Who Are You Calling Ugly?

By Nadia Mustafa

They weren't the first designer plush dolls, and they probably won't be the last, but a cast of 15 unattractive, ever evolving characters called Uglydolls--each accompanied by a quirky, amusing narrative--have plopped down at the forefront of the designer-toy movement. The dolls' creators, David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim, are themselves outsiders in a nearly monopolized corporate toy industry. Their first doll, a snaggle-toothed, apron-donning orange blob named Wage who, the story goes, works at a grocery store and lives for chocolate-chip-cookie dough, was born in 2001 not as a pop-culture collectible but as a love letter turned art project.

Since then, over a million Uglydolls have been sold in 2,500 stores around the world (including high-end retailers like Barneys and Takashimaya), and last year Kim and Horvath's company, Pretty Ugly, did $2.5 million in sales. The dolls have amassed a cult following, with a fifth-anniversary convention, UglyCon, to be held in Los Angeles in December. "I'll bet there are toy-company boardrooms filled with Uglydoll samples and that they're scratching their heads as to why it works and why they didn't do it first," says Eric Nakamura, owner of L.A.-based Asian pop-culture store Giant Robot, where the first doll was sold. "I'm sure people have lost their jobs over it."

Kim, 30, and Horvath, 35, knew since childhood that they wanted to make toys. Growing up in Seoul, Kim's friends played with Barbie houses while she fashioned dollhouses out of cardboard and clay. On the other side of the world, in the U.S., Horvath's mother designed toys for Mattel. "She would bring home her beautiful unique prototypes, but when I saw them in the toy store, they looked the same as everything else," he recalls. "I always wanted to make toys, but I knew I never wanted to work for a toy company."

The two met in an illustration class at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City in 1997. "Right away we realized we had the same vision: making toys that are a storytelling device," says Horvath. "I chased her for a year, and she kept saying no. When I started to give up, she came around." But in 2001, Kim's student visa expired, and she had to move back to Korea. "I was completely devastated," says Horvath, who during their two years apart took a job as a manager at Toys International in L.A. "I interfaced with buyers and distributors and realized I wasn't just interested in toy design but also in the way the whole toy world worked and why it worked that way, why you couldn't just make toys but had to work for a big company or have connections," he says. "I always wanted to follow another way. I wanted to come up with a great idea, not a big idea."

But Horvath's mother started to worry and persuaded him to show his drawings of what were to become Uglydolls to a major toy company (he's mum about which one). "They flat out told me none of my characters could translate into anything," he says. Frustrated, that night he wrote Kim a letter with a little drawing of Wage at the bottom. "Basically I was like, I'm going to work hard and find a way for us to get back together." When Kim received the letter, she decided to do something with it. "I knew it would make David happy to see his character alive in the real world," she says. "So for Christmas I sewed Wage into a doll."

Horvath was so thrilled that the day he received the doll, he carried it around with him and at one point ran into his friend Nakamura. "It was original and simple in a time when handmade plush dolls were too ornate and craftlike," says the Giant Robot owner. "The prototype had great energy and didn't ask too much in terms of analyzing it as a form or design concept. It was just easy to like. So I ordered 20." They sold out immediately. Kim sewed a second batch of a new character, Babo (Wage's blue, buck-toothed, dumb-but-loyal best friend). They sold out in two days, and so on.

Over the next 18 months, Kim sewed 1,500 dolls by hand, interpreting and mixing and matching the drawings Horvath sent her. "For the first two months I didn't have a sewing machine," she says. In 2003 they went into full production and set their sights on a spot in the American International Toy Fair. "Every time we sold a doll we would save for a booth at the fair. Our 10-ft. by 10-ft. booth was made out of felt and a couple of pieces of wood. We were there with spray glue 20 minutes before it opened," he says. "We were right behind where the guy from Mattel went to the bathroom."

Despite the humble showing, Uglydolls were a hit. Adrienne Citrin, spokeswoman for the Toy Industry Association, which this year awarded Uglydolls Specialty Toy of the Year, says Horvath and Kim were the first to marry indie pop culture and plush. Nakamura agrees. "Uglydolls are self-deprecating, and it's an eternal question whether they're really ugly or not. They're made and designed well. They're soft and puzzling since you can't always figure out what their moods are from their facial expressions. They also don't fade," he says. Early on, Uglydolls appealed mostly to adults, but a younger crowd now accounts for an even share of the market. "There are 30-year-olds who buy the dolls because they look good on their modern sofa, there are 4-year-olds, and there are guys at the Whitney who put them in their office," says Horvath.

Kim moved back to the U.S. after the fair, and she and Horvath wed last November and are expecting a child. Pretty Ugly has a warehouse and a sales-and-support team of seven (all under age 30) in Warren, N.J., but the dolls, which come in five sizes, from 14 in. to 6 ft., are sewn by hand in Korea and assembled in China. They range in cost from $7 to $600. The company also sells keychains, T shirts, limited-edition vinyl figures, a card game and a How to Draw Uglydoll book.

Last year the big toy company that rejected Horvath's designs came a knockin'. "They offered us a bunch of money, and of course we said no. The same person who said it could never work was one of the people," he says. "We were so happy that we'd held out and stuck to what we believed in. We didn't have a board meeting or marketing team help put it together." They are, however, considering a television show, and will publish a storybook in a few months. They're also expanding globally (75% of their business is domestic) to places like Tokyo and Copenhagen.

Seok-hee Lee, product manager for MoMA Retail, which has sold 3,500 of the dolls since January, thinks they're here to stay. "The more you get to know each character, the more you get attached," she says. As for Nakamura, he still displays the dolls in his storefront window. "We don't carry fad items, and if we do, they burn out especially fast," he says. "Uglydolls are a constant seller. They hit an emotional chord in people."