The Greatest Toy Ever?

In light of the many recent articles I’ve seen highlighting the year’s best toys, I asked myself: “What would be the greatest toy ever?”

That’s easy. A toy that lets you make your own toys.

And with 3D printing, that is a possibility within reach. Imagine printing out complete Lego parts from scratch using your desktop?

3D printers are amazing, and starting to become more commercially accessible and affordable in price, though still out of the reach of many. Hobbyists and artists like myself would love to waltz into a store and grab one like you would currently with an inkjet printer, but that’s probably 10 years away.

As a toy, this should be aimed at people with no technical or 3D skills at all. It would include hundreds, possibly thousands of 3D molds for you to output. Simply install the accompanying software on your PC, and go to town.

The economical model lies in you buying the plastic resin refills and additional 3D molds from an online store. Can you imagine going to Lego.com and buying all the molds for a 1980′s Space Station set, then printing them out? Heaven.

And not just Legos, but other small toys could be output. Hasbro could release their own model for Transformer and G.I. Joe parts. Imagine getting an email notification from Hasbro.com, offering a pack of weapons for your Optimus Prime which you could print for $2.99. It would be the new iTunes.

The iTunes-like store would not only feature many molds from the company, but custom molds created by fans too — sort of like an app store.

Toy companies might not like the idea of people making their own toys and cannibalizing toy sales. I theorize the first few toy printers would allow for small parts only, so this would compliment existing toys, instead of replacing them outright. Selling resin refills and 3D molds would be a huge market. You know how pricey ink refills are these days…

I personally would build many cool little toys and prototypes. It would be a blast!