About the DTAs

The Designer Toy Awards (DTAs) founded in 2011, is the leading award honoring excellence and innovation in Designer Toys throughout the world. Presented by Clutter, the DTAs is an annual event bringing recognition to amazing talents in this genre, from artists and sculptors, to bloggers and manufacturers. This award ceremony is a thank you to both the winners and losers, everyone who takes part!


Reflecting the tremendous and ongoing growth of the Designer Toy arena, the DTAs celebrate the best of the industry’s artists, designers, and brands, as well as honoring those involved in championing Designer Toys throughout the world. Members of the prestigious DTA Board select the majority of finalists and winners in each category from the nominees bringing their years of industry knowledge in casting their vote for those who push for excellence, however, — the online community — determine, in some cases, the winners by voting for nominated works, that they believe to be the best in each category.


Over the years the DTAs have grown and improved the award offerings, by making changes to award categories such as removing "Best Event", "Best 1/6th scale", "Customizer of the Year" (which is almost impossible to judge fairly, and was replaced by "Custom of the Year"), "Best Collection", (which has historically always been difficult, those with the biggest collection rarely want to advertise them), and adding categories such as "Best Production Sculpt" and "Best Resin". These categories will continue to evolve as the Designer Toy genre continues to shift direction.


The Designer Toy Awards is owned in full by the Designer Toy Foundation Charity and is run by a board of directors. All decisions and changes are made by the members of that board. The owners or employees of Clutter do not vote in the awards, decide the winners or participate, apart from selecting the Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement awards, above being the organizers. All voting is either conducted by the Industry Board most well suited to vote on these categories, or by public votes.

Please note: When the Designer Toy Awards first came to be, we allowed one vote per day per user, but soon came to the realization that this clearly lead to a popularity contest and vote-rigging (prizes being offered etc), due to this we limited the votes to only one per user and track IP's or suspicious voting blocks. We will remove, or disqualify votes if we find this is occurring.


In 2020 we celebrated the 10th year of the awards which has become the cornerstone event for the Designer Toy community. Taking place during the weekend of the Five Points Festival, this is where fans and artists come together to celebrate artworks like no other!!