Kidrobot quickly went on to create unique toys outside of the Dunny and Munny characters. Its eponymous mascot—a streetwear-laden homage to Ultraman—took vinyl form, the brand teamed up with musical acts like the Gorillaz and Madlib, and streamlined Frank Kozik’s Smorkin’ Labbit, which was previously produced by Bounty Hunter and Medicom, by turning the pudgy, cigarette-smoking toy rabbit into a leaner and more crotchety character. Says Budnitz of the brand’s fast track to success: “We’d just say ‘fuck it’ and make a toy because we loved it, and those were always the toys that did best and that kept fans excited.”

The success of Kidrobot didn’t rely only on its edgy toy designs, but also on the marketing of the products. The 3-inch Dunnys, among other series, were solid in blindboxes, cardboard boxes encasing the foil-wrapped toys as to prevent the buyer from knowing which Dunny in the series he or she was about to purchase. To get the Dunny you wanted, you’d have to either be really lucky, meet up with fellow Kidrobot fans to trade, or keep buying blindboxes until you unwrapped the right one, which at about $8 a pop, wasn’t out of the question for most fans. And of course this kind of product attracted completists. Fans with deep pockets would throw down the cash for a full case of Dunnys to acquire every piece in the series.

Another key to the company’s success was its leveraging of scarcity. While their toys were sold in specialty shops, their first-party Kidrobot locations were the main draw. Shortly after the Kidrobot webstore launched, their first brick-and-mortar location opened in San Francisco in 2002, followed by a store in Manhattan’s SoHo area in the fall of 2003. Locations in Los Angeles, Miami, London, Las Vegas, and Boulder followed. In the early days, Kidrobot products weren’t so easy to come across. It was like Black Friday every month, but instead of over-caffeinated soccer moms waiting in front of Wal-Mart, it was sneakerheads, graffiti artists, and graphic designers outside Kidrobot’s retail shops well before the manager turned the key and flipped the “open” sign. The limited edition aspect of the company even served to push its designs further. “When you make things that are limited edition it means you can take more risks, because if you make just 100 pieces of something, only 100 people have to like it,” says Budnitz. “That resonates with people.”

Recognizing the buzz the company was generating, Kidrobot was quick to build a community around its brand and products. The stores hosted launch parties where fans could gush over the latest releases, trade blindboxes, and meet the artists behind the toys. Popular designers dropped by to paint in-store customizations of Munnys, which were often raffled off or auctioned for charitable causes. Kidrobot was the place to be for locals and a destination for visitors. “I loved that job,” says former Kidrobot New York manager Lisa Lyons. “I loved going there every day. There would be people lined up outside at 10 a.m. in their chairs and they’d give me a juice box. How could you not like that? I felt like a celebrity.”

Similar to how Budnitz describes Kidrobot as an art incubator rather than a business, Lyons describes the retail locations as a gathering place rather than a commercial artifice. “For me, it was exciting because it was community-centric. There were some people who would come in and we’d talk for hours and I’d pick their brains. They’d drop all this knowledge and it was so cool for me because I’d learn about all these artists and galleries. It was more of a place to talk about art and hang out than a retail store.”

The brand even created a secondary designer toy market. Certain artists, such as Jon-Paul Kaiser, Squink, Sket One, and 64 Colors, became so adept at creating customized Kidrobot toys featuring DIY paint jobs, additional sculpting, and more, that they were able to sell their work to collectors and create a new source of income, some of them even quitting their day jobs to customize fulltime. Collectors commissioned custom toys to their specifications from their favorite artists, and those customs often became the crown jewels of their display cases.