Can you figure out an artistic way to recycle old toys? A few years ago, British artist Robert Bradford did. He was sitting in his studio and glanced over at his children’s old toy box. He opened the lid and was struck by the varied colors and shapes of all the castoff toys in the box.

Once he figured out how to mount the toys on a wooden base using metal screws, he created his first doggie sculpture—a mutt covered snout to tail with little superheroes, train tracks, skeletons, cars, letters of the alphabet and other tiny toys. The sculpture shown here, called “Sniffer Without,” is one of several Bradford dogs.

“The toys themselves interest me in their own right as mini sculptures by unknown and uncredited artists,” Bradford says. “Mostly I use the toys abstractly to build muscle, bone or organs, but the toys also provide a moving history of fads and fashions as they pass through the media and our awareness temporarily significant and then forgotten.”