Why these little pink men?
Like many people of a certain age, I have a deep nostalgia for the toys of my youth. This archive turns that feeling into a complete photographic field of all 236 figures.
The Mario Opera and GameJew
Around 2001 I became re-obsessed with the Nintendo games I played as a kid. That chase for the rush of seeing something old as if for the first time led to the Mario Opera, and later to GameJew: songs, interviews, launch-day adventures, and a meeting with Shigeru Miyamoto.
Watch The Mario Opera and GameJew on YouTube.
The M.U.S.C.L.E. connection
M.U.S.C.L.E.'s American heyday lasted only a few years in the mid-1980s, but its strange silhouettes and dedicated collector culture stayed with me. Near the end of my fifth year of Song A Day, I made Song A Day #1781 about the figures.
From collecting to an onchain experiment
CryptoPunks later gave me the same collecting feeling: a field of related characters where tiny visual differences become stories. Little Pink Men is my attempt to bring that feeling to a complete, carefully photographed physical collection.
The photographs stand on their own. The MATT auction is the next part of the project and will open only after the production contract and launch details are ready.
