Between the Shapeways-Façade that Hasbro has set up for experimenting with the customized fabrication of My Little Pony dolls to Sesame Street’s decision to grab hands with MakerBot to create extruded yellow ooey-gooey plastic Big Birds, it’s no secret that toy brands and manufacturers are lining up in droves to cash in on this ‘3D Printing Craze’.
The latest to join the craze is Japan-based Hello Kitty manufacturer Sanrio. According to the very first sentence of their Wikipedia page, Sanrio is “a Japanese company that designs, licenses and produces products focusing on the kawaii (cute) segment of Japanese popular culture.”
The collection debuted at Hello Kitty Con (it was painful to type that FYI) yesterday, October 30th, and is available on MakerBot’s Digital Store.
Perhaps what’s most intriguing about this is not only MakerBot’s potential reach into a deeper global market, but…what does the future of branded rapid content creation look like? When will Sony start offering custom 3D printable headphone designs? What about IKEA On-Demand for desktop CNC machines?
If you’ve always wanted a Bad Badtz-Maru or Hello Kitty doll staring at you freakishly all day, you can purchase the model with the option for unlimited prints starting at $5.99.
