KAWS x Squid Game: When Art Toys Get Chilling

In late 2024, as Squid Game Season 2 stirred up global anticipation, KAWS brought the show’s most haunting character back to life, this time as a limited-edition art toy. The result? A figure that felt part nightmare, part collectible, and all KAWS.

At the center of the release was Young-hee, the giant robot doll from the show’s infamous “Red Light, Green Light” scene. But KAWS didn’t just recreate her. He reimagined her. Think XX eyes instead of cold robotic ones, sculpted cloud-like ears, and those classic KAWS hands frozen mid-motion like she’s deciding whether you move or not. It was unsettling and familiar all at once.

Two versions hit the market. One stayed faithful to the original character’s schoolgirl colors. The other stripped her down to grayscale, turning her into something more minimalist and sculptural. Both felt like they could blink any second.

This wasn’t just another collab. It was a collision of cultural icons - KAWS’s visual language meeting one of the most globally recognized TV shows of the decade. And it worked. The figures sold out quickly and started surfacing in auctions, with collectors scrambling to get their hands on a piece of the story.

The real power of this release wasn’t in its rarity or even its resale value. It was in how it captured a cultural moment. KAWS took a character designed to terrify and made her into something artful, collectible, and strangely beautiful. A toy, yes, but also a reminder of how far the boundaries of pop art can stretch when the right worlds collide.