FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 97
Companion (Open Edition) Grey
The first KAWS figure made without a numbered edition, the $200 grey Companion was meant to put the artist within everyone's reach, and it ended up crashing a museum website.
- Year
- 2016
- Maker
- KAWS
- By price in art
- 99 of 100
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Create a free account- Artist
- KAWS (Brian Donnelly, born 1974, Jersey City, New Jersey)
- Released
- November 2016 (listed release date November 22, 2016)
- Made by
- Medicom Toy, Japan
- Material
- Painted cast vinyl, sold sealed in a clear blister pack
- Size
- About 11 in (27.9 cm) tall; package listing 10.5 x 4.5 x 2.5 in
- Edition
- Open edition: not numbered, produced in several batches
- Retail
- $200
- Colorway
- Grey, full body, in tones of grey and white
- Occasion
- KAWS: Where the End Starts, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, October 20, 2016 to January 22, 2017
A Mickey Mouse with crossed-out eyes
The Companion is KAWS's best-known character: a figure in Mickey Mouse-style buttoned shorts, with a skull and crossbones for a head and X's for eyes. KAWS created it in 1999, after the Japanese toy and streetwear brand Bounty Hunter invited him to Japan. That first vinyl Companion came in an edition of 500 and sold out almost at once.
For the next 17 years, KAWS figures were made in numbered, limited runs, many through OriginalFake, the brand and Tokyo store he ran with Medicom Toy from 2006 to May 2013. The open-edition Companion of 2016 broke that pattern. It was the first set of KAWS toys since OriginalFake closed, and the first not produced in a numbered limited edition, so new batches could keep shipping to toy shops and museum stores.
The 2016 release came as six figures, in full-body and 'flayed' versions. This entry is the full-body grey, finished in tones of grey and white.
From bus shelters to museums
Brian Donnelly was born in 1974 in Jersey City, New Jersey. As a teenager he invented the tag KAWS because he liked how the letters looked, and painted it on a rooftop he could see from his classroom at St. Anthony High School. He earned a BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1996 and then painted backgrounds for animated shows including 101 Dalmatians, Daria and Doug.
By night he did graffiti. With a skeleton key he got from the artist Barry McGee, he opened bus shelters and phone booths in New York and painted his characters over the ads, later doing the same in Paris, London, Berlin and Tokyo. As one major auction house's guide puts it, he built his following on the street and through mass-produced objects before any gallery took him on.
The open-edition Companion fits that idea. A New York writer who stood in line for one in 2017 called it a relatively inexpensive way for people to own a piece of pop art.
Fort Worth, then the MoMA rush
The figures launched in November 2016 alongside KAWS: Where the End Starts, a survey of his work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that ran from October 20, 2016, to January 22, 2017, and then traveled to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. They were sold through KAWS's own online store, the Fort Worth museum, the MoMA Design Store and, in Japan, Medicom Toy's own shop. A later Medicom web sale priced them at 191 euros before tax.
Demand outran supply. When the MoMA Design Store released more Companions in May 2017, its website crashed under the traffic. A reporter who went to the store on West 53rd Street found the toys stacked in boxes behind a pop-up register because the allotment would not last the afternoon. The man ahead of him in line, hands shaking, bought $600 worth.
At the same time, a clothing store on the same block was wrapped in a 30-foot Snoopy from KAWS's Peanuts collaboration.
The figure that sets the floor
Because it is open and was restocked, the grey Companion is the most common way into the KAWS market, and it trades every day on resale platforms. In early October 2026 the lowest asking price on one U.S. resale marketplace was $464, a bit more than twice the $200 retail.
That market sits far below KAWS's top results. In April 2019 his painting The KAWS Album (2005) sold in Hong Kong for about $14.7 million, a record for the artist at the time. A large four-foot Dissected Companion from an edition of 100 sold for $106,250 online in July 2021.
How to identify it
The grey open-edition Companion stands about 11 inches tall, with the full body painted in grey and white. It was sold sealed in a clear plastic blister pack; examples still sealed are the norm in the resale market. The feet carry stamped markings.
Several later KAWS figures also come in grey and are easy to confuse with it: the flayed version from the same 2016 release, and later open editions such as Clean Slate (2018), Gone (2019) and Separated (2021), which are larger poses with their own prices.
The numbers
- Medium
- Painted cast vinyl
- Dimensions
- About 11 in tall (27.9 cm); package 10.5 x 4.5 x 2.5 in (16.7 x 11.4 x 6.4 cm as listed)
- Edition size
- Open edition, unnumbered; production total not published
- Manufacturer
- Medicom Toy
- Original retail
- $200
Timeline
Brian Donnelly is born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Donnelly earns a BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts, New York.
KAWS creates the Companion; Bounty Hunter releases the first vinyl figure in an edition of 500.
KAWS and Medicom Toy launch OriginalFake in Tokyo.
A Companion balloon flies in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
OriginalFake closes.
KAWS: Where the End Starts opens at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Listed release date of the grey open-edition Companion; retail $200.
The Fort Worth survey closes and travels to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai.
A MoMA Design Store release of Companions crashes the store's website.
The KAWS Album sells in Hong Kong for about $14.7 million, then the artist's auction record.
A sealed grey open-edition Companion, with its original MoMA invoice, is offered without reserve in a U.S. online sale of KAWS figures.
Lowest asking price on a U.S. resale marketplace: $464.
The world in 2016
Beyoncé releases Lemonade.
The United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union.
Pokémon Go is released and breaks download and revenue records.
The Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, the first held in South America.
The Chicago Cubs win their first World Series since 1908.
Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 3, 2026 | $464 | Asking price, not a saleLowest asking price for a new grey open-edition Companion on a U.S. resale marketplace when checked. Retail was $200. |
This is an asking price, not a sale. It is what a seller wanted on the date shown. Asking prices often sit above what buyers pay, but an ask is not a ceiling: a sale can land on either side of it. It is not a value.
By reference price, Companion (Open Edition) Grey is number 99 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (97 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- KAWS chose his tag because he liked how the letters looked. The word means nothing.
- This was the first KAWS toy released without a numbered limited edition.
- The first vinyl Companion, from 1999, came in an edition of 500 and sold out almost immediately.
- Before he was an artist, KAWS painted backgrounds for the cartoons Daria and Doug.
- In 2013 KAWS redesigned the MTV Video Music Awards Moonman trophy as a Companion.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026