American soft vinyl producers?

Wandered back to this thread. AFAIK HOPToys did not continue producing vinyl themselves.

Does anyone know what happened with Chance Priest's vinyl operation?

 

He built his own facility, the 3P Toy Factory. He says you can source them to make your toys from start to finish.


You can see the latest stuff on his IG
https://www.instagram.com/victorycomicsllc/

 

I believe Chance does resin, no vinyl, but I could be wrong. He certainly slings a wallet crushing amount of fun sofubi on his insta auctions every week, fun thing to tune into

 

At this point it's an open secret that Clutter has been pulling vinyl for a couple of artists. I've been scanning their feeds to see if they plan on taking on new clients and opening it up as a business, but I haven't seen anything.

 

Also, Wonder Goblin is in the process of getting a factory together.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

So is the composition of ‘American’ soft vinyl still different than current Japanese? I remember all the posts from about 15 years ago about how Japanese sofubi vinyl not being allowed in the US for production due to how toxic it was, but I see Butanohana posting ‘Phthalates are not used’. Is this true for all current Japanese makers? The video above for the Clutter shop shows the ‘raw’ vinyl in a jar and not from a hot vat being poured, which makes me think it’s still different from what is used outside the US even without the phthalates (softeners).

 

I'm sure the plastisol composition is different somehow between America and Japan. I'm very happy with the material Mile High uses for my figures. It's a custom formulation from his supplier.

Clutter and everyone doing the Crafsman method are all probably using different products from different suppliers, too. It's like making any other product, you're bound to see some differences because of source materials and technique.

 

Article on Clutter's operation: https://highlandscurrent.org/2025/12/12/clutters-new-home/

 

Mile High's vinyl is definitely really, really close to Japanese vinyl if you ask me. Especially more recently. It looks and feels very Japanese, especially when heated for assembly.

 

Slush molding and dip molding vinyl is never hot when raw. It’s a stable and super viscous liquid until it’s heated to cure it. The American stuff is similar to the Japanese stuff, and certainly better than the mass production chinese stuff. However, recently many China, Hongkong and Taiwan baser places have started using different stuff too - a lot of it is gross and oily and smells of coconut oil. Some is verging on decent.

I played around with the set up in Beacon before it was 100% ready to go. It was sketchy, but definitely seemed on its way to working ok. Sounds like they’ve made some good progress pulling stuff for Jesse.

 

Can anyone point me toward / put me in touch with any American airbrush wizards that do paint applications for toy artists? Like as a service, or for production runs rather than one offs? I’m getting pretty close to a first toy release but lack a setup and the requisite practice for paint at the moment.

Even after the first one it’s going to take me a long time to get the space and equipment together for regular paint runs. I’m planning on continuing to focus mostly on sculpts and graphic design for quite a while to fill out the line. I'm hoping I can make some connections in other areas of the production cycle to keep the whole thing moving along.