Toy Suit

Why

In around 1997 I saw a skateboarding footwear advert that featured a guy with a full suit made of small toys. I thought it looked great and thought it would be good to have something like that. Some years later I had been almost accidentally collecting the small toys that were in McDonald’s or Burger King children’s meals that I used to often get on a lunchtime. Although I wouldn’t have enough for a suit, I thought I’d be able to make at least a jumper out of them. So I gave it a go and It turned out that gluing and stitching toys to old clothes was difficult and very slow, and would also require a very large number of toys if it was to avoid looking patchy and half-arsed. When it became clear that I wouldn’t have anywhere enough toys to do the project justice, I bunged it all in bag and left it in a wardrobe. For almost 18 years.

In autumn 2020 I was looking through records of abandoned projects (of which there have been a few), and decided that reviving the toy covered jumper was a good idea. It looked terrible though, and wasn’t something I could simply resume. So I decided to go all out and buy some more toys, and put them on a boiler suit. I didn’t know how many I’d need, but from the middle of December I spent £135 on about 185 toys from 11 eBay auctions.

On the first day of 2021 I began the task of hot gluing the toys onto a boiler suit. This would have been so much more difficult if I didn’t have a mannequin. It was much quicker to hot glue them on than the wet solvent glue and stitching palaver of 2003, but it would still take a lot more time, effort and toys than I anticipated.

When

Began an earlier version in 2003. Resumed and completed in January 2021

Elements

At least 333. I kept a list of how many I was adding, but I may have missed a few, so there are at LEAST 333 toys on the suit. There are 38 Toys on the hat.

Amount of Work

Three weekends and some evenings in between.

Level of use

Despite pubs being closed for months after making his due to Covid-19 restrictions, I got to wear this about 9 times in public up to the time of writing in October 2021.

Notes

Needs minor gluing repairs after almost every outing but it’s still more resilient than expected. LED lights were added as summer drew to a close, and it jut made the suit even better. I wore it to Leeds Light Night twice and the level of attention it got was off the scale.
It weighs over 12Kg.

Future Use

It’s rapidly become my best costume, so yes. Certainly.