Tag Archives: disruption

With Sites Set on LEGO, 3D Systems Cubify Launches Robot Toy Line

3D Systems Cubify Toy Robots

3D Systems’ consumer brand Cubify has announced a new toy line called Cubify robots. This move follows the acquisition of My Robot Nation and launch of the Cube consumer 3D printer.

We have published several features about the toy industry and how 3D printing will disrupt it, including the father who printed the Rosetta stone for toys.

Now 3D Systems is taking a page from LEGO and other popular toy manufacturers by making collectable toy robots whose parts are interchangeable.

From the 3D Systems press release:

3D Systems Corporation announced today the immediate availability of its new Cubify® toy robots designed specifically for printing on Cube®, the world’s first home 3D printer. The entire collection can be downloaded and printed at home on your Cube 3D printer.

Starting at just $4.99, Cube printed robots are also available for home delivery through Cubify and come individually packaged or in sets of three with exciting options to choose from like ray-guns and rocket-packs.

Cubify® robots are moveable, poseable and printable in colorful, lego-like plastic. Printed parts can be snapped together, swapped and colors mixed to create an amazing new robot, or an entire crew.  With thousands of possible combinations, Cubify robots provide hours of educational and creative fun for kids and adults alike.

“We are thrilled with these cute, playful new Cubify robots. Kids of all ages can collect the entire series as they create unique configurations to amaze their friends,” said Cathy Lewis, Vice President of Global Marketing for 3D Systems.   “Our excitement continues to build with each new toy and app we make available to our growing Cubify community.”

 

3D Printing Presents Long-Term Threat to Otherwise Healthy Toy Stocks

Hasbro 3D Printing Threat

Back in April, we discussed how 3D printing could disrupt the toy industry, and in May featured a story about a father printing the Rosetta stone for kids toys.

The analysts at Seeking Alpha have put together an interesting perspective of how an otherwise appealing dividend growth stock might be a failed investment because of the emergence of 3D printing. The stock is Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS), the owner of brands such as Tonka, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony.

As an investor who is interested in dividends, I look at these metrics to begin my analysis.

  1. Dividend: $1.44
  2. Yield: 4.1%
  3. 5 yr. DGR: 17.2%
  4. Payout Ratio: 44%
  5. Debt Coverage Ratio: 6.1

This is just a quick peek at a few data points, but upon deeper analysis, the company looks relatively healthy with plenty of room to increase its dividend in the near term. Additionally, the recent success of the Avengers movie is expected to translate into revenue for Hasbro. What has me worried is the future of the company five to ten years out. Why? 3-D printing.

The analyst goes on to say that once 3D printing becomes ubiquitous, it will become a threat to traditional toy makers, and we won’t be able to get the genie back in the bottle. He cites some examples of 3D printed substitutes and complements.

  1. The following is a video of a student at a community college who created a STAR WARS TIE Fighter. There are 2 important additional points to note: Hasbro owns the rights to sell STAR WARS toys, etc. I don’t believe that this is an exact/scanned replica because it is not as detailed as the real one would be.
  2. Soon, owners of Microsoft’s (MSFT) XBOX Kinect will be able to use it to scan objects and create 3-D models. This will make it very easy to create the schematic (instructions) that the printer needs.
  3. Also, the Pirate Bay (an illegal file-sharing website that has successfully fought against being shut down) recently created a section for sharing the 3-D schematics. There are already a number of possible cases of patent infringement. The Huffington Post notes one case where someone has shared a file that is probably a copy of a “Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Dreadnought.”

In my eyes, this is just the first evidence of what will be gaining speed throughout the next couple of years.

 

Read the full article at Seeking Alpha.

Read more coverage about 3D printing and toys.

Hasbro booth photo by Gage Skidmore used under Creative Commons license.

3D Printing the Rosetta Stone for Kids Toys: Nerd Dad Triumph

Free Universal Construction Kit

Carnegie Mellon Professor Golan Levin has built the Rosetta Stone for kids toys. His Free Universal Construction Kit is a design for parts that enable interoperability between Legos, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and several more popular toy brands. The catch? If you want these parts, you have to 3D print them yourself!

In what Forbes calls the “ultimate nerd dad triumph”, Levin and his former student Shawn Sims made sure these parts will fit:

Levin and Sims didn’t just make near replicas of the commercial toys, they used a measurement tool called an optical comparator to copy the toys’ dimensions to within 3 microns. And then they published those models on the Web. “Our lawyers were a bit concerned,” ­admits Levin, so much so that the pair initially planned to release the project anonymously.

Professor Golan Levin - Free Universal Construction Kit

Back in April, we highlighted the potential disruptive impact 3D printing could have on the toy industry.

With the price of toys so marked up, it’s within reason to think that kids will turn to generics or pirated designs to fill out their toy chest after parents tap out the budget at retail.

Look back at the music industry. The only way to buy music in the late 90s was to purchase the full album at retail. Then Napster and other P2P sharing software came along and allowed consumers to download individual mp3 songs, albeit pirated. When iTunes launched with individual song pricing and a more reliable service than the P2P networks, consumers flocked to the legal alternative. The retail music industry died but the digital music industry was born.

Perhaps in the next 5 years we’ll see the retail toy industry collapse and be replaced by a digital successor. The question is whether we will see a digital toy black market in the interim. In our view, that will be up to the toymakers and their willingness to disrupt their current model.

Has Levin truly liberated construction toys from working only with their own kind? Will this type of innovation improve or hurt sales and prices of popular toy brands?

See the full poster of toy compatibility at Slideshare.

The video below shows how the Free Universal Construction Kit works. Notice how the voiceover makes it feel like a proper 1980s advertisement.

 

Read the full story about Levin’s project at Forbes.

Will 3D Printing Disrupt the Lucrative Toy Industry?

LEGO Star Wars kits are currently selling on Amazon.com for hundreds of dollars. Even small components come with a hefty price, such as a V-wing Starfighter that measures 9″ when full assembled and costs $20.

Enter 3D printing and open-source design package LeoCAD. If kids could design their own LEGO-style building kits and print them out on their home 3D printer, why wouldn’t they? Hey, even LEGO is training kids how to design online with the LEGO Digital Designer.

With the price of toys so marked up, it’s within reason to think that kids will turn to generics or pirated designs to fill out their toy chest after parents tap out the budget at retail.

Look back at the music industry. The only way to buy music in the late 90s was to purchase the full album at retail. Then Napster and other P2P sharing software came along and allowed consumers to download individual mp3 songs, albeit pirated. When iTunes launched with individual song pricing and a more reliable service than the P2P networks, consumers flocked to the legal alternative. The retail music industry died but the digital music industry was born.

Perhaps in the next 5 years we’ll see the retail toy industry collapse and be replaced by a digital successor. The question is whether we will see a digital toy black market in the interim. In our view, that will be up to the toymakers and their willingness to disrupt their current model.

Some references are from MIT Technology Review.