After reading “Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel” I am struck by the similarities of the toy industry in the 1960′s and 2000′s. Both eras were marked by the maturation of technology and increasing sophistication of customers. In the 1960′s injection molding and television advertising allowed Mattel to go from the minds of Ruth and Elliot Handler to a billion dollar Wall Street darling in the space of a couple years. Today, web-based CAD, custom manufacturing, and the social web could create an opportunity for an upstart (Smith & Tinker ?) to displace one of the market leaders in similar fashion.
A couple recent developments demonstrate the opportunities available to entrepreneurs who are willing to consider hacking bits and atoms.
Spore opens up 3D models
Spore recently opened up the ability to export characters from their proprietary game engine to the Maya modeling/rendering software. This allows you to do a few interesting things:
You can make models look amazing
The Spore game engine is limited by web connectivity. The models look good, but won’t give Pixar a run for their money. By exporting to Maya you can render graphics that are orders of magnitude better.
You can export Maya files, to STL files which can be used with 3D Printers.
Currently, if you want to print your Spore character you have to use the Spore Sculptor service offered by ZCorp. Now anyone with access to a 3D printer could print the characters. You could print a 12″ tall character (which is not permitted now), model articulated joints and create an action figure, or manipulate the models for yet unimagined purposes.
You can animate your Spore characters
Spore has the ability to make cool creatures, but can also be a decent general purpose CAD package. Budding animators today can quickly model amazing characters, create detailed props, and hone their craft animating the results rather than get hung up on character design.
The Spore game has received a lackluster reception in terms of game play, but the creative elements and the openness with which EA has shared them creates the potential for massive innovation.
Mattel Creates Augmented Reality Action Figures
Coinciding with the release of the new film Avatar, Mattel is releasing a series of action figures that come with augmented reality tags that can be scanned by web cams and display an animated character or vehicle from the movie. It is a reuse of existing technologies, but is significant since Mattel is the market leader in toys and it ties in with a blockbuster movie release. This is a major boost for the “Internet of Things” even if the product is a gimmick.
Related articles by Zemanta
- 3D Printer Benchmarking with Action Figures (replicatorinc.com)
- Mattel’s New Web-Enabled “Avatar” Toys Will Offer Augmented Reality (readwriteweb.com)
- Shapeways adds free 3D parts database (makezine.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8b9cfc30-b16f-4a09-9ab7-4ab5caef96d6)
