Speaking of Cardboard Playsets

[palitoy]

This new ebook from www.sherryloutoys.com might be up some folk's alley.



Build Your Own Space Station Playset

Sherry Lou Toys is my first sponsor over at PS, it's a really fun site with a lot of imagination.

[mikeoz]

Now that's really neat. There's a definite vintage death star vibe going on with it.

[alex]

What a great idea.

[HardyGirl]

OMG! That site is so awesome! Did you click on the Monster Mites video? There are Megos in it!

[4NDR01D]

They actually have a tomland on the cover. Awesome!

[David at Sherry Lou Toys]

Thanks so much for your feedback guys and girls. We've worked on this a few years now, and we have several more sets coming, all interchangeable.
Although the boxes are extremely simple in design, the art took us a while.
Being a professional artist the first few versions I hand painted- which looked great, but they were almost too realistic and when printed on paper looked kinda bad when you build a 4 foot model. Of course now I have all these hand painted backgrounds I'll have to find some use for.
So we went the route of designing everything to look like a toy- so the paper almost looks like plastic or something, it worked well.

And WOW, there are some amazing customs on these forums! Everywhere I look I see something I want, BADLY.

[DocDrako]

That is so cool. There's so much potential here for future designs. I hope to see more types of "Build Your Own" books in the future. And I'd even love to see something in Mego scale.

Great idea!

[Meule]

Can you convert this to Mego scale?

[ctc]

NEAT!

A nifty way to build some playsets.

>they were almost too realistic and when printed on paper looked kinda bad when you build a 4 foot model

Hmmmm.... you can always doctor them up after building. I'm thinkin' some graffiti and airbrushed rust and water stains on the space station makes a great 40K playset.

Don C.

[David at Sherry Lou Toys]

Well, actually the PaperBlox kinda originated in the Mego scale... Years ago we made dioramas for Mego scale when I owned a toy store back in the early 90s (start of that whole toy/comic boom was a lot fun until it burst). But very labor instensive, so we sold kits with styrofoam sheets and such...
The reason these download kits work well for the 3 3/4" scale because the simple blocks of paper when folded actually look like a real toy, and even the cheapest matte paper looks great and is very strong as a box, perfect for action figures.
All the models you see in the pictures and video were printed on paper that cost 5.00 on sale, done by someone who has never put together one before, with nothing but a glue stick, xacto knife and ruler.
To try to do the Mego scale and make it look good would require other materials like cardboard or foam board... Would be a tough sell as an ebook: "All you need is lots of skill, talent, foam board, spray adhesive, photo paper, etc.." Your only going to sell to the real diehards, most of whom have the talent to make it themselves. Just doesn't work as well as "Just Print & Build PaperBlox!"
I've toyed with the idea of making molds for plastic of some of the sets I still have lying around (beat up a bit over the years), but when we looked into the logistics of shipping and production, hard to make it affordable in a small time home/studio operation. You'd have to do mass production to make it work- or work hard to find people willing to spend $150 plus $50 shipping for a beautiful 3' long Mego scale diorama.
So, no, the PaperBlox idea just doesn't work the same for Mego because the boxes would have to be so big and they would loose their strength, or you'd have to have really super thick almost cardboard paper and a large format printer...

[captact]

Can you convert this to Mego scale?

What if augmented to Mego scale and glued to Oaktag or posterboard,..would it work?????

[David at Sherry Lou Toys]

>What if augmented to Mego scale and glued to Oaktag or posterboard,..would it work?????

Yes, I've seen people glue them to foam board for Mego scale, but I haven't seen anyone try to make them as PaperBlox for that scale. I suppose it could be done. Posterboard wouldn't work, just not rigid enough for a box that big. I suppose you could simply use them as backgrounds for those DiDa displays, though I would have designed them differently for that scale, more detail would be needed for that size. In the end I don't think it would be worth it- I've seen some great free backgrounds that where intended for Mego that I think work much better than trying to enlarge mine.

[LordMudd]

Two comments. The first I think I addressed in the other playset thread. When enlarging these you have to deal with pixelation, a blurring effect. With these that should not be that hard to fix because they are fairly simple graphics. Second, look at my most recent work with this, the Space 1999 moonbuggy. That was printed on regular cardstock, cut out, then laminated to cereal box cardboard with spray adhesive. The result is both thin and very sturdy. For something bigger like 10" by 1" thick you might look at inserting 1" ribs inside across the width of the box.

CCC.

[David at Sherry Lou Toys]

Great ideas. Not too much pixelation because the graphics are pretty high quality to begin with.
And yes, you can put in supports to make it work, just would be too hard to sell like that to the general public. I know some of you guys would probably be interested, but not a big market thing...
The main reason the PaperBlox work is when completed they do not look like cardboard cutouts but almost like plastic toy pieces. At toy shows people always do a double take when I tell them it's all just paper...
I LOVE that moonbuggy- but it still looks like a cardboard cutout toy- which I love (I have a collection of paper toys going back to 30s) but few are going to stop and say "wow, that's so freakin cool!" EXCEPT us older toy freaks who appreciate these things. I sell just as many ebooks to older fans who love the retro feel as I sell to younger fans who want to build a display that doesn't look like a paper model.

[LordMudd]

My suggestion wasn't so much for a saleable product as for those who might want to acquire it and upscale it themselves. When I say it isn't hard I speak from experience. I am self taught with using the Paint program that is standard with most computers, so a customizer should already have all of the tools they need. That moonbuggy is almost double size from the image I found on line and required a lot of clean up of the graphics to look that good. I think it is an adequate item. I am not interested in taking it further because I have no Space 1999 figures to display with it, it was mainly just a learning exercise. I plan on getting your product soon. Most of my focus however, has been on creating a haunted house theme playset for my Remco Monsters and developing my skill level to the point of enlarging and assembling the STTMP punchout bridge to scale for my Mego figures from the movies.

CCC.