Tag Archives: toys
With Sites Set on LEGO, 3D Systems Cubify Launches Robot Toy Line
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.”
America Will Lead the Future of Manufacturing, China Will Follow
In a fantastic opinion piece by technology entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa, the case is made that America will be the center of manufacturing, not China. This won’t happen through increasing Chinese labor costs or monetary policy, but through American innovation in technology. Specific innovations cited include robotics, AI, 3D printing, and nanotechnology.
Below are Wadhwa’s thoughts on 3D printing:
A type of manufacturing called “additive manufacturing” is now making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material until you’re left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.
In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The ”3D printers” that produce these parts use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.
Three-D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand?
Read the full article at foreignpolicy.com.
American flag photo by Loving Earth used under Creative Commons license.
Vivek Wadhwa photo by BAIA used under Creative Commons license.
3D Printing Presents Long-Term Threat to Otherwise Healthy Toy Stocks
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.
- Dividend: $1.44
- Yield: 4.1%
- 5 yr. DGR: 17.2%
- Payout Ratio: 44%
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 Will Empower Most Innovative Decade in History – Forbes
Forbes contributor Vivek Wadhwa explains why he believes this will be the most innovative decade in history. Wadhwa is Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University. Here is his general view:
Why am I so optimistic? Because of the wide assortment of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging. They are enabling small teams to do what was once only possible for governments and large corporations. These exponential technologies will help us solve many of humanity’s grand challenges, including energy, education, water, food, and health.
Among the technologies he cites as game changing this decade, 3D printing has a main feature:
In an emerging field called digital manufacturing, 3D printers enable the production of physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. These printers use something like a toothpaste tube of plastic or other material held vertically in an X-Y plotter that squirts out thin layers of tiny dots of material that build up, layer by layer, to produce a 3D replica of the computer-generated design. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. Within this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. In the next decade, we can expect local manufacture of the majority of goods; 3D printing of buildings and electronics; and the rise of a creative class empowered by digital making.
Other technologies Wadhwa mentions include genome sequencing, nanotechnology, micro-electrical-mechanical systems, and artificial intelligence.
Read the full post at Forbes.
Vivek Wadhwa photo by BAIA used under Creative Commons license.
MakieLab Raises $1.4 Million for Personalized 3D Printed Dolls
In May, we covered MakieLab, a Britain-based startup looking to disrupt the toy industry by letting consumers design and print their own dolls.
Now they have announced an Alpha launch and $1.4 million in seed funding.
From their press release:
Smart toys company MakieLab announces the open alpha launch of MAKIES, the first ever user-designed, 3D-printed action doll. On http://makie.me customers are designing and sharing digital avatars that are brought to life via 3D-printshops across London.
“We’ve seen amazing levels of creativity from our customers since letting the first few in during open alpha just a few weeks ago”, says Alice Taylor, founder and CEO of MakieLab. “We’re now hard at work to enable further customization of MAKIES, more creativity, and to expand to include digital and physical gaming.”
Together with the launch, MakieLab announce their seed round investment of $1.4 million. The round is led by early-stage investors Lifeline Ventures and Sunstone Capital and is joined by Anime and gaming industry veterans Matthew Wiggins, Daniel James and Cedric Littardi of superangel-fund Ynnis Ventures.
“The toys industry is ripe for disruption and 3D printing opens up for a powerful blend of digital and physical. We’re thrilled to support Alice, Jo, Sulka, Luke and team in London and Helsinki in their venture to define a new toys company,” says Petteri Koponen, Partner at Lifeline Ventures.
“MAKIES are great proof of how 3D printing will impact our everyday life in so many subtle ways. My daughter is already saving her pocket money for a MAKIE and for her and her peers this physical customization will be the norm,” adds Nikolaj Nyholm, Partner at Sunstone Capital.
MakieLab joins the ranks of culturally influential companies in the portfolio of Lifeline Ventures and Sunstone Capital – including Tinkercad, Supercell, Prezi, Gidsy, Layar and Applifier.
Congratulations to MakieLab and Alice Taylor!
