It's something endearing seeing a 60-year-old's eyes still light up in the presence of a toy. Suhaimi Subandie, grandfather of the local punk scene, co-founder of the May The 4th SG and proprietor of Pop Culture Punch Collectibles, still speaks about toys with the same sort of reverence as a zealot.

With an impressive collection of over 3,000 toys, made between the 60s to the 90s, they offer a fascinating window into Suhaimi's past. There are the likes of Master of the Universe figurines; Kenner Star Wars action figures, still in their pristine packaging; still-sealed boxes of MASK vehicles fill a shelf in a display cabinet.

Then, there is Suhaimi's Japanese toy collection.

After the Second World War, Japan saw the embodiment of wakon yōsai, which applied Western learning to Japanese traditional spirituality. It was a period where science fiction became a way to explore postwar Japan through a creative medium. Companies saw a way to capitalise on the nation's fascination with sci-fi, anime and manga industries by producing lithographed tin toys.

Godzilla was popular, borne out of the fallout of nuclear devastation; mechas came about from Japan's rapid industrialisation. Kaijus; Super Robots; Super Sentais, these and more would find their way into the hands and imaginations of children in the 60s.

Suhaimi's first exposure were the anime and tokusatsu (Japanese for live-action shows with practical special effects). Mesmerised by the flashing colours and derring-dos of the heroes, his focus shifted to the toys from these Japanese shows. Suhaimi recounts that shopping malls like the defunct People's Emporium, carried "a lot of toys from Japan".

As a follower of all things UFO and cryptid, it was a time when the first instance of UFO sightings occurred around the world that further piqued Suhaimi's interest in anime.

"I love everything that's robots and monsters," Suhaimi enthused. "I was a fan of Mazinger and when they decided to do a spin-off called [UFO Robot] Grendizer, I became a fan of that as well."

Grendizer had equal spades of monsters and mecha and the anime had a hold on a young Suhaimi. "I remembered that the cartoons were either dubbed in Malay or Chinese but the visuals and sound were so good that you don't need to speak a certain language to understand the story."

The premise of Grendizer is Prince Fleed leaves his destroyed world in the UFO Robot Grendizer, a powerful war machine. He lands on Earth and fights alongside his new human friends against the enemies who were behind Prince Fleed's ruined home planet.

Watching Prince Fleed interact and attach to Spazer (the flying saucer-like support vehicle for the Grendizer), to Suhaimi it was the coolest thing he'd witnessed.

He would gather a few Grendizer toys. There's a miniature die-cast Spazer that Grendizer can fit in, a still mint 15-inch vinyl figurine from Marmit and there's even the odd 12-inch watering can. He remembered how high-quality the toys were at that time. "Their quality is unbeatable, unparalleled," Suhaimi says. "They do very detailed work; you hold the toy in your hand and you know it is quality from the weight or how it feels. This makes the play value of the toys more [enticing]."

Over time, Suhaimi would lament about the drop in quality as Japanese toy houses moved its productions out of the country. "Made in Japan toys are more expensive, yes. But that's because of the quality packaging, quality toys, quality design. How the toys are made goes beyond what normal toys are produced."

His first Japanese toy was a bootleg Ultraman blow-up doll that his grandmother bought for him when he was two. "I think I threw a tantrum when she wouldn't get it for me," Suhaimi recalls with amusement. "I was rolling about on the floor. Then, she finally gave in." Back then, that 16" high knockoff was worth SGD2, "But we were from the kampong," Suhaimi adds, "so that was quite expensive."

Plastic was a new material at the time. Prior to that, toys were made out of tin or wood but with plastic, production became affordable. A subgenre would emerge from the plastic boom: sofubi, which are vinyl toys usually handcrafted by independent toy makers or artists. Usually based on superheroes, Japanese folklore and other Japanese pop culture icons, companies like Marusan, Bullmark and MARMIT were producing sofubis in large numbers. Some of the companies were family businesses, operated by family members.

"They'd have a workshop in their homes where, maybe, the brother-in-law makes the mould, the wife is doing the packing and the mother is spray painting. That's why those companies can't produce too many in a year."

Suhaimi has a soft spot for these independent toy makers, often supporting their businesses. After all, he hailed from the punk DIY culture. He created his own t-shirts using wax paper, he built his own skate ramp from scratch.

His backing for the underdogs also extends to the shows he watches. The main programme is exciting but the inner workings of the show... ah, to Suhaimi, that is far more interesting. "You'd want to know about the unsung heroes, the people behind the scene. It's like appreciating a meal; you'd want to know who the cook is. You taste his food and then you think, this guy is such a genius; who is this guy?

"I like Godzilla," Suhaimi says. "I especially like the actors, the stuntman and the director, especially Eiji Tsuburaya [co-creator of Godzilla]. He practically started the whole monster genre even way before Ray Harryhausen." He gestures to a loose figurine of Tsuburaya, which was part of a set from Tsuburaya Productions to promote the director's 100th Birthday.

You might be surprised to know that even with such care given to his collection, Suhaimi understands that he can't take it with him when he passes on.

"A few years ago, I was sick and when you're sick, there's only one thing on your mind: to get better. So, I told my wife to sell off whatever toy I have—those that can be sold easily; the faster, the better—in order to pay for the medical expenses."

Suhaimi became better but the incident brought clarity to his attitude towards materialism. He declared that when he dies, the collection will go to his wife; his family. They have carte blanche; they can sell it, keep it, give it away. "But," Suhaimi adds, "I want half of the money to be donated.

He cites Sadaqah Jariyah, the act of ongoing benefits for future generations. You plant a seed and that seed grows into a tree and it provides shade, food and a home to animals and people. It's a gift that keeps on giving. At the end of the day, these toys are just... things. They may cost a pretty penny but it's Suhaimi's approach to giving back that is priceless.

Photography: Jaya Khidir

For Milan Design Week, Saint Laurent Rive Droite teams with the Gio Ponti Archives, Ginori 1735 and the Fundación Anala y Armando Planchart to showcase a plate collection. But these aren't ordinary plates. These are Villa Planchart Segnaposto Plates and for such an exceptional collection, it is showcased at the Gio Ponti—Villa Planchart exhibition. Saint Laurent's creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, curated the exhibit.  

This collaboration dates back to 1953. That's when Anala and Armando Planchart commissioned renowned Italian architect, Gio Ponti, to construct an avant-garde villa for them on the highest hill overlooking Caracas, Venezuela. While designing the villa, Ponti employed exceptional Italian artisans with traditional expertise for the interior decor of the Villa Planchart. This included the Florentine manufacturer Ginori 1735, for which he had previously worked as artistic director. He designed a set of porcelain tableware decorated with the various symbols of the villa. This pays homage to the village and Anala and Amando. 

Saint Laurent will reissue 12 original plates from the Villa Planchart Segnaposto collection designed by Gio Ponti. These traditionally-crafted decorative porcelain plates are painted by hand in Ginori 1735’s Italian Manifattura. Available in vibrant hues, the plates feature the same motifs that appeared in the porcelain tableware designed for the villa. This included the sun, the crescent moon, the polar star and iterations of the letter “A”—referencing the initials of the villa’s owners.

The limited-edition plates will be available online, at SAINT LAURENT RIVE DROITE Los Angeles, SAINT LAURENT BABYLONE in Paris. Also, for a limited time, by appointment at Saint Laurent’s Milan flagship on Via Montenapoleone during Milan Design Week.

Held at the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, the Gio Ponti—Villa Planchart exhibition will be open from April 16th to 21st. To pre-book tickets, register here.

Jeffrey Koh is well known in the local toy scene, maybe even in the world, for his extensive collection of toys. His Instagram account is a visual archive of the man’s seemingly endless line-up of figurines, statues and pop culture accoutrements.

Just before COVID hit, Koh had mentioned that he managed to clean up the front space at his office. “I was so happy. But during COVID, when staff couldn’t come into the office, I filled it up with boxes and stocks. It bugs the [crap] out of me every day I come into the office because I really wanted to clear that area and run, like, a little guerrilla pop-up.”

He’s not kidding. In fact, in our humble opinion, it might even be an understatement. Step into his foyer and you’re met with brown cardboard boxes, stacked floor-to-ceiling, to your right. To your left, are a hint of what he has—his toys, all black, arranged like tiny idols. You’ll have to leave your shoes at the front and enter through the narrow path into his main office where more of his toys are kept. Many of them loose from their packaging, some, still in their boxes. It’s a hoarder’s dream and a relative-of-said-hoarder-who-is-crushed-under-felled-boxes’ nightmare.

Almost every bit of nook and cranny of his office is taken up by a figurine or a pop culture artefact. So mountainous is his trove that you’d fail to notice his staff at their desk if it weren’t for the sounds of mouse and keyboard clicks.

Here’s the kicker: despite the cornucopia that we have witnessed here, he still has a storage space where more toys are stored. “I just keep running out of storage space,” Koh says. “I’m considering renting a small warehouse. Maybe about 500 square feet.”

It’s a constant struggle, he tells us. Something that many collectors will contend with. The overflow of material joy and the scarcity of space. This will be Koh’s bugbear but he has always lived for the moment; that’s why he collects.

In a way, Koh opines, collecting for him is most collectors’ raison d’etre: reliving their childhood; buying stuff that they didn’t have back then. Nostalgia: it's a hell of a drug.

“It’s never about having the biggest collection in Singapore. I’m just lucky to have a space and the means to buy these toys.”

While it feels like there’s no rhyme nor reason to his purchases, Koh boils it down to “stuff that catches his fancy”. Regret never comes into play. “It sounds a little snobbish to say but I’ve never cared about the investment value of the toys I get,” Koh says. “People ask what my favourite toy is and I’d answer that it’s the one I haven’t bought. Just buy whatever makes you happy.”

And that joy of acquisition, perhaps is collecting at its purest. He still keeps the boxes the toys come in but not because the packaging has more value if he resells his toys, rather he rotates out the toys that are displayed for the ones in the boxes. “Without the boxes, it’ll be difficult to store them.”

He adds that people, with the intention to resell the toys, often will not make much profit. “Here’s the thing with Star Wars... the toys from the ’70s or ’80s fetch a lot of money on the reseller markers as not many people bought them at the time. When Hasbro [the American toy company] released ‘The Power of the Force’ line, people started hoarding them but now they can’t sell them for five bucks.”

Koh points to a moment when he had a chance to purchase a rocket-firing Boba Fett prototype. The action figure prototype was shown at the New York Toy Fair in 1979 but it was never mass-produced due to concerns that the missile was a safety hazard to children. There was a chance to buy it for USD7,000. “But I was in my early 20s and that amount at that age was too much for me,” Koh adds, “a graded version went for USD200K.”

He puts out his own toys as well under the arm of FLABSLAB, the acronym for Muhammad Ali’s quote “Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee”. FLABSLAB isn’t about making money. No, that responsibility belongs to his creative agency Nerf Creative. FLABSLAB is a passion project, a platform for Koh to take his ideas and make them real.

The toys created through FLABSLAB are things that Koh would buy for himself. “In a way, it’s a little bit of a dictatorship,” Koh says, “of course, I’ll listen to input—it is a collaboration—but the toys produced are just stuff that I like.

“A lot of people say that I’m an artist. I feel kind of insulted on behalf of actual artists who dedicate their lives to the craft. I just have stupid ideas [and I need artists to help make it a reality].”

Koh is realistic about his toy collection when he dies. He knows that he can’t take it with him. He tells us about images that he reposted on his IG account about a toy collector who passed away two years ago. A man who had so many toys that it took his friends and relatives that long to unpack everything. “It’s a burden, a burden that’s left for the family to deal with. I don’t want that for my own family so the plan is to liquidate everything and have them split the money among themselves.”

Patience isn’t his strongest suit. He bristles at the thought of cataloguing his toys and dealing with—in his own words—”stupid” buyers. “I long for the day when someone would appear at my doorstep and just buy everything. Everything, including the office, and I’ll walk away.”

When that day comes, it’ll feel like an empire has come to an end. But to Jeffrey Koh, the enfant terrible of the toy world, maybe it might feel that he finally has the much-needed space to breathe in.

And who knows, maybe he’ll feel the need to fill it up once again.

Photography: Jaya Khidir

He hardly looks like a man with a green thumb, let alone a whole garden. Darren Loke, who is behind Omitir, Veblen Supplies and handles operations at Aa Furniture, collects plants—mostly aroids and caudiciforms.

His interest in them was first piqued during his time with his ex. She had plants, and in those heady days of romance, he lapped up her overspilt passion. He started his own collection; a few here and there initially. Until his hobby blossomed into an obsession. When the pandemic hit, he was plunged even deeper into his garden.

“Obviously, when you start a hobby, you want to explore and understand the craft,” Loke explains. “There are plants that grow around us but then you discover others from the highlands [ecosystem] or more temperamental ones like cold-loving plants that won’t survive in Singapore. It came to a point where I had to concede to only growing plants that can thrive in our climate.”

Before the use of hashtags, interest in plants stopped short of simply knowing their general nomenclature, not even their genus. When it comes to describing a tree, most can say that it has leaves and is covered with bark, but falter if pressed for specifics.

Then, social media made it easier to identify plant types. COVID brought about a heightened insularity that accelerated plant interest for shut-ins. “It used to be that any plant tips you get would most probably be from a US writer with knowledge about plants in their region,” Loke said. “Now it’s more varied.”

Ficuses are his jam. While commonly found in Singapore, a ficus plant has different subspecies; some hail from Myanmar, others from Japan. Loke is attracted to their forms, finding them “interesting”. Driven by aesthetics, Loke would pair a plant with the pot.

You may have heard people say that having a garden helps them relax. Not Loke. It’s the opposite for him. He used to enjoy tending to his plants whenever he returned from work but his obsession led him to constantly fret about them. “If you think about it, it can be a chore,” Loke says.

He has stopped counting but Loke reckons he has about 400 plant species. Then, catching himself, he adds a disclaimer: “But I’ve cut down a lot.” His current collection is stored in two places: at Aa Furniture showroom and Chwee Nursery in Seletar.

Plants at the nursery blossom due to the humidity. Once they are ready, Loke propagates them and transfers them to the showroom for display and sale. These plants are suitable for indoors and their presence helps customers to visualise, and inspires them to spruce up their own homes with a plant.

He waters the plants twice a week at the showroom and once a week at the nursery. Knowing that his plants are in an environment where they can thrive, assuages his fears about their survival. “I believe,” Loke adds, “that some plants thrive in neglect. Just give them the basics and let nature take care of the rest. In the end, they are plants, right? We shouldn’t be working for them.”

He tried growing a Pachypodium namaquanum but the species is found in dry rocky deserts and thrives in harsh conditions—extreme summer heat and wind. They can survive in a tropical setting, he says. “Think of it as a controlled situation. Air-conditioning with artificial grow lights just to maintain that environment but it’s not sustainable because, at the end of the day, these guys won’t reach their full growth potential.”

To Loke, a plant is only ready when it starts flowering. “That’s when the plant goes through a full cycle of growth, which means it’s healthy in that current condition. That’s something I definitely learnt. There are a lot of expensive mistakes.”

It is an expensive hobby to get into. The pandemic brought about a price inflation in the plant market, where the entrepreneurial and, depending on who you ask, the exploitative, took advantage by flipping plants for a higher profit. These days, plants are more affordable, the best time to get into the hobby, if you ask us.

Loke doesn’t refute that this can be considered an old man’s hobby. “Gardening taught me to slow down. For the tangible side of things, there are some rare plants that only a few importers can bring in. You’ll just need to make the right contacts. With enough money, you can get almost any plant you want.

“Even so these are life forms that will come and go,” Loke says as he plucked the leaves of a frankincense plant and crushed them between his fingers. With cupped hands, he breathed in the balsamic and woody fragrance.

From the ashes of the pandemic, the local plant community has grown ever larger. While some might opine that it’s just another consideration to create a space for a garden; think about this: it was all green before we intruded. Maybe, space can be made for both.

Photography: Jaya Khidir

Even though he has never been musically trained and doesn’t play any instrument, Teo Chee Keong (or CK as he’s known to friends) seems inexplicably drawn to music. There were the salad days of listening to Rediffusion in his mother’s kitchen; his father’s cassette tapes that were near to being worn out from constant play. “Boney M and ABBA... the disco stuff, you know?” CK specifies.

Eventually, like the revolutions of a vinyl on a record player, it all comes back full circle with his vinyl obsession starting in 2012, rather late in life, CK admits. Accompanying a friend to Zenn Audio Electronics, CK saw Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind. Even without a turntable, CK was besotted with the band and the album cover. So he bought it. It was priced at SG$70, a pretty penny in those days. “But I love it so much,” CK enthuses. With his prize in hand, CK felt that he had found the Holy Grail but he would not know how fragile a vinyl would be. Leaving Nevermind in his car for a day resulted in the disc getting heat warped. “I had to get it flattened again,” CK laughs. 

Nevermind may have started the collection but securing a turntable less than a year later to listen to it was the catalyst. “Once I had the means to play a record, I started buying more. I was still staying with my mother and every day, there would be records delivered to my house.”

His vinyl collection didn’t stop growing. In 2013, while holding on to his day job, CK opened a record store with Eugene Ow Yong called Vinylicious. The store was the first local record store to introduce Record Store Day in Singapore. In some way, this invigorated the vinyl-collecting culture in the country.

His vinyl collection is how CK reconnects to key moments in his life when he’d listen to the radio. “I’d listen to Casey Kasem’s America Top 40 on Redifussion religiously. Whenever I play his records now, Casey’s voice would come on and I’m back to my teenage years.”

It is a formidable form of time travel. For many, a scent or a photograph can unlock a flood of memories. For people like CK, who have a stronger auditory sense, a piece of music can transport them to the moment when they first listened to it.

Aside from a live show, when it comes to the listening experience, the vinyl medium presents more dynamism. Analogue music gives a richer sound; there’s a warmth to it. “CDs and Spotify can’t create that experience. Vinyl does,” CK says.

In his Punggol flat, an entire room is set aside for his record collection. High ceilings made it possible for CK to install custom-made shelves (the design was cribbed from someone else’s collection that CK once came across). The cost of the furnishing? In the ballpark of SG$18,000.

Fully stacked, there is a system to his catalogue. One section houses music from the ’80s. Next to it are his jazz records—one that’s instrumental, another that features vocalists. Another part features genres like funk and soul and classic rock. Yet another is segmented into either the ’90s or the 2000s... it’s a complex directory that only CK knows how to navigate through.

Some collectors are adamant about only acquiring original pressings but CK is non-plussed. “If I have SG$1,000 and if I’ve to get either one SG$1,000 record or several hundreds of records that are reissues or not rare, I’ll get those.”

He does have some grail items and many of them are precious in his sight. His record obsession has infected his son as well. “He’s musically inclined,” CK says. “He even introduced a few musicians to me like Eminem and Måneskin. He saw [the latter] in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2021,” CK says with pride.

It’s a collection that’s still growing. CK ponders if he should start selling some of them soon. So, what happens when his vinyl collection is no more?

“You mean when I don’t have it with me?”

He looks sad for a moment as though the image of empty shelves in a high-ceilinged room is triggering.

“When I grow older and nearing the end, I can accept the fact that I can’t take it with me. But if for some reason, my collection were to go missing or disappear, I think I might fall into depression.”

Photography: Jaya Khidir
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Photography Assistant: Danial Mirza