Tristan Eaton is an artist who needs no introduction, but we’ll give him one anyway. With Los Angeles roots, Tristan is an internationally renowned artist with work spanning from fine art canvases to large-scale murals. His work combines a powerful blend of pop culture, art history, and personal experience. And most importantly, he created the Dunny! Our infinitely reinvented art figure has been a platform for the world’s most groundbreaking artists, designers, and illustrators since its birth in 2004.
In honor of the Dunny’s 20th anniversary, Kidrobot has teamed up with Tristan once more to create a new 20th Anniversary Dunny Collection. The first release is his fantastic Still Life Dunny 8-inch Art Figure in sculpted vinyl. A visual autobiography in 3D form, the Still Life Dunny is a portrait of Tristan and a celebration of him as an artist and founder of the Dunny. Throughout this multifaceted design, you’ll find a treasure trove of elements representing everything from his love of anime and robot art to his skateboarding roots and lifelong pursuit of spray paint mastery. (The figures in this series are all named after MONTANA-CANS spray paint colors.) We caught up with Tristan at San Diego Comic-Con to ask him about his new Dunny, the cultural impact of the Dunny, and more.
Kidrobot: Hi Tristan! Tell us about your new Dunny.
Tristan Eaton: This year is the 20th anniversary of the Dunny, so that shows you how old I am. [Laughs.] To celebrate, we are doing a few special releases. So, this is the 8-inch Still Life Dunny… fully sculpted, soft vinyl. This toy is basically a self-portrait in objects. So, it’s like my life story, my family, my inspiration—all in one sculpture. And it has my motto, “Be kind, take no shit.” [Laughs.] And it has one of my dad’s toy soldiers, and the Welsh dragon, the respirator, and the little banana caps I use. And of course, it references drawing and skateboarding and all kinds of secret references about my life and who I am.
KR: The detail and work here is incredible.
Tristan Eaton: Shout out to Kelly Barfield at Kidrobot who did the sculpting. She really knocked it out of the park.
KR: How did the Dunny get created?
TE: I started designing toys for Fisher-Price when I was like 18 years old. One of my college instructors introduced me to someone there. I was sending drawings by fax machine from Kinko’s, and I was doing graffiti, and when I met Paul Budnitz, the founder of Kidrobot, Kidrobot was like both those worlds together—toy design and urban arts and graffiti. So, I was like, “Dude, I’m your guy!” and we started working together, so I did the Kidrobot logo. And then I designed the Dunny, and I was curating artists and getting everyone on board. And calling everyone, like “Hey, you want to make a toy? You want to make a toy?” And then we went to Hong Kong, and we’re talking to factories and all of that, and came back, and we did the big 20-inch Dunny exhibition, and it was like 5,000 people in the street. It blew up fast. And then next thing you know, Jay-Z’s wearing our T-shirts and Lindsay Lohan’s coming out with bags of stuff. It was crazy, man. It was wild.
KR: Do you have any favorite Dunnys?
TE: I like the blank ones. I like the flat-colored, sculpted pieces. To me, painting’s about color and sculpture’s about texture, so I like the detailed, sculpted ones. But I also really love the collection that was done with the Metropolitan Museum with Mondrian and Monet. That’s bonkers. But the Dunny being in the Museum of Modern Art now, this is wild. Like, you never thought it would go that far.
KR: Reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the Dunny, what stands out the most?
TE: The Dunny itself is interesting because it launched so many artists’ careers…the early series really put a lot of artists on the map and allowed them to launch their careers into exhibitions and their own toys they were designing, beyond the Dunny. And a lot of beautiful stories came out of that, but it also created a generation of art collectors who were collecting Dunnys and then went on to collect paintings and more. So, no other toy is like the Dunny because of that history and culture it created.
Kidrobot will reveal the rest of the 20th Anniversary Dunny Collection throughout the rest of 2024. You won’t want to miss it!
Grab your Still Life Dunny now! 
