For the last several weeks, as we wait on the final clearance to open the Ellijay Makerspace, I have been making toys. We’re 3D printing original characters in resin using an elegoo mars, and then making a latex mold and casting duplicates in resin. Everything gets packaged in original cardbacks, made with recycled chipboard and resealable bubbles. You can see some of the toys we’ve made so far, at least the ones that are currently available for purchase, on Mountain Town Toys.

When I was a kid, I would take apart my toys and reassemble them in to new characters, repaint them, and just generally make new toys. After I graduated from highschool, I started scultping new action figures in clay, and I was honestly pretty good at it, but it was an incredibly frustrating and slow experience, and very easy to accidentally ruin several days worth of work. These days, I work with several 3D artists and we design original STLs that are then 3D printed on a fairly high resolution resin printer, and then molded in latex and cast in plastic.

The results look like this:

They feature 2, 4, or 5 points of articulation and are very much in the style of Mego’s Pocket Super Heroes from the late 70s, a style which was co-opted and made significantly more popular by Kenner for Star Wars, and recently by Super 7.

I’ve also been playing around with the SEUCK for the c64 to make a video game or two featuring the characters from our toy line.

The results so far have been pretty good!

Eventually, I’ll finish that up and figure out how to get vice and emscriptin to play nicely together and post the game for any and all to play.

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