Week 7 – Wayward Shifty

I started this toy a long time ago and never got around to gluing on the key.  So an easy jump back into this project was to just assemble THE LAST PART.  I love going back to projects like this

My friend Tiffany of Wayward Shiftys (her clothing line) makes cute, creepy little characters called “Shiftys”.  They just kind of appear.  Like, WHOOOOAAAAA.  I decided I wanted to make a shifty moving shifty so Tiffany kindly donated one of her shifty posse members to Bribot’s ULTIMATE MEGA TOY A WEEK project.  It took me FOREVER to drill out the inside of the Shifty. It was made from baked Sculpey and it was like drilling through an eraser!

The idea was to make it spin around in a circle.  I had a regular car gearbox that turned wheels.  Then I put in a 3rd wheel oriented 90 degrees to the other  2 wheels so the shifty would be forced to spin around.  It would have been amazing if I could have had a wheel that moved in all directions, but I only have so much patience!  I also glitched drilling the hole for the key and had to move it around a few times thus creating a giant gaping hole in the side of Shifty…..but there was life!

Watch the video!

Week 6 – Arm Car

I started making a walking dinosaur toy, but got discouraged from the idea when things just didn’t seem to be working.  So, lo and behold, another car!  They are pretty fast to make, and this one has attached arms to the inside gear so that they spin around when the car is pushed forward.  This car has a simple pull-back mechanism with coil.

Week 5 – Spicy Car

Deliver the all-spice!  This toy was really simple to make.  I found this all-spice tin at the Alameda Antique fair about a month ago.  I used the motor from a pull-back tractor toy and a rubber band (for the tires) from a broccoli bunch.

Watch the video!

Week 4 – Fresher than Altoids!

This car has the best gas mileage ever!  It has enough power to cross the entire downstairs dance floor.  I found an ugly bicycle windup at Urban Ore, from which I removed the gear box that directly powers the back two wheels.  I used the Altoids mint tin as the car body, and then just added a single wheel in front for stability.  There are a lot of possibilties with tins; they look so cool!  Deliver mints across the table at your next office meeting!

Watch the video:

Week 3 – JitterBug

This piece is called JitterBug.  It’s comprised of a gear box with counterweight, mint tin, green rubber coated wire, sea creature arm, 2 springs, gears from a play-skool toy car, and bug wings.  The arm and additonal spring are hidden inside the mint tin around the gear box, just as fodder.  It was really hard to manipulate the wire, so all the legs are a bit uneven which, makes movement unstable.  In addition, the wings throw the weight off-center as they rotate around the toy.  It sort of has a lurchy, jittery movement.  I wanted to use the rotation of the key to move another gear, so I added the extra yellow one at the back.

Check out the video!

Week 2 – JitterKat

I visited the Exploratorium in San Francisco in October.   It is a hands-on kid’s museum that has lots of interactive exhibits about sound, light, motion, sense, etc.   I founds some wind-up toys in the gift store by Kikkerland, a company from the Netherlands, that were simple, elegant, and fun.  You can easily see the mechanisms that power movement.  These machines inspired my interest in making wind-up toys.  I based this next design on “Critter”, a creation that uses a counterweight to make movement jittery and the toy sort of scuttles around.

I found a lot of parts at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse.  It is an organization that collects and sells used/excess/discarded arts and crafts materials, fabric, paper goods, and lots of random materials in bulk.

In this piece, I used some green rubber coated wire, a kitty head, gears from a play-skool car, small arms with claws from an insect, and a gear box with counterweight from a green sea monster.  I also used the back fin from the sea creature to make the kitty mohawk.  I originally cut the mouth out of the kitty because I wanted the arms to emerge as fangs, but I liked the design where it’s head spins around as the gear box unwinds.  I think it still looks pretty nice without a mouth.

Watch the video of JitterKat in action!

Vintage Koyo Tin Litho Beetle Bug Friction Toy

Today I stopped by Urban Ore to check out the toy selection.  I was surprised to find a Koyo friction toy, which I saw at the antique fair this weekend for $10, except it didn’t work.  This one works great and is in great condition too!

Week 1 – Walking Skeleton

This skeleton is comprised of 4 different toys.  I took the gears from a pre-skool moving car, 2 different skeleton toys, and a walking monkey.  I forgot to take a picture before I destroyed the original toys.  Watch the video.  You can see that his head spins around 360, and that once wound, the skeleton wobbles and walks back and forth.  Ideally, I wanted the gear on the crank to move the head gears so his head would spin around when he was walking.  Maybe with my next toy, I will have more patience to figure it out.

Walking Skeleton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDw_sdDfKwA

One Toy a Week

One toy a week.  I will construct one wind-up mutant toy every week.  A mutant wind-up toy is a little creature made up of broken, recovered, recycled, found, salvaged, bargained, and gifted toys that end up on my work bench.  Most of my mutant toys are wind-up, and move about.  The idea of creating one toy a week is supposed to motivate me to use my imagination and learn something new more often in my daily routine.    My other side project was getting a bit overwhelming, so I thought this would be a nice break.  This is also a test of dedication.  So far I have experienced frustration, persistance, and victorious joy one my first piece was finished.

Every Monday I will post my new toy creation.

Thanks for having a look!