed web drops that generated genuine FOMO. The system borrowed heavily from sneaker culture and the streetwear world, an area where Australian collectors have always paid close attention.

First celebrity forays into hip-hop and EDM

The earliest celebrity tie-ins leveraged Superplastic's existing relationships in the electronic dance music circuit. Steve Aoki, a long-time figure in the vinyl crossover scene, became one of the first major collaborators, releasing limited figures tied to his label Dim Mak and his habit of throwing cake at fans. Aoki's Superplastic pieces sold out quickly, signalling the formula could translate from niche web celebrity to arena-tier fandom.

Soon after, the brand started working with hip-hop names who already understood the resale economy. Gucci Mane, Future, and a string of Atlanta-adjacent rappers dropped capsule figures that doubled as social-media moments. Each release came with an animated teaser, slang-heavy lore updates, and a tightly limited run that could flip on the secondary market within hours. This is the same resale-driven environment where buyers have to be cautious about fakes, a topic any collector tracking limited drops will recognise from guides on avoiding rigged platforms before committing money to an unknown seller.

By treating the secondary market as part of the marketing mix rather than something to fight, Superplastic built a calendar of hype that fans could plan around. It is the same playbook that high-end sneaker boutiques in Melbourne and Sydney have used for years, and it travelled well across the Pacific.

Paris Hilton, Post Malone, and the mainstream pop crossover

Two collaborations pushed Superplastic from underground favourite into mainstream conversation. The first was with Paris Hilton, a celebrity who already understood designer toys through her long-running fascination with Japanese kawaii culture and her fashion label's accessories. Her Superplastic piece leaned into the brand's tongue-in-cheek glamour, featuring a blonde synth draped in rhinestones and holding a tiny Pomeranian in honour of Hilton's real-life pets. It sold out in minutes and even turned up in editorial shoots in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.

The bigger cultural moment came when Post Malone joined the roster. Post, whose face-tattooed everyman image sits comfortably alongside Superplastic's slightly unhinged aesthetic, released a character named "Big Rig." The figure riffed on his love of country music, fast food, and oversized jewellery, and became the basis for a multi-episode animated series rather than a one-off collectible. For Australian fans who had watched Post's tours roll through Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena and the Brisbane Riverstage, seeing a vinyl drop tied to his name felt like a direct nod to his global reach.

These collaborations marked a transition. Where earlier drops felt like collector experiments, the Hilton and Post Malone releases showed that Superplastic could anchor a full entertainment property around a celebrity, complete with narrative arcs, costume changes across colourways, and crossover events with other synths.

The NFT pivot and return to physical drops

Like many in the designer-toy scene, Superplastic experimented heavily with blockchain-based collectibles during the 2021-22 boom. They minted thousands of digital synths, ran auction-style drops on platforms such as Sotheby's Metaverse, and teased a virtual Gucci Mane compound where holders could buy in-game mansions. Some of these projects aged badly once the broader NFT market cooled, but they did establish a generation of digitally native collectors who later migrated back to physical vinyl.

Today the brand has quietly leaned back into resin and plastic, with a pipeline of collaborations that includes Lil Yachty, Gunna, and Italian-American rapper Costanza. Each drop comes with a smaller digital component, usually a token-gated Discord where holders get early access to physical merch. The hybrid model appeals to buyers who keep one foot in the crypto-collectible world and another in the more traditional art-toy hobbies celebrated at Oz Comic-Con and indie markets in Brisbane and Adelaide.

Australian collectors and the Superplastic resale scene

Down Under, Superplastic has carved out a loyal following despite the hurdles of international shipping, customs duties, and a soft Australian dollar that makes USD-priced drops feel expensive. Local collectors gather in dedicated Facebook groups and Discord servers to coordinate pickups from Sydney's inner-west boutiques, Melbourne's Fitzroy street art corridor, and the occasional pop-up held during Supanova Expo on the Gold Coast.

What Aussie fans actually track between drops:

Aussie slang has crept into the way fans talk about these figures. Locals refer to chasing a new drop as "having a crack at the raffle," and they will "throw a few hundred on it" to secure a headliner piece. Australian retailers who stock boutique toys also pay close attention to what Superplastic is doing, since the brand's calendar tends to dictate wider industry trends. Stores in Perth and Adelaide now field specific requests for "synth-style" figures, a phrase that did not exist in the local vocabulary five years ago.

What sets their celebrity collaborations apart

The short answer is narrative infrastructure. Most licensed toy deals involve a celebrity waving a wand of approval and providing a likeness, then walking away. Superplastic treats each collaborator as a co-writer inside an existing fictional world, which means the figure is rarely just a tiny statue of the person. It is usually a synth version of them, complete with a name, a backstory, and a wardrobe that changes across colour editions.

The studio also understands how to pace a release. There is a teaser phase, a content phase, a preorder window, a shipping window, and a quiet period where the lore simmers until the next celebrity shows up. The pacing respects how fans actually collect rather than flooding the market with product. Critics in the Australian collecting scene have noted that this discipline is one reason Superplastic's resales hold value better than the average licensed vinyl drop.

Signature traits of their celebrity drops:

For anyone who has waited in a virtual queue at 3am AEST to secure a Janky variant, the format feels like the natural evolution of the designer-toy hobby, one that finally takes internet fandom seriously. Drop the team behind Go Figure News a note with a photo of your collection, share the rarest piece sitting on your shelf, and help us map where the next wave of celebrity-led vinyl is heading across Australia and the rest of the world.