VERDY'S PANDA RABBIT VICK WRAPS MERCEDES BENZ'S NEW CLA

Vick, the panda rabbit character Verdy has been drawing since his earliest years in Tokyo, showed up on a Mercedes Benz CLA on September 12, 2026. Visty, his rounder, more colorful second character, took the G Class that day too, wrapped in a camouflage pattern Verdy designed himself. Mercedes Benz Japan built the rollout around a single line: VERDY meets Mercedes Benz STUDIO TOKYO.

It is the first time the automaker has handed two production silhouettes to a Japanese streetwear graphic artist as a canvas, and it lands six months after Mercedes leaned on Carl Benz's 1886 patent to make its case in Miami instead.

September 12. Vick Boards the CLA.

The first capsule collection went on sale September 12, 2026: original t shirts and keyrings carrying Verdy's artwork, sold alongside a pop up that runs through September 27 inside Mercedes Benz STUDIO TOKYO. The venue sits in Omotesando, the Tokyo district built for this kind of foot traffic. It opened as a standalone space on April 24, 2026, then expanded into a full lounge on June 30, growing from a single showroom into a multi floor brand experience in a little over two months. Mercedes Benz has described the space internally as a brand store that does not sell cars, built for people to spend time in rather than sign paperwork in, an instinct that already put Mercedes Benz's own museum inside a Miami collector car weekend back in March. Handing the Tokyo space to a streetwear artist for two and a half weeks reads as a bet, not a press stunt timed to a drop calendar.

Visty Wears a Camouflage Verdy Drew Himself

Visty is not a repaint of Vick. Verdy built the two characters years apart, Vick the earlier panda rabbit, Visty the newer, rounder monster figure that already has its own Nike SB Dunk Low release behind it. For the G Class, Verdy did not just apply the character as a decal. He drew an original camouflage pattern from scratch, wrapped the body panels in it, and set Visty inside that pattern instead of on top of it, so the character reads as part of the paint, not a sticker sitting over it. The CLA keeps Vick isolated and graphic against factory colored bodywork instead, a deliberate split between the brand's newest sedan and its oldest off road nameplate that puts two different characters, and two different ideas about how a car should carry art, on one September calendar.

Carl Benz's Patent Anchored March. Vick Anchors September.

Mercedes Benz has run this play before, just with a different collaborator. The Miami showcase built its case around Carl Benz's January 29, 1886 patent application for the Patent Motorwagen, pairing the replica with the brand's MANUFAKTUR customization program for a Florida audience built on collector cars and auction results. Six months later, the brand is telling a familiar story, craft and reinvention justify the price, to a Tokyo audience instead, except the historian has been swapped for a 39 year old graphic artist and the 1886 patent has been swapped for two cartoon characters wrapped around a CLA and a G Class.

Girls Don't Cry Started as a Gift for His Wife

Verdy was born in Osaka in 1987 and moved to Tokyo in 2012, working through the illustrator collective VK Design Works before launching Wasted Youth in 2016 and Girls Don't Cry in 2017, the latter conceived as a gift for his wife on a trip to Los Angeles. Those two labels turned Vick and Visty into recognizable currency across streetwear long before this collaboration, and in August 2024, Human Made named Verdy its creative partner, a title that put his characters inside a Japanese heritage brand two years before a German automaker came calling. He has also worked with Nike, Kenzo, Beats by Dre, Levi's and Dover Street Market, and served as artistic director for ComplexCon Long Beach in 2022, ComplexCon Hong Kong in 2024, and Blackpink's Born Pink tour, a run of credits that made an automaker's brand studio a logical next stop, not a surprising one.

Mercedes Benz has not said whether Vick or Visty return for a second capsule after September 27. Given that a creative partner title at Human Made has already outlasted a single drop by two years, the smarter bet is that this Tokyo pop up is the opening move of a longer arrangement, not the whole campaign compressed into sixteen days.