Rubber Ninja rethinks retirement and pays respects to toy titan Richard Gottlieb

Vadim Govorov is Rubber Ninja and creates content to reflect his super-diver alter ego.

Do you know the Muffin Man? Of course, you do! Brace yourself; you’re on the verge of an intro to Rubber Ninja: his smell is more seawater than sugar, but he’s twice as sweet as the tired, ol’ aforementioned cake peddler.

This article appears in the November 12 issue of GLOBAL TOY NEWS. It appears here for the convenience of Medium readers. Enjoy

Toy titan Richard Gottlieb, the author, and Rubber Ninja Vadim Govorov talk toys in 2022.

Time travel back to 2022. It was Dickensian at its core. It was the best of times and the worst. The pandemic stubbornly persisted; folks supersized their toy collections; Richard Gottlieb published GLOBAL TOY NEWS; and commercial diver/toy sculptor/graphic novelist/Gottlieb mentee Vadim Govorov — a.k.a. Rubber Ninja — enjoyed his first print interview in the seminal plaything publication.

The tail end of 2024 is no less of the Dickens but markedly different. One of the starkest changes is the world’s October 2023 loss of Richard Gottlieb. On the first anniversary of Richard’s passage, Rubber Ninja recalled the lasting impact of his toy industry sensei.