We loved this idea from the start: A website where you can design your own stuffed creature, select from hundreds of visual elements to mix and match however you like, and have the resulting 9" softie shipped to your door. I'm pretty sure this would have been impossible to get off the ground five years ago, and although recent technological advances make customized toys feel like an idea whose time has come, we wondered if the folks at Xoddo had pulled it off or had a disaster on their hands. We asked them to let us design and order a softie through their site to test their software, ordering, and physical product, and they agreed. What we discovered was a pleasant surprise.

Designing your Xoddo softie

When you hit Xoddo.com, you're immediately invited to start designing a softie, and you won't be able to resist browsing the menu of visual elements you can add to and position on the vaguely teddyish design template. There are more items than you'd think, and the menus are obviously built to allow easy expansion; building these out is probably the cheapest part of Xoddo's operation.


One critical area of risk for a site like this is the functionality and friendliness of the design tool. If you don't have fun making your softie, you're very unlikely to be in the mood to order one (we'll get to the price in a minute) once you've battled your way through it, and far more likely to give up on the way. The company clearly understood this, and did a good job of making the tool very easy to use and reasonably intuitive. We worked with our five-year-old on the design, and although she made all the design choices (don't blame me for those freaky alien eyes or the necktie-and-bunny-slippers outfit), as her supplicant navigators of the web Jenni and I both had a little trouble with a couple of the functions, and had to figure them out. Deleting a layer or item you've added, for example, requires you to drag the layer, and sometimes you can't put your cursor on just the layer you want, and have to sort of shift them around to get to the item you'd like to remove. Clearing the entire design is a single button click away, though, and the button is located right next to the figure, which means it isn't hard to accidentally clear a bunch of work and creating some ill will among possible softie shoppers.

But overall we got through it pretty easily, and learned a couple of tricks we'd employ next time, if there ever were one. (If Z has her way, there will be. I told her to start saving.) The company has created a demo video which shows off how the site works. It's designed to instruct you in how to use their site, but basically, if they were relying on an instructional video to get customers through the process, they'd be sunk. The fact that the site is relatively simple to use is proof that they know this, and have worked hard to create a user experience with as few opportunities for confusion as possible. Anyway, here's that video, because it shows off the most surprising thing about the site - how well the company nailed the cute but hip crossover audience this product is perfect for. Accessorizing visual elements ranged from hearts and rainbows to glass-enclosed brains in fluid.


The only features that really should be there are the ability to resize and rotate design elements, at least those that wouldn't cause major problems for the software. These features would introduce a lot more creative freedom into the process of designing a Xoddo softie. You also can't import your own graphics, but I can see the problems with that and appreciate the limits they've set. (If you could upload a graphic, would you want a proof? Or expect them to check your design to make sure it would print properly?) More softie shapes would be nice, but those can come later.

To order, you have to create an account, so that your Xoddo figure can be saved in a personal gallery. I'd question the wisdom of making this a requirement - why not let business come through the revolving door of people who don't want to set up a profile? - but will leave that to the egghead business types. I'm less conservative about setting up random personal accounts than some, so it bothered me only on principle. I might also point out that making a big to-do about creating a gallery and saving your item there for future purchases might beg the question of what you have really accomplished in your design, and if it is not worth preserving for the ages, is it really worth having around? This could dissuade those casual consumers who might otherwise buy impulsively.

What you get

The dolls are pricey - $28 for a version that's 9" from toes to ear tips, or $18 for one about half that size. This may make Xoddo's offer a no-go for some consumers, but people have been paying $30+ for Build-A-Bears and their ilk for years. There is clearly a market out there, and these things have way more hip potential and are far more customizable. For people willing to invest in this kind of object, they need to trust that the quality of both the construction and the printing are high.

Fortunately, Xoddo has invested solidly in the manufacturing process. The colors printed on the fabric are bright and rich and the printing is crisp and clean - not quite as eye-popping as you see on a new T-shirt but far more than what you'd see in an iron-on transfer or from a custom T-shirt shop. And the quality of construction is great - the filling is even, the seams are very neat, and the whole thing is well-put-together. Unlike some competitors' products (which we're also very interested in getting our hands on) this dolly is not designed for short-term use.


Add to this the fact that Xoddo's manufacturing occurs entirely in the U.S., and I don't think $28 is unreasonable for the combined software and real-world service they're providing. Shipping is $4.95 unless you are buying 3 or more, in which case it jumps to $9.95, unless you are buying 9 or more, which takes you to $14.95. But if you have $252 to drop on customized plushies, I'd like to speak with you about some investment opportunities.

Turnaround on our doll was about two weeks, which was a morally reprehensible lapse in Z's opinion; I think she would have led a demonstration at the factory gates if we'd offered to drive her there. But the fact that she asked us, unprompted, at least three times over that period WHEN THAT DOLLY WAS GOING TO COME and WHY WASN'T IT HERE YET is a sign of how powerful the possibility of highly-customized, "user-generated" inanimate playmates can be to a young child. So if you have one (a young child, that is) and you're on the fence about whether it's worth the cost of admission, make sure to check out this site after the kids are in bed, and decide for yourself if you're going to show it to them.

We'll be donating the value of this toy to charity in accordance with our Keep No Stuff policy.

I recently ordered a package of a dozen poorly-made "Jumping Jellybean" wind-up toys from the Oriental Trading Company to use for DIY toy-building. Inspired by the TOMY Bumbling Boxing set we found at a garage sale a few weeks ago, Z and I cut the upper portions off a couple of the jellybeans (old scissors work fine), acquired the heads of some small discarded stuffed animals, and taped them up for painting, with adding arms to allow these two creatures to rush into each others' arms. We call them Hugging Robots.


This particular behavior is a favorite way for Z to greet a loved one who has been absent for some time. She doesn't just make a point of dropping what she is holding and racing into the arms of her beloved, who is expected to behave in a similar manner - she actively coaches them in advance over the phone that this is what they should do when they meet.

Z and I perfected a method of using masking tape to create a paintable surface for modified plastic toys (see our DIY Drawing Robot here for more details). We used this technique last weekend to transform a wind-up hopping Easter Bunny and a jiggling eyeball keychain into a pet monster that has been Z's constant companion ever since.


Wish we'd bought up a bunch of these wind-ups after Easter. I have a bunch of ideas.

Lockwasher has a fantastic set of images of toy vehicles he's made out of found objects, mostly old Electrolux vacuum cleaners and metal lunch boxes.


Photo by Lockwasher, shared via Flickr.

I love the look and class of these art objects (as well as the gorgeous robots and bugs featured in other sets and on his website) but am also inspired by the concept behind the camper-style trailers made of old lunch boxes to do something fast and cheap that my daughter would love just as much. (Kids are easier to please than you think - try making a paint sample vehicle sometime and you'll see what I mean.) You can pick up a new, white metal lunchbox in the right design for as little as $8 on Amazon, or scour garage sales for a while to find one for more or less, depending on how nice it looks and how old it is. But true "vintage" lunch boxes might contain lead, so going with a new one would be a safer route.

The far more common side-opening style, which you can get new for a cool $2.39, would work better for a homemade play mailbox.

Printies, which we first spotted in Media Macaroni's Toy Fair wrap-up, are "dolls" you create using printer-friendly fabric and software to go with it. Purchasing the fabric enables users to print from standard designs available on the company's website, while ponying up for a $20 "Design Studio" software allows for custom creature design, including drawing tools and image upload. Either way, the printed pieces can then be popped out along perforations, stuffed with filler and sealed without sewing.


Photo by Anton Olsen

I love the technology, but the creative crafter in me notes that a five-year-old can make a far more "personalized" doll with scraps of fabric and simple stitching (even if Mom or Dad helps with the sewing) than uploading graphics and arranging them on a template. That said, we'll be curious to try out Printies out when they're available this summer.

Printies' rightsholder (creator?), Techno Source, also manages a grab bag of other "bright idea" products, most of which don't seem so bright, with the notable exception of Pixie Hollow's Clickables, which allow users of the Disney-themed online world to (among other things) share online contact info when they meet in person, enabling them to find each other again in the virtual world.

But the product raises an interesting question about how we and our kids might view technology-aided creativity differently. Is the fact that this occurs on a computer screen worthwhile in its own right - teaching technological literacy as its own form of "craft"? Or is it just making a gimmick out of a technology that should be used in cases where we can actually make things better (in this case, more open-ended and expressive)? Amy sees a middle ground - party favors and a party activity combined.

What do you think? Would you buy these at $15 for a pack of paper and $20 for design software?

Warning: At the end of this video, this zany guy will promote a phone. You don't have to watch that far - what I want you to see is a brilliant take on an optical illusion that that is not actually, as far as I can tell, that old, as optical illusions go. It starts at 1:10.


We have a roundup on Punnybop today of books and videos that show off the same "moving pictures" effect, but in smaller form. But it also has me thinking of another form of illusion that I've wanted to make for Z for quite some time: A zoetrope.

There are zoetrope kits out there, which I've never tried.



Also for the zoetrope's weird cousin, the praxiscope.



I have a fantasy about building a zoetrope that utilizes a motor to make it turn. I have many fantasies like this, and many of them unfortunately require storing junk in my house for times when I will actually produce such brilliant creations.

Fortunately for my family, I did not have zoetropes in mind when I gave up our perfectly good stove vent hood (which uses a fan to suck smoke and steam up into the vent) during a kitchen renovation currently in progress. It would have made an awesome zoetrope, but it was also a hulking beast. An old record player would be a more compact, tabletop model. You could also make one on a lazy susan with good ball bearings.

And of course, you can also make your zoetrope 3D. Check out this fascinating model, built on a phonograph.


The easiest first exposure to play with rapidly moving images is a thaumatrope. Flip books are simpler in one sense, requiring only a pad of small paper, but the ability to draw slightly changing images from one page to the next is a bit over the heads of most preschoolers. A thaumatrope uses a piece of cardboard and a couple of rubber bands and allows the child to draw any two images they'd like to appear together. A bird and a cage or flowers and vase are classic examples, but two figures will work as well, if they are in different relative positions, or features on a face.