A little over two years ago, Paul Fresno and his partners in crime stormed the art toy world, resurrecting a staple of carnival culture—the knockdown doll—and offering it up to the rising stars of the lowbrow scene to modify it as they please. Art giants like Tim Biskup, Gary Baseman, and Frank Kozik joined new blood like Andrew Bell and Ness customizing these Circus Punks with kick ass designs. For just under a hundred bucks, art fans could own a silkscreen on canvas print, signed and numbered, and framed in fur. No other platform toy could beat that.

Then, just after a massively successful custom show in New York City, the punks disappeared. Wave after wave of punks trickled down to a handful, and fans have been left wondering if the circus punks were dead. Had they been beat down by the onslaught of big name vinyl toys that can be had at a fraction of the cost? Life In A Bungalo rang up Paul to find out what the deal was and he had no problem spilling the beans.

A lot of people have been wondering what happened to the Circus Punk project. The output from you guys has dropped from four punks a month to nearly nothing in 2006. What’s going on with you guys?

We basically did a great job of flooding any potential market we had. We would go a couple of months and put out eight. And these things aren’t cheap. I was seeing way too many dealers on eBay fighting for the same customer and racing towards the bottom on price just to get the order. I just got sick of it. We put out so many because we love them. We started Circus Punks because we wanted them.

So it’s safe to say that the Circus Punks project is not dead right now?

I am still alive, and so is the project. I have a career that has become much more demanding, and a family that deserves more time, but Circus Punks is not dead. I may go on to another project that I may put my creative energy into.

We just decided to slow down because we were kind of burned out after the New York custom show. That was a lot of work. It was hard work dealing with 300 artists, getting out there, and setting the show up in a day. We still got six or eight punks that we are going to release when we are ready to release them.

Speaking of projects, you did a series of artist rugs. Can you tell me what was going through your mind when you decided to do them, and how did that work out for you?

The only thing that was running through my mind is that these were pieces that I wanted to own. I mean we really don’t make a lot of money, so why do we do it? We do it to be a part of something and then to own one myself. That’s what it amounts to. So we made some runs that did fine. But we don’t really have that much time during the weekdays to run a marketing program, and we don’t have enough money to run a marketing campaign. So our only marketing strategy is the Kid Robot message board and a couple other toy boards, and that’s not enough. If that’s the kind of work that we need to put into it, we probably should back off these projects, but I know we have a Circus Punk coming out that Cook designed that is absolutely amazing. We helped Glenn Barr get some pieces done, and we will be doing a Ledbetter rug for Comic Con, with a run of only 50 that Joe will be signing at the DKE booth on Saturday at Comic Con.

The aforementioned punks would have come out regardless, because we batched about 25 punks a ten months ago and we would have been sitting on these anyway.

What do you mean by batching?

The people we use to silkscreen and sew don’t want to do one at a time. They ask for the next year’s worth so they can work on them all at one time. It’s efficient for us and that’s what we did. They would send them to us unstuffed so that they were easier to store, and then we would stuff them and base them, as we needed them.

The real question is were we going to batch again, and I wasn’t going to. But, then I started thinking about all the artists that I didn’t get to work with that I really wanted to work with. I want to be able to say that I worked with this artist or that artist and that we are part of this movement. So when Jeff Soto came forward and said he wanted to do one and then Shag said… I wouldn’t have asked Shag, because he has been doing art for such a long time that I thought doing a project like this might have tasked him, but he asked if he could do one. The people who are coming next are Nathan Cabrera and Roman Dirge. In the next six weeks we are going into production on Thomas Han, Craola, Buffmonster and some top secret ones. I can’t confirm or deny a Pushead punk. If we do one it will be done differently, and if it happens it will happen soon.

We’ve also still have pieces in the can for Electric Frankenstein. We jumped the gun and someone announced that those will be released at ComicCon, which they won’t, but we have a Pigors and a Koch Electric Frankenstein pieces ready, and we have 15 other pieces of Electric Frankenstein art from other artists that we may or may not do. I think we have a couple of Pizz pieces ready to go.

You mentioned being agitated by the vendors selling punks on eBay at lower than MSRP, and that undercutting screwing your brick and mortor dealers. Was fighting them kind of like Pearl Jam taking on Ticketmaster?

Well, yeah, but it worked for us. I figured out who all the dealers were and I stopped selling to them. Even if Circus Punks doesn’t continue that kind of practice is not healthy for anybody. Nor do I think people should be able to own a signed piece of art by Tim Biskup for less than $100. If it were to go for less than that, I would just quit doing it. Obviously it affected our sales greatly. I mean shit; anyone can sell dollars for 50 cents. We had some really strong online retailers, but to be honest, we don’t need more than one eBayer and a handful of online stores. They don’t add any more value after that.

Now we have the problem that all these retailers only have limited funds, so they’ll buy your stuff when it comes out, but chances are if you don’t sell out the first go around, then you are kind of in a jam—Unless you have something that’s really hot.

I’ve always been against selling on our site, because I don’t want to compete against our own customers, but at this point I’m forced to sell on our own site and do exclusives through our site. It doesn’t make our retailers happy, but I wouldn’t be able to do a Ledbetter set for that price and wholesale them. Nor could we sustain ourselves just selling to retailers.

The Ledbetter punk is going to be your largest project to date. Isn’t it like 30” tall?

The set consists of two 30” pieces with two signed prints. I have no idea where everyone is going to put these things, and they are going to come in a big ass box. I don’t even know where I’m going to put mine and I live in a big house.

What about the mini Circus Punks? You never seem to talk about them.

I hate to see them get forgotten. I put together the first run and the artists I worked with were great, and it did very well. We sold 6,000 pieces. This time Strangeco took the lead and did eight pieces, but the pieces they picked, the color of hair and the printing quality just made for a kick ass set. They’ve got Peter Bag of Hate Comics doing four of his own pieces. If they are done right, they are great. If they are done wrong, it’s disastrous.

Most of our diehard fans aren’t toy collectors–they are art collectors. It’s a 3D art print that stands on its own and has it’s own frame. I think in 20 years, Circus Punks will have made an impact more than most platform toys. We aren’t after today; we are after something creative, that’s quality, that will hopefully make a mark. A lot of younger kids just don’t get them and it’s weird. People who don’t get them sometimes react in anger. It makes no sense. You rarely see that reaction over Dunnys or Qees.

Your NYC show was fantastic. The works ranged from pro quality to amateur. Are you planning another show?

We did the eBay show, which some people didn’t like as much because it can seem phony and trite, but I love that aspect of pop culture. We are not going to shun what’s not popular—We are not highbrow. We’ve been offered venues to do shows, but the NYC show burnt me out. The only shows we will do now are those where the gallery will send the punks out themselves and set it up.

I loved the idea that some of them were amateurish, including mine, and some of them were totally pro. There is another show going on in Chicago some time in late summer, early fall. I’m also going to work with someone in December to do a Christmas show. It’s going to be the polar opposite of the New York show, with fewer high profile artists, but with killer exclusives using red and green hair.

It was just so exhausting doing something as big as New York. Just keeping track of the different punks and figuring out how much each artist will get paid and every artist has a nickname so who the hell are they really and how do I reach them. We did have 50 punks that we don’t know who they belonged to.

If you could go back and redo how you did the New York show, what would you have done differently?

I would have realized what Haze XXL told me. He said to get my list down to only 80 artists and guarantee that I punks back. I was a bit disappointed that 25% of the punks that we sent out at our cost never got back to us. That’s pretty lame. The good thing is that 75% of the artists are good people and live up to their word.

Your blank punks seem to be a hot seller.

I think one of the reasons people want them is because we are so darn inconsistent with keeping them out there. It builds up a frenzy, but we are going to keep them available. We might even package them soon.

If you could go back and relaunch the whole Circus Punk project what would you have done differently?

I would probably have controlled the eBay sellers better. I would have selected who I sold to better… You know, hindsight is 20/20. These are things every art/toy seller should think about. Sorry eBay sellers, but a lot of the eBay sellers are dicks anyway. I would have stayed away from the sellers that were in it for they hype and not the heart. There a lot of things that I can think of, but we never went into this thinking it was going to be first class, we went into it by the seat of our pants and just did it. I would have liked to have run all the printer proofs with white hair or something like that.

Do you have any plans for the immediate future?

The next two months will see a new release, maybe at Comic Con and maybe some rugs. We’ll be floating around the isles being obnoxious. Then I’m going to talk to Mike from Strangeco to seriously consider starting a new toy that the world needs.

Can you go into it?

Not really, but I don’t think the world needs another platform company with expensive toys. I want to do something different.

Click Here to read more about the birth of Circus Punks>>>