Toys, toys, toys — we love them, we love them. Sounds like the line of a song by Lady Gaga but in truth we all love toys and many in the 3D printing world see toys as the first, mass-market consumer application of 3D printing. To get a head start into the future world of downloadable 3D printed toys you can now buy and sell 3D printable toy models on ToyFabb, a new German and English language website that offers a dedicated repository of toys.
There are many reasons why toys are considered central in bringing 3D printers into consumers’ homes, the first of which is that ‘toys’ are exactly what most consumers are already 3D printing. The second is related to the understanding that 3D printing is a technology that will be fully understood only by those who were born with it (like the Internet was for those born in the ’90’s), and those who were born with it (or who will soon be born with it) will mostly want toys.
3D Systems made toys a priority for its Cubify network and Makielab has developed an extremely successful business model around interactive 3D design of toys and 3D printing. Many large toy companies, such as Lego, Mattel and Hasbro are also looking at a future shaped by 3D printing, having used the tech for years for rapid prototyping in product development applications. However, they have not yet opened to selling digital models, primarily because of copyright violation concerns.
There was not, however, until now, a 3D printing online marketplace entirely dedicated to toys. Swiss based Toyfabb wanted to fill this void and launched the first marketplace focusing on 3D printable toy designs, while providing secure streaming of 3D Design files to customers to protect the copyright of creators. Designers can choose if they want customers to be able to download the STL file or stream the G-code securely to their home 3D printer.
Consumers don’t get the design files itself. Instead they just connect their 3D Printers and hit “Start 3D Printing”, according to Toyfabb’s co-founder Jochen Hanselmann.
“We wanted to build a platform for all the designers who are widely ignored by the industry with their exceptional creations. We think that there is a huge potential out there. And 3D printing is the ideal technology to free up this potential,” Jochen said. He told me that the team did indeed “intensively” considered partnerships with large toy manufacturers: “Actually, when we started we wanted to build the platform for both B2C and C2C. Then we decided to focus on independent toy designers. We are convinced that there is a huge potential of designers and creative people out there that have fantastic ideas for toys but haven’t had the chance to promote their creations yet. With ToyFabb they can share their unique and interesting ideas to an increasing number of people using 3D Printing. We think this potential could be industry disruptive.”
At the time of writing the website has just launched and is currently facing the same challenge many other 3D printable design marketplaces face: the need for more designs to populate the website. There currently are only four designs and a contest organized for the website’s launch will call on designers to contribute by submitting their STL files by September 2014.
While the winner of each toy category will receive a $100 reward, all submitted designs can be sold through each designer’s personal shop page (for which they receive 70% of each 3D design sold) One project that I personally would love to see featured on ToyFabb (though it might need home 3D printers to evolve further) is the Modarri, a 3D printed toy car that unfortunately did not reach its Kickstarter funding goal.
I asked Jochen how they might go about attracting more toy designers. He told me that: “success for us is not only a matter of the amount of available designs. We want to attract the best toy designers, provide unique toy designs, reliable processes and receive a high rate of customer satisfaction.” However in terms of attracting new designers, the approach is twofold: “First, because ToyFabb is the first specialized platform for 3D Printable toy designs, our objective is to be the platform of choice for high quality toy designs that can be printed on the most common consumer 3D Printers. And, second, ToyFabb attracts professional toy designers by offering a secure way to share and sell their creations. Protection of their intellectual property is a great added value for designers.”
Jochen also promised that more will be coming in the following weeks and months, saying: “We have a pipeline full of new features which we will introduce step-by-step to make ToyFabb even more attractive. In future there will be the functionality for customers to personalize and individualize 3D Designs online before users produce them.”
If the Toyfabb model proves successful we are likely to see a lot more toy companies get involved, in a way similar to Hasbro partnering with 3D Systems, although it is likely that the people who will fully take advantage of the possibilities by ToyFabb have not been born yet. Then again the website will be perfectly positioned to cater to their every 3D printed toy request by the time they are old enough to play with them.
