Breaking the toy mold

According to Chinese lore, the monkey king was an impish rebel driven by the maddening conformity of the kingdom of heaven to launch a war on the Jade Emperor. Taking his inspiration from this legend, L.A. filmmaker Patrick Lam has launched a more contemporary revolution against conformity -- this one aimed at the fiefdoms of mainstream art and mass-produced toys.

Lam is the owner, inspiration and chief operating imp behind Munky King, one of the city’s most unusual toy stores. Nestled in the heart of Chinatown’s Gin Ling Way, Munky King carries no Malibu Barbies or Diva Starz. His is a mutinous army of peculiar, unruly, ugly, often handmade, and, at times, delightfully disgusting playthings.

The shop, after less than three months of life, is already supporting itself, thanks to a small but rabid klatch of in-the-know artists, graphic designers and pop couturiers who show up in droves to buy limited-edition Kubricks, Scary Girl Treehouse denizens and Red Flyers.

Designed to remind browsers of an ancient shrine to the Chinese trickster god, the store is dominated by a stylized, nattily painted monkey head that looms over the cash register. Vinyl figurines are in two custom-made display cases designed by an artist to look like towering temple guards from some indistinct dynasty.

The toys themselves are geared less to impressionable young cereal-eaters than to seditious parents. The whole inventory is nurtured by artists eager to co-opt, tweak and twist the Saturday morning cartoons of their youth. Think of these items as the bratty offspring of postmodern folk art and the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup.

According to Lam, the hot sellers currently include something called the Ugly Dolls collection -- plush creatures that sport little fangs, bat wings, chest hair and other unlikely features. Also popular is the inscrutable “Friends With You” line of dolls. Actually, Friends With You is less a “line” than a pantheon. The headliner in the collection is Red Flyer, a stuffed, cloth, blockish pillow creature who sports long, spindly arms and a tag describing him as “literally the fabric of space as we understand it.”

But by far the jewels of Munky King’s inventory are the vinyl figurines, the most elaborate of which cost up to $140.

Created mostly in Hong Kong, these plastic sculptures are molded into assorted improbable characters, from sexy female space explorers to everyday laborers. (Lam’s favorite 12-inch figurines are a teahouse waiter and a construction worker who comes with a little water bottle and a tiny pack of cigarettes. He’s kind of the anti-Ken.) Designed mostly by independent artists in numbered series, these dolls are more like art objects.

So how did a 34-year-old, normal guy like Lam get sucked into a toy coup d’etat? In March, Lam began running a small industrial film production office in that same space on Gin Ling Way. Ensconced between souvenir stalls and coffee vendors, the storefront drew curious passersby, who were constantly pressing their faces against Lam’s front window to get a peek at the interior.

“We realized we should be giving something more back to this area,” Lam recalled. “There’s so much happening here: galleries, bars, cafes. Chinatown is undergoing such a huge renaissance.”

The location was perfect. The crowds were already curious. A retail kingdom beckoned. But what to sell?

Growing up steeped in Chinese heritage, Lam had heard stories of the mythical monkey king and was intrigued by his rebellious spirit. And as a filmmaker surrounded by creative types (Lam’s wife, Chanda, is an actress), the new trends in toys had not been lost on him.

“I had always loved to collect hard-to-find toys -- stuff that’s not mass produced, stuff you find mostly online,” Lam said. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a store devoted to independent, designer toys?’ ”

Much of what’s often called the “mad toy” phenomenon took on new life in the mid- to late ‘90s, when a Hong Kong artist named Michael Lau got it in his head to tear GI Joe action figures apart and replace their faces with other, decidedly less famous faces.

“He started sculpting likenesses of his friends instead -- just these slackers who were into hip-hop. And people went crazy over them,” Lam recalled.

Other artists in Australia, Europe and Asia joined the postmodern fun. Limited by budgets and time, the artists created perhaps 500 to 1,000 toys in a batch.

“The movement just blossomed,” Lam said. “People started creating more things out of vinyl, and that’s the medium of choice now.”

For example, comic book artist Roman Dirge has launched a line of toys called Halfsies, palm-sized replicas of cute little animals -- ducks, bunnies -- who happen to have been bisected. Pop them open, see their guts.

Opening a store for these bizarre objets d’art may seem a financially hazardous enterprise. After all, the small pieces fetch only $5 to $15. But Lam says he never thought about the risks. He simply couldn’t imagine himself selling anything else.

“The monkey king was sick of the yoke of the Jade Emperor, and he went against the status quo,” Lam said. “That’s what I wanted this store to do.”

Now the Halfsies occupy a shelf at Munky King near the cash register.

Local cartoon artist Tim Biskup has a figurine called Pollard, a brightly colored dragon, or maybe it’s a dinosaur, or actually maybe it’s a rhino, for sale inside one of the giant temple guard display cases. Nearby, the 12-inch Moon Girl, a leggy blond Sharon Stone look-alike wearing tiny shorts and brandishing a big gun, glares from behind her space goggles.

Other L.A. trend-spotters say they have been waiting for an antiestablishment toy store like Munky King.

Peter Lang, head of the design studio Basement Productions and owner of the new L.A. restaurant 01, collects limited-edition toys and has high praise for Munky King.

“We’re graduating from seeing toys just as hunks of cheap plastic to seeing them as art forms,” he said. “This is design, man.”

Even the restless monkey king couldn’t argue with that.

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Toys From the Underground

What: Grand opening party

Where: Munky King, 441 Gin Ling Way, Chinatown

When: Saturday, 7-10 p.m.

Store hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.

Contact: (213) 620-8787 or www.munkyking.com