The dreary corridor radiates life as anonymous voices permeate with hip-hop bass and vibrate through the puddle-lined street. Small cliques in their Thursday best escape the gloomy drizzle and pour in and out of 111 Minna’s elusive side alley entrance. Of no surprise or dismay to anyone, the Minna mob is lush with pretty boys and girls. But tonight, the beautiful won’t be getting all the attention. Tonight, it’s Munny time.

Stark white, vinyl and hollow on the inside, the 7-inch-tall Munny dolls garnered curious looks through their blue and white cardboard boxes at Kid Robot’s latest coup, “The Munny Show,” earlier this fall. Celebrated by its maker as “the greatest do-it-yourself-toy,” Munny is what it is—a blank canvas meant to titillate one’s creativity by titivating its exterior. In other words, you design the damn thing yourself. And from the looks of more than 50 post-op Munnies done-up by the likes of DJ Qubert and comedian Robin Williams, the possibilities are endless. Each one looks light years apart from the next. It’s hard to believe they’re all versions of the same doll.

This makes them not just dolls, but art. And despite the haters, Munnies are not the clever solution for a dry spell in design ideas. They are just one drop in a virtual storm of unique toys—more than mere playthings. Designers are even upping the ante with imaginative handmade dolls, like Ciriaco Sayoc’s Figments, who gets his inspiration from cool shoes. These are “designer” or “Urban Vinyl Toys,” and they form the nucleus of the urban toy scene.

Cuter and cooler than Jem, Cabbage Patch Kids and that skinny bitch Barbie, the designer toy movement is a godsend for anyone with a thing for dolls but isn’t down for explaining why (think Rick Moranis in “Spaceballs”). Munnies sported gold chains, microphones, spray-painted televisions, peacock feathers and a Jesus robe, and there is no shame in wanting one.

“I want to skin a stuffed animal and cover my Munny with fur!” Munny Show attendee Norma Perez says with a mischievous grin. Others reach for crayons, fuzzy balls, feathers and cotton fabric generously laid out for the proud new Munny owners.

Now don’t freak out if this is news to you. In the realm of commercial products, the designer toy is barely a teenager. It all started in 1997 after designer Michael Lau dropped a prolific bomb when he broke out with GI Joes revamped into hip-hop figurines at a Hong Kong toy show. Lau’s vision of taking the typical doll and giving it a cool cultural makeover had designers all over Asia making their own versions of his hip toy phenomenon. Word got out to the States and Europe, and now San Francisco hosts one of two Kid Robot stores in the country that exclusively carries designer toys.

Nowadays, urban toy fans don’t need a 415 area code or a Japanese hookup for easy access to the curious creations. Popular characters like the random amoeba-shaped, one, two or three-eyed, different shade of puke-colored Uglydolls are sold at Tower Records and have taunted shoppers from the inside of a Barney’s New York window. Trendy mega-boutique Urban Outfitters, not to be outdone or "out-cooled," offers Smorkin' Labbit, a glow-in-the-dark rabbit with a smoking habit.

For the more sophisticated crowd (are you really reading this?) up-and-coming Chump Toys have exhibited their fez-wearing monkeys at the Whitney Museum in New York. They probably said “what’s up” to the Uglydolls while in New York because they both got to represent at the museum.

What sets mainstream toys and their corporate carriers apart from designer ones is more than just a Haight Street address and trendy galas. The formers offer a plethora of mass produced goods while urban toys are all limited. It depends on the artist, but individual collections may include one, 100 or 500 characters, and that’s it. Each one is extremely rare and can go for thousands of dollars. Shortly after “The Munny show,” a Munny designed by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami closed out on eBay for just under $10,000. Cha-ching! A far cry from factory-churned counterparts like Barbie dolls, which sell at a rate of 215,286 per day, or 1.5 million every week. Busy girl.

Local designer Ciriaco Sayoc will have none of that carbon copy bullshit. “It bugs me when designs are straight-out copied and not even flipped a bit,” Sayoc says.

No stranger to the scene, 29-year-old Sayoc jumped on the designer toy gravy train back in 2003. Taking his talent in fashion design a leap forward, Sayoc introduced the unique characters he calls Figments at the Soled Out shoe exhibition.

Past downtown traffic, through Protero Hill’s dark, desolate streets and five flights up in his ultra modern loft-style office, sits a dozen Figments-to-be. Bunched together, silently awaiting his artful hands to finish them off, each one already says something different. One says, "I love Fresco brand t-shirts, Levi’s and two-toned black and white Adidas." Another says, "I have a floral patterned head with Raggedy Ann dreads that are on point with my Nike dunks." But anything more really can’t be explained, even by Sayoc himself. “These are figments of my imagination … cheesy I know,” he says.

Ok, let it out. Ha-ha, they’re "figments" of his imagination. But he’s no Muni-riding loony toon. His apparitions are catalysts for one-of-a-kind works of art he makes from a mix-mash of fabrics, labor and a love of shoes. Taller than their alien Munny cousins, Figments range from 16-inches to 4 feet in size, making them too big for most display cases, but perfect for hugging. Nevermind their $300 starting price tag. Some version of urban uniform is standard, which Sayoc makes from scratch with a barrage of materials he’s collected since 1993. A faceless mug complements the outfit.

But for a Figment, it’s all about the shoes, baby-sized. Picking a pair is often the first step in the eight-hour creation process and continually serves as his unyielding muse. Sayoc says, “A friend of mine always puts it like this: Shoes are like a period in a sentence. They finish what you wanna say.”
Judging from the mass appeal of the quirky urban toy designs, Sayoc’s got the right idea.

But don’t worry Barbie, there’s just no getting rid of you.