Let me take a second and assure you, I will not be stealing your ideas in order to get rich. I will not even be stealing your ideas to get less poor, but that is what I’d like to focus on today. Using a 3D Printer to bootleg the bootleggers.
Who Bootlegs The Bootleggers?
The topic of recasters has been covered before, if someone straight up recasts your work, nothing added, nothing changed, they are just stealing your work. But up till now, they’ve had to get their hands on one first. They have to give you some money for that single piece to copy. It doesn’t make it ok, it doesn’t make it better, but they’ve gotta lay out some dough to procure your toy if they’re going to steal from you down the line.
.........But not so much anymore.
With 3D programming becoming far more intuitive, and the entry price for a 3D printer is roughly equal to a month’s worth of Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccinos, anybody can design and generate a prototype with a little effort. All you need is a cool idea. Or someone else’s cool idea? We are now at a point where if someone wants to bootleg your work, they may not even need to buy it first to make a copy.
Let us take an example. Near the end of November 2016, Special Ed Toys unveiled a new toy design, The Excavating Terrestrial, a new take on the pixelated E.T. from the Atari video game of the same name. It’s a great design, and a really fantastic idea to capitalize on something that would conceivably never be produced in any other fashion due to its stellar failure in the 80s. I loved the toy, as I actually loved the game.
Fast forward a month and my disposable income is low due to my recent 3D printer purchase. These figures go on sale, and I don’t have the cash. So I think about it, I have a 3D printer, I’m starting to learn how to design things, could I make this? And as it turns out, yes, sort of.
There are some very big differences between the Special Ed Toys version and my bootprint (a 3D printed bootleg). For starters, the official version comes on a very nice backing card with blister packaging. Like buying a toy at the store. The figure is smooth and finished, the way a final product should be. I’m not sure what was used to make them, but I would assume resin, which has a much higher melting point than my simple biodegradable plastic. Meanwhile my piece has slightly different dimensions with a shorter neck, plus there’s noticeable 3D printing lines around the entire piece, and of course, the back is complete garbage. I didn’t feel the need to clean it up any further. It sits on my desk and that’s it. My little poor copy of a good thing.
I’m no threat to Special Ed Toys, I’m not making more of these for anybody else and I’m not distributing the file. I can’t even be bothered to clean up mine, I’ll be damned if I’m going to clean them up for anybody else anyway. And regardless, he sells out of every version he makes, because it’s art, it has value, and it’s a good price for what he makes. But that’s not the point of this article. The point is to show that if somebody wants to steal your idea and get rich, 3D printing is making it a little easier. I’m Jim Ford, reminding you to get with the prog. Prog is short for program.
If you’d like to follow Jim and see what toys he rolls out with for you to steal and get rich, check out his Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/choanata/
PS: This just in from Special Ed Toys......E.T. The Excavating Terrestrial - The Arcade Game!