3D Printing Favorite 1980's Toy Characters - Day 1

Hi dudes and dudettes!

I thought I'd take a moment to write a bit about a project I am working on! Its in the early, early stages but I think it has a lot of potential!

That projects is . . . dum dum dum!

3D Printing our favorite 80s toys!

This Christmas I got a 3D printer as well as some plastic spools. I had been drooling over 3D printing for about 15 years since I first heard about an early version called a "Fab Lab." I knew that 3D printing would allow me to do some things with toys that were only possible using Sculpey clay. So I carefully watched the industry, waiting for the printers to get cheaper and better. Finally, my husband got tired of listening me talk about it and got me one for Christmas! I was completely surprised but also SUPER intimidated! I had no idea where to even start.

So the printer sat in my office for a few weeks. Finally, I broke it out and decided that "today would be the day."

I started by watching a lot of Youtube videos. In no time I figured out how to turn a 3D file into a printable file. I wont go into that right here but the first thing I printed was a skull:

As you can see the skull is very detailed, as to almost look real. I was hooked! I started printing a ton of free objects from pinshape.com. In time I got quite good at figuring out how to print certain files so they would turn out well. We have printed bunnies for Easter, snakes, funny characters like Zelda and Anna from Frozen, etc! So it was time to figure out the creation side.

SOME IDEAS

My ultimate goal is to be able to print 1980's toys! Here are some ideas:

- Print prototypes that are hard to find (Like my Treat Heart Pig)
- Print characters that never existed in toy-form like Noble Heart Horse.
- Print miniature, doll house versions of favorite 80's toys. Teeny SSC dolls, for instance
- Print accessories that might look cute with classic 80s characters
- Print custom fan items that never existed. An example would be a litter of pink kittens for Custard the cat.


THE DOWNSIDES


Of course, if it were THAT easy, I would have them in The Pink Room already! But it isn't quite there yet.

In order for me to get a proper model of a toy I would either have to build it or scan it. 3D scanning is very possible but it is also very expensive. The scanners that tend to do the best are in the $3k range and they still have lots of issues. There are a few that are in the $500 range but they tend to cost quite a bit in "clean up" time.

Building is possible but my skill level isn't quite there. I have found a very cool (and free!) program called Sculptris that I am getting better at learning how to use. I have to say, it totally rocks for creating scary and odd alien-looking characters, but I'm struggling somewhat on the 1980's toy designs.

Also, printing isn't without its downfalls. Each item that prints has to have what's called "rafting" which is a grid-like structure that separates the piece from the surface its printing on. This grid is very hard to remove and has to be either sanded or melted off, which is somewhat of a pain. Some pieces that don't have a flat bottom (Treat Heart Pig's Head) will have to be heavily treated to remove the rafting.

Also, the plastic is very rigid. Sort of like the plastic used in water bottle lids, but much thicker. This means that certain toys won't be as flexible after its creation.

That said, I am still going to plug away at this idea. I think it will be fun to get really good at either scanning or sculpting.

If there is some toy item you would like to see 3D printed in the future, drop a comment! Remember, almost every plastic color is available, including glow in the dark! The sky is the limit! I would love to hear your brainstorms!


Have a good week!

Vintage My Little Pony Pretty Pals Unboxing 1 - Baby Lucky Leaf & Baby Leafy

Hello fellow toy hounds! I am back again! Yay! I am on my way to getting my online crap together, but its taken some time. I'm sure you can relate: you have 30 accounts on every social networking site imaginable but the REAL WORLD often calls you away to do actual physical things and that can pile up!

Ah! Modern life!

Lots has happened since my last post. I have continued to grow The Pink Room quite a bit. We went from about 1,000 items to 1,700 or so. I have sold about 700 vintage toys since last I posted and I now have about 5,000 items of inventory waiting to be listed. I'm slowly working through the boxes while doing other things like going to school and writing books and being a mom and all the other fun things in life. I made myself promise not to scout for new inventory until all the rest is listed. I hope I can keep that promise! See my previous post, this is a long labor of love and I never really make a profit because of the nature of the business, but I almost don't care. :)

I have also tried to get much, much better at taking photos for The Pink Room and ever so slowly they are getting more professional. All my ugly old photos featuring cute vintage things are being discounted 30%-90% until all the ugly photos are gone. So if you have your eye on an expensive-ish item, that's something to keep in mind!

Even though I haven't written here, I have been steeped in writing about for months and months. I am currently writing a book about vintage 1980's toys and there is a lot of interest in that with various publishing companies. Over the years I have  published several articles about antiques and vintage and several short stories and poems of mine have been featured in magazines. My pen name is Erika Viktor, if you care to follow that part of my life. I just started posting stuff on Wattpad this week, just some short paranormal stories if you are interested!

So I have been slowly adding to my MLP collection these past few months. I decided I want to focus on complete and mint to near mint sets. I was fortunate enough to spend way too much on a set of Pretty Pals that are partially removed from their packaging. I now have the whole set and will do a slow unboxing on the blog with just some nice photos! Hooray!

Feel free to use the photos for anything you want, but would appreciate a link back!

So today I am starting off with Baby Lucky Leaf and Baby Leafy. I was not lucky enough (pun intended) to have these as a kid, though I did have numerous other MLP growing up. Stay tuned for a nice scan of the back packaging. I love the vintage art! I'm also going to post a photo of the whole collection with their accessories as soon as I unbox the others.

This is how they came to me on their card. I was tempted to keep them on the card but since the boxes were in poor shape I decided to take them out!

And here they are with their accessories! Now emancipated after 30 years in their packaging! I love so much about this particular pair. First off, Lucky Leaf's coloring is just classy looking! Rarely did the makers of MLP stray from the obvious girl colors to create something a little more artistic in palate, that is, a base analogous color scheme (yellow/gold) with two complimentary accent colors (pink and mint green are opposite on the color wheel). More on color theory here. Not to mention the fact that I just love this particular unicorn pose known as the "Baby Glory" pose.

Look how slightly derpy Leafy the calf looks. Its super cute!

The symbols match and look to be the same tampograph pad print stamp. These were typically applied one by one by a worker and I imagine these were likely done at the same time.

One little rant on the accessories, which I think are a little unimaginative. What about a sandbox and some spoons and a bowl speaks "Lucky Leaf and Leafy?" This is where the newer MLP shine. Their accessories are typically tailored to the pony in question.

That said, don't you just ADORE collecting tiny accessories? Mine always got lost or vacuumed up so I feel like I am righting some cosmic wrong by gathering them again.

I will be keeping these guys on the shelf above my desk for awhile until its time to unbox the rest! I like to rotate them and appreciate them one by one on my hand made desk in my toy store.

Thanks so much for reading, my friends!