There have been 13 series of Homies, with more than 200 characters. By 2005, the Homies line featured female characters, as well as characters with Puerto Rican, Filipino, and Japanese backgrounds. Īccording to Gonzales, he has received orders from countries in Europe, South America, and Africa requesting Homies characters representing people from those continents. Stores quickly returned the Homies to their shelves the resulting media coverage of the controversy helped Homies gain ever more popularity.
He created stories for each of the characters on the Homies website, with each one embodying a positive trait. In response, Gonzales repeatedly explained that he “did not create Homies to glamorize gang life”. Law enforcement entities pressured retailers to stop selling Homies as a result, many mainstream stores, such as Walmart and Safeway Inc., stopped selling the toys. The figures caused controversy after their initial release as members of the Los Angeles Police Department argued that the "urban, inner-city Latino" figures glorified gang life. The toys were widely popular, with the first series selling a million Homies figures in four months. The first series featured the male characters Eight Ball, Smiley, Big Loco, Droopy, Sapo, and Mr. In 1998, Gonzales released the first set of Homies figurines, initially sold in supermarket vending machines located in Chicano communities. Gonzales began drawing his humorous characters on T-shirts and other products, which he and his wife sold on local beach stands, swap meets, liquor stores, and eventually urban clothing stores. In use in the West Coast Latino community for decades, the word "homie" has crossed over into the mainstream culture.) More and more barrio characters from Gonzales' experiences were introduced to the public through the Hollywood strip - these became "Homies." (The word "homie" is an African-American slang from the southern United States, meaning someone from "back home". The main character, based on Gonzales himself, was called "Hollywood." The strip, which later changed its title to The Adventures of Hollywood, was picked up by Lowrider magazine and published monthly. His amateur comic strip was called The Adventures of Chico Loco, and the characters were based on " barrio guys," as Gonzales grew up on the tough streets of a poverty-ridden Mexican-American neighborhood. Gonzales began drawing comics while he was in high school.