Denton lore is all over David Bayon’s work.
The miniatures artist crafts custom action figures of notable Denton characters like The PriceMaster, Bonsai Tree Lady and Tigerhead Keyboard Guy.
Even the name of his online store, Thug Emporium, is a play on the name of a beloved University Drive pharmacy and health food store that had customers in tears when it closed in 2021.
“From the outside looking in it's just a weird-looking thing, and that's part of the fun of it is we get to tell the stories,” Bayon said.
Hometown heroes
Some of the local legends are pretty straightforward.
Tiger Head Keyboard Guy is a roving musician known for playing his keyboard while wearing a fake tiger head. Similarly, Bonsai Tree Lady is known for setting up shop in parking lots around town and selling bonsai trees.
“She’s super sweet,” Bayon said. “Everyone’s bought a bonsai from her.”
The PriceMaster traces its history back to a garage sale turned performance art exhibition on Normal Street in 2001. A Denton resident named Nathan Austin donned a gold mask, silver jacket and red parachute-like pants and bellowed out absurd prices for secondhand wares.
As Bayon describes the toy on its custom packaging: “Pricemaster is the unsung overlord of discount doom. Cloaked in mystery (and maybe pleather), he's part shopping guru, part chaos demon and ALL DENTON.”
He sells the action figures on his website for just over $20. They were a hit at Dentonpalooza, a festival celebrating the city.
Joey Liechty founded the festival, which celebrated its fifth and final year last October.
“[Bayon] floated the idea like, ‘What if I made a PriceMaster figure? What if I made the Kroger rodent creature or something like that,” Liechty said. “I was like, man, that sounds hilarious, and I think people would really dig it.”
Festival attendees bonded over recognizing and sharing local celebrities’ lore.
“It's really fun to see when a group of people walk up and one will be excited to tell the rest of the group. Or I'm happy to tell them too … so it's just fun in that aspect alone,” Bayon said.
Hot rods and ‘Stranger Things’
How does someone get into making custom action figures? For Bayon, it all started with model cars.
“I can't build a hot rod in a weekend, or afford it, but I can build one as a scale model,” he said.
From there, Bayon was inspired to make images of his work even stronger, so he started crafting dioramas and human figures to make the scenes more realistic. Naturally, custom action figures were the next step.
The first one he made was for his neighbor, Chester Rushing, who played “Tommy H.” in a few episodes of Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”
Rappers are one of Bayon’s favorite subjects.
A few years ago, Bayon crafted a purple, plastic version of New York emcee Homeboy Sandman for an album he was featured on.
“He got me looking pretty svelte in the waistline. I'm really looking real Herculean with it, which is pretty fly,” Sandman said. “I don't really [look] like that in real life, but when I look at the toy, it inspired me to hit the park and get some reps.”
Now, Sandman is working with Bayon again to create a new action figure for a solo album that will be released in July.
“I really, really liked that last one. It was real fly,” Sandman said. “I like turning me into a crazy superhero figure, but now we gonna have a special realistic one coming up that's gonna have different heads for my different hairstyles.”
Making action figures isn’t Bayon’s full-time job. But the property manager has fun doing it.
“I've been fortunate enough that people share my passion. They also love them. So yeah, so between their admiration and asking for them and I have fun making them, so why not?” Bayon said.
Everything he makes is something he wants for his own collection anyway. So, Bayon will keep tinkering away, making new figures in his home studio as inspiration and collaborations roll in.
The KERA ArtsDoc series is a biweekly program featuring artists working in North Texas. Find us on YouTube. Got a tip? Email Marcheta Fornoff at mfornoff@kera.org.
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