basically statues with (sometimes) some articulation?

i'm not trying to hate here. i'm just curious.
i've recently purchased my first resin piece, the scumlife bootleg(ish) motu beastman tribute.
and it is awesome.
but it seems super fragile (which is a quality i don't find suiting to something labeled as a toy).
also, very statue(ish). so basically i am wondering if there are different forms of resin (like vinyl with japanese soft vinyl and that crappy western kr stuff)...

Homemade resin casts are basically fragile statues. Technically speaking all plastic toys are resin. But the difference is molten plastic resin pressure injected and molded is stronger and lasts longer than the over the counter stuff you can get as a crafter and cures via air.

if you get the right brands of resin, they aren't really fragile except in areas of thin depth. articulation is possible using ball joints, etc. much like onell does with their figures. working in plastic, you can do a lot more movement and casting of moving parts than most do in this type of resin scene. but the model kit resin kit-bashing scene is intense.

I've collected several resin figures by Le Merde, We Kill You, Uh Oh, and Hello, Brute. I would not really call them toys. I don't play with them. I just really enjoy looking at them on the shelf. "Figures" is probably the best term, but I do commonly refer to them as toys, I suppose because I really don't play with my $50 - $200 vinyl toys either (don't want the paint scratched up, etc.) Full sized ones also tend to be really heavy, which reduces the playability.

The main draw for me with the resin pieces are the characters. Any good character, 3D or 2D, has a kind of animated quality to it, even if its a statue. Le Merde's stuff is a really good example of this. I always think his figures are about to say something fucked up or kick one of my other toys in the nuts.

anytime you have a thin resin piece it's going to be fragile ie a protruding arm or some sort of peg articulation. on the other hand, if you drop a Le Merde figure the floor has a better chance of breaking than it does.
resin is a great medium for artists who can't get a vinyl figure made, or just someone who would like to have complete control over their figure making process. articulation is something that's very tricky to figure out and get to work properly, so a lot of people don't do it.
say a vinyl figure moves at the waist but has static arms and head, is that a toy? it's less articulation and more vinyl is hollow and we need someplace to put the 2 pieces together. or a RxH fortune cat, is that a toy?
anyway, you bring up some good points and I'm glad you decided to buy a resin figure and hope more people venture into this mysterious land.

All the resin figures I make, MonstreHero does the work. and I'll tell you, they do not seem fragile at all. I could probably fast ball them against the wall and it wouldn't break. I have notices, the clear resin and opaque resins seem to have different consistencies. The clear is harder, heavier, and feels more statuesque. The solid, is lighter and to me feels more plastic (action figure) like.

Just like there are different kinds of vinyls, each with their own texture, weight, smell, taste etc etc, any there are many, many different kinds of resin.
Cool thing about resin is that there is a great degree of customization available. You can add metal powder to it to make it heavier, or micro air pellets/bubbles to make it lighter. Some resins cure soft, some cure hard, some are rubbery when cured, and so on. Generally, the lighter opaque stuff is the cheapest and easiest to use option, so thats why you see alot of that.

And just like vinyl, the quality varies considerably. There are many, many options for the homebrew resin toy maker, so almost everyone's toys will feel a certain way.

Resin is just a material, and it just happens to be more accessible than vinyl.

Resin is the working stiff's means to make a toy. I think it's DIY and Indie toy making at it's purest form. It's def not for nocking around but If you're init for the sculpt you can't get any closer to source than resin. There's some play value init albeit different. Collect it and you'll prob get hooked.

the guy who taught me how to make molds used the same materials as toys, but he made tons of other useful stuff. Optical heart stint parts that bend light for surgeons flashlight-scalpels. interlocking shapes used to demonstrate geometric theory.

moldmaking is at the heart of the resin toy scene, but the uses for both molds and pourable plastics is extensive.