Knucklebear

Knucklebear was Touma's first creation to be produced in vinyl form.

The original design was an 8" figure produced by Toy2R, creators of the ever popular platform toy - Qee. Originally planned to be a one-off figure, the orignal design featured a dark, greyish-brown bear with a white muzzle and tattoo one one paw. However the platform proved extremely popular and was shortly followed up with the 'Waver' design, now considered a classic Touma piece and highly sought after. The Waver design opened the path to many more Knucklebear variants, predominantly by Touma himself though a couple of other artists were also granted permission to work on the platform, Voltaire and Yoyamart.

The popularity of Knuckle Bear led to it being given it's own Qee form, the Knuckle Qee. The Knuckle Qee featured the standard Qee body and legs but with a large Knuckle bear head and arms. Only 2 official series of Knuckle Qee were ever produced, although there were a few special editions and later an 'Elemental Set' was released. Series 2 also brought in two sculpted variants of the Knuckle Qee, the 'snarling' and 'closed mouth' heads.

The Knuckle Qee proved even more popular than it's bigger brother as a collectible and a platform for customisers that it got made into a limited edition D.I.Y 10" Qee. No Touma designs were ever produced on the larger Qee, though 2 Frank Kozik designs were - the 'Digi-Skull' and 'Skull2Knuckle' designs.

A GID DIY Knuckle Qee was handed out along with a Chrome finish 2.5" Egg Qee to all those who entered their custom Qee into one of the Toy2R DIY Qee shows, it was never for sale on the primary market.

In recent times the Knuckle Bear form has been given a new burst of life with Singapore based producers Play Imaginative, or "P.I".

This has seen many new forms of Knucklebear, or Rebone Knucklebear, with many variants in mouth and arm sculpts as well as the new paint jobs and colour ways, there was even an extremely limited run of Knucklebears wearing Touma's trademark style shoes. The new Knuckle bears comes in a wide range of sizes, ranging from 2" capsule toys to 5" collectable art toys and even 18" monsters!

Knucklebear has also made the occasional appearance as plush and on the toy platform 'Trexi'.

Knucklebear's latest appearance is in the upcoming mini series from P.I and Touma called "Touma's Little Trickers' which will feature miniaturised, kawaii versions of Touma's classic designs. Also included in this series will be Snout, Skuttle, Hellhounds and others.

At many shows and signings of his work, Touma will often be found wearing a luchadore style wrestling mask in the shape of Knucklebear!

Knuckle Bear may not be appealing to all but it is arguably one of the most iconic designs in the art toys scene and will always remain popular among fans and collectors of Touma.