In the past ten years or so, Marvel Studios has tried to make its name synonymous with “summer blockbusters”. I’m sure super hero movies come out every season, as they don’t seem to ever stop making them, but there’s no doubt that kids will be dragging parents to the theaters this summer to see Guardians of the Galaxy or some other story about a muscley guy beating up a scary guy while things explode in the background. That’s why this idea from the Sam’s Club in Burleson, Texas was such a good one. For their grand opening yesterday, the mega store had its own Marvel 3D printing station.
Using a mobile 3D printing station, the new Burleson Sam’s Club gave customers the ability to scan their heads to be 3D printed onto the bodies of Marvel superheroes, which are then delivered to the customer’s home or to the store itself, so that, on that next shopping trip, Sam’s Club members can grab the print on their way out.
The Marvel 3D printing station is part of a white label product line developed by Utah-based 3DPlusMe. The company offers such 3D printing experiences that can be tailored for specific marketing purposes. In this case, the station has been wrapped in Marvel’s insignia and is stocked with 3D printable models of Marvel heroes on which customers can print their heads, but 3DPlusMe can also adapt their system to 3D print famous athletes and video game characters.
For instance, at this year’s E3, the company had their system set up for gamers to cast their faces onto characters from such games as Assassin’s Creed. And it seems that the 7″ figures were quite a success, or at least the scanning was. If you check out this Twitter search, people seem really stoked to see their faces on the bodies of famous characters.
While there are other mobile 3D printing services, such as the Factory-In-A-Store from PieceMaker, I think that the company’s CEO, Cydni Tetro, may have been right when said, in discussing the company’s attendance at the 3D Printer World Expo, “The ultimate brand experience is for fans to become part of the story. That is what we do with 3D scanning and printing, we make fans part of their favorite story with our personalized merchandise platform.” 3D printing is exciting and all, but people will much more psyched to see themselves as their favorite heroes in full color sandstone than they would to 3D print some monochromatic jewelry. I think that we’re likely to see more 3DPlusMe stations pop around the world wherever people gather.
