🌀 This post is part of an ongoing research series from Art Toy Gama’s editorial division:
📚 This Is Not a Book About Art Toy Exhibitions & ToyCons

Our Upcoming Art Toy Book: 1000 Iconic ArTToy Exhibitions

Context matters

Chicago, December 2020. COVID-19 still dictated distance. Galleries cancelled openings, collectors stayed home, and “normal” felt like a rumor. Rotofugi refused to go silent. Instead, they staged a duet that turned fragility into strength.

The Sad and Horrible Show wasn’t just another exhibition title. In that year, it became a capsule of time. “Sad” and “Horrible” summed up the global mood, but inside the gallery, those words mutated into something else: tenderness, humor, resilience. With no traditional reception, the show lived half in Rotofugi’s space, half online, reminding everyone that the Designer Toy Movement had found ways to breathe through screens and shelves alike.

POSTER Reading. What the image really says

The POSTER itself was paradox embodied
A hot pink background, bubblegum loud. Typography big, rounded, almost childlike. “Sad and Horrible” looked less like a warning and more like a carnival sign.

At the center, the worlds collided:

A soft sculpture covered in felt scales, eyes wide and disarming; Horrible Adorables making the monstrous irresistibly cute.

A bee frozen in amber, Sad Salesman’s melancholy specimen; trapped, fragile, but smiling at its own confinement.

Even the miniature fir trees grounded it in December. Not a Hallmark Christmas, but a fairy tale with edges. The irony was clear: nothing here was truly sad or horrible. The pink, the typography, the characters all whispered the same secret: melancholy can be adorable, horror can be tender.

The design went further: “rotofugi” written in lowercase, discreet but steady. A reminder that the Gallery was not just host, but heartbeat of the scene. The POSTER wasn’t promotion. It was Manifesto: come and collect what feels broken, because it’s the cutest thing You’ll ever find.

What the exhibition showed

Sad Salesman filled the room with quiet confessions sculpted in resin: Man-Potatoes, Bugs in Amber, Fossil Friends. Figures that looked vulnerable yet carried humor in their details. His philosophy, there’s a little sad salesman in everyone, was present in every curve, every smile drawn from melancholy.

Horrible Adorables countered with soft sculptures like mosaics of felt: Gummy Tummy, Flurry, Snowshoe Chippy. Creatures stitched into existence, hybrids of comfort and oddity. Monsters with horns, feathers, or scales; yet always begging for affection.

And then, the collaborations. Resin met felt. Whimsy met melancholy. The hybrids were not simply objects; they were jokes turned into relics, half confession, half daydream.

Collectors didn’t just browse. They connected directly to the artists: through signatures, through the unmistakable mark of handcraft. No factory distance, no sterile display. Just work that carried warmth across a winter that needed it.

Why it mattered

Because 2020 was about survival, and this show proved that ArT Toys are survival devices.
Because Rotofugi, already a temple for character Art, doubled as shelter: a place where sadness became beautiful and horror wore a smile.

Because the Designer Toy Movement thrives in tension: cute versus creepy, vinyl versus felt, scarcity versus myth-making. This show didn’t resolve those tensions. It celebrated them.

And because calling it The Sad and Horrible Show wasn’t irony: it was truth transformed. The works contradicted the title, and that contradiction became philosophy: ArT Toys aren’t escape; they are the alchemy that turns scars into stories.

Legacy & Mutation

The Sad and Horrible Show planted seeds. From it grew Sadder & Horribler in 2022, and the realization that Eric Althin’s melancholy humor and Jordan & Chris’s hybrid cuteness were stronger together.

But more than sequels, it left a principle: ArT Toys are not products. They’re myths in small scale. Felt, resin, flocking—they’re materials, yes. But the function is deeper. To collect one is to carry both smile and scar in the same palm.

Biography in Brief

Eric Althin (Sad Salesman) turned his philosophy of hidden melancholy into resin companions. His misfits embody humor born of fragility, figures that whisper: keep going, even if it hurts.

Horrible Adorables—Jordan Elise Perme & Christopher Lees—turned felt into language. Each cut, each scale, each layered pelt a way of humanizing monsters. They create hybrids that are strange, vulnerable, and instantly lovable.

Rotofugi Gallery, since 2004, has anchored Chicago’s role in the Designer Toy Movement. More than a store, it is a hub: a connector of artists, collectors, and philosophies. Hosting Sad and Horrible in 2020 meant holding the line when much of culture froze.

Final Thought from Art Toy Gama

From our side, the lesson burns clear. The Sad and Horrible Show wasn’t contradiction. It was revelation.

The ArT Toy is not a toy. It’s a Manifesto disguised as a creature. It’s Community stitched in felt, Resilience sculpted in resin. It’s the reminder that even in global lockdowns, Creativity doesn’t ask for permission; it finds a way.

And that’s the philosophy we stand for at Art Toy Gama.
Dis(Play) is the New Memory. We don’t collect objects. We collect mirrors.
Mirrors that smile when we don’t. Mirrors that say: Your sadness is allowed, Your monsters are welcome.

👉 In 2020, collectors didn’t just buy figures. They bought survival, myth, tenderness. They bought proof that even in a world paused by COVID-19, the ArT Toy kept moving.

👉 Step into our store.

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#1000IconicArTToyExhibitions

We’re currently building an Upcoming Publication that explores and celebrates
the most iconic and influential Art Toy exhibitions around the world.

Each article in this series helps document, reflect, and invite the community
to take part in constructing this cultural archive — one exhibition at a time.

We’ve seen countless exhibitions since then: small and large, modest and monumental.
And we love them all.

No matter where they take place or the resources behind them,
every ArT Toy show adds something to the Movement.
Some will make history, others will make Memory. All of them matter.

This is not just documentation.
This is Dis(Play) in the making.
And You’re part of it.

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