The Journey of Toy Creation (and a Few Cute Robot Therapy Sessions)
- Harish Prabu
- Apr 11
- 3 min read
Anyone seen that one episode of Phineas and Ferb where they join a toy company and create the Perry the platypus toy? So basically, the wonder boys invent a toy and within a span of 20 minutes, the toy becomes famous, goes into business and then later becomes the most popular toy in the world. Seemed liked the absolute dream job when I watched the episode. I mean… create what you love, become insanely rich and famous and call it a day. Truly a wonderful day.
Now let’s go into the reality of how making a toy goes. It all starts with the napkin of doom. One random day, sitting in a café sipping a coffee and then it strikes you. The great “what if we did this?” and then you pull a napkin out, ask for a pen and start sketching it out. Who cares about the practicality of it? It could literally be a flying cute robot that runs on glitter and you’d sketch it out with no mind to the curses you’ll get when you suggest it to the team. But again, that’s how the greatest toys are created and our journey to create funtastic toys also went through the same process.
The next step that comes is prototyping the product idea (this is where the team considers if your existence is required) and testing out the practicality of it. Each prototype makes life all that worse as it explodes (our cute robots aren’t always cute in behavior initially. We have a long taming process), runs amok, randomly starts dancing or just decides that it doesn’t want to move. Our struggles with the 3D printer also exist as it decides to print a noodle instead of an arm.
Next come the safety tests. Tell a kid not to touch the iron or walk on the terrace wall and they’re never going to follow it and we do not have the money to take the numerous lawsuits that our lawyers warn us about. So, as we proceed with our safety tests, our lawyers watch us like hawks. And hence begins the host of ridiculous tests including drop tests, chew tests, “can-it-survive-rage-throwing” tests and so on. We give our cute robots therapy at the end of all these tests so that you may receive a happy funtastic toy that will not trauma dump on you.
And then finally we come to the packaging. Never judge a book by its cover but we don’t think there’s a single soul on the planet that follows that. Hence it becomes really important to spend hours taking the right photos, editing it, and putting things on the box like “enhances motor functions”, “develops cognitive skill”, “funtastic toy in the form of a cute robot” and so forth to make parents feel less guilty about spending money on the little buddy.
And the very last step to the entire process where my existence is no longer questioned and the toy goes to mass production to become a funtastic toy. Sure, we get calls from the factory questioning the number of screws but we firmly believe it’s a canon event for every kid to look for the screw to make their cute robot work. The process for the toy is finally done and then we sit back and watch the sales and happiness that we spread through our toys here at AtumX.
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