Goodness! Gone for a week, to find some great Racer news when I logged in! Heartiest CONGRATULATIONS @Mr Fox !!!!! Your new Racer is wonderful and I'm glad to see him in you herd! Your collection is divine and displayed with elegance . Thank you too @Roger for the nice Hawaiian reference. Mr Fox and I were pondering if the Hawaiian Ikarus in an orange car with no number sticker, was a variation to the "normal" #3 car release. Or if it was part of the last group of releases, cobbled together with remaining autos and head assemblies, as @Biff explained the appearance of some very nice one-off combos. So, at first thought, he might have grabbed a remaining Hawaiian and stuck it on a plain orange car. But @ultrakaiju posted his Ikarus Racer, the same as Mr. Fox's curiosity! So now that two of these Hawaiians in a plain orange cars have been seen, does that support the intentional variant release? Sort of like the #66 Gamera turtle car variants. There are two variants on the blue turtle. Both are blue, but the second version has a darker purple spray on the back of the head and shell. Here is @ultrakaiju version, Hawaiian+plain Orange. Note that he's still sealed MIB! @ultrakaiju photo! from http://skullbrain.org/bb/index.php?threads/show-your-vroom-vroom-for-martin.46009/page-4 A sealed release and then the discovery of Mr. Fox's car. Does this support the intentional variant release theory? Hmmm.... Nerding out here Great Racers Mr. Fox and Stevie!!!
As an aside and heads up, Martin's Kaiju 500 has been reissued in unsigned print form: https://www.outregallery.com/collections/new/products/the-kaiju-500-festival-print-edition Seven kaiju in cars with Godzilla officiating the race... what is not to like!
Thank you for the heads up! Was literally just thinking about that print. Having gotten into F1 the past couple years, this is the perfect mash-up of things for me, cars, kaiju and toys!
Thank you so much for the notice! I’ve always loved that print but never could find the original so this is a perfect release!
Thank you @Mr Fox for the wonderful news! Just submitted a request for the print! Thank you Martin, you are very missed.
It has taken me awhile to get one these framed and the other reframed, post the Outre show, but after much procrastination they went up on my office wall today…
Both were, although the top one, Kaiju 500 was shown at Martin's exhibition at Outre and sent on by them. Martin wasn't keen on doing commissions but I was lucky to call him a friend and I floated the idea past him of a painting based on our shared love of Racers. We threw around some ideas and after awhile, he'd come up with the basics of what he wanted to do. The end result was all that I hoped it would be and captured exactly how much Martin loved these toys; furthermore, how all toys meant a lot to him and he viewed them as being so much more than an inanimate object (hence the title of his last show at Outre). His natural ability and talent to capture whimsy and joy in a painting made this subject a perfect match. After the first painting was completed, he asked if I would mind him making some prints of it. I didn't, in fact I encouraged it, and was glad that others would be able to share in his work and for Martin to benefit. I believe the first version is one of the reasons why his focus for his final show was vinyl toys. Whilst he had included a piece, or a character, in a few of his previous paintings, he hadn't done an entire collection based on soft vinyl toys. The pieces from Kaiju are my friends are his love letter to the toys that capture all of our hearts.
These are both fantastic, but there's something about the second one that really calls to me. A shame Outre isn't doing both...
The one on the bottom was done as a print in 2020, but only as an edition of 20 (you can see it on Martin Harris’ Instagram). I’ve had no luck tracking one down so this new release was perfect
