Artist: Michael Lau 
Series: Kai and Merra figure set from Santa Inoue’s Tokyo Tribe Comic Series 
Date Purchased: Sometime 2003
Price purchased: $150-$200CAD for the set 

Story:  When I first started collecting vinyl figures, I saw some of these Michael Lau versions of Kai and Merra from Santa Inoue’s Tokyo Tribe Comic Series.  At the time, I didn’t know anything of this comic or the characters.  I just liked the Michael Lau style simplistic sculpts with exaggerated jaw lines and the playful almost cartoon like bubble jacket.  I’d say it was Michael Lau’s style that drew me to these figures rather than the characters themselves.  Anyways, there’s another story I’ll share later, but being new to vinyl collecting and really having limited time while on a  trip to Hong Kong, I ended up buying these figures.  Unfortunately they weren’t the Michael Lau vinyl ones, but rather standard 1:6 style ones.  This was a complete error on my part and again, since I really liked the artistic interpretation from Michael Lau, this was a painful miss for me.  Anyways, these figures are the Michael Lau Tokyo Tribe figure set I was originally looking for.  I didn’t get them on that trip to Hong Kong, but I did track them down eventually.  I found Kai (the bubble jacket figure) on Ebay and I found Merra (the tall dude in the back with the sword) in Hong Kong on a return visit a few years later.  From my experiences with my cousin in Hong Kong my first time, I was able to get around on my own and find the toy shops.  I saw Merra hanging in a store display in one of the plazas.  It’s not easy to find these, let alone someone selling them individually so I was pretty excited to see it.  Not wanting to sound like a sucker tourist, I pulled together all my courage and broke out my English laced Cantonese, asking if they could sell below the marked price for about $100CAD.   Funny thing here is as soon as I opened my mouth (shit, probably as soon as I walked in the place), the clerk pretty much knew what I was all about and started speaking in English.  His English was appalling, but I have a feeling it kicked the shit out of my Chinese.   I guess my Cantonese was so poor he felt sorry for me and let me have it for the $100CAD.

Over the years, I’ve seen these figures come packaged in two different ways.  A simple sealed plastic bag, or a nice cardboard box with some Tokyo Tribe graphics on them.  I think they’re priced similarly (if anything, the boxed ones should cost a bit more).  Mine are the ones in the sealed bag.