Went to my local Sam’s Club today and was surprised by this. Thought folks might want to dash out and grab one.
Enjoy
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I am in the UK. They are a bit pricey when you can get an A1 mini for £139 in the UK. Plus, you know what you are getting with Bambu.
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When I was physically more childish than I am now (now it’s only mental) we had a device called The Thing Maker. You would put liquid “goop” into a mold, put it in TTM (too lazy to type full name) and it would heat it and out would come a flexable thing (behave Malc) like a reptile, Creeple People, insect, etc. They even had Glow in the Dark Goop. Circa 1970 3d printing. Mattel I believe.
Makes me sad to think of all the kids that will get one of these TOYS, when their parents could have just gone across the street to Best Buy and bought a real printer.
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That is exactly what I thought when I first saw these in Sam’s Club.
A bargain is when you find a good price on a good product.
A bargain is not a bargain when you buy a poorly made no-name product sold cheaply.
The difference being…“I got a bargain on this Bambu Labs A1 Mini.”
That is not the same as “This brand (I have never heard of) is cheaper than a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. What a bargain”
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As an aside, I think the ad you posted has probably caused the purchase of many a printer that ended up being abandoned, sold, disgarded. Not by BB, but by the manufacturers.
When these manufacturers show their printer with these complicated prints like the castle in the ad you have attached, that is a disservice to the buyer (IMO) because it implies that you can pull off a print like that with no effort beyond hitting send.
Exactly right on all points - Mattel (It’s swell!) I had a Thingmaker and loved it! Glow in the dark goop was cool too! The original devices were minor hazards and kids got burned sometimes. They revised it to control exposed hot spots but it didn’t seem to catch on or I didn’t pay enough attention.
My dad also got us a Vacuform which was cool at the time but the toys you could make with it weren’t that great. But great for modelers and such. Neat capability. Mattel used to make really cool but slightly dangerous almost lab level stuff.
Another old and dangerous “toy” was a lead soldier and figure casting set from Gilbert (the chemistry set company). I think that was more my dad’s bought under the guise of it being for the boys. Nothing like a pot of molten lead for kids to pour into molds. It was really cool but didn’t hold interest like making spiders in the Thingmaker to scare our sister with.
All we needed was the Irwin Mainway “Bag O’ Glass” and holidays would be complete!
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Looking at the toy Box printer they certainly know how to do an add setup.
And if you are looking for a US brand well hey, their office is in Oxnard Calif.
Of course the device itself:
AI Overview
The Toybox 3D printer is made in China. It is manufactured by companies located in China, such as those that produce similar 3D printers like the MakerPi P2, which is also manufactured in China, according to Alibaba.com and Alibaba.com.
It looks like they call their filament “printer food” which is pretty clever when aimed at kids and parents.
But I have a feeling parents will end up needing to be more involved then some of them thought. I haven’t looked at any of the YT vids or any of the reddit stuff and am not trying to be pro/con here, just find the whole thing interesting.
A good friend of mine has grandkids that got a ToyBox printer sometime almost a year ago. He says they are constantly printing stuff with it. He showed me some bits they made for him and print quality isn’t terrible. Not great but surprisingly good. I didn’t think to ask how much parent time is actually involved but the two boys are something like 8 and 10. They especially love printing fidget-like stuff. He’s a retired amazing machinist and spends some time with them but usually can’t be there when they print.
But the thing is he says they love it and the limitations it has now are lost on them. They already have lots of time on the printer and a bookcase full of things they’ve printed. One is getting itchy to dive deeper but the other is fine just picking models off their web page catalog to print. He has me giving him reject prints so he can coach them on stuff to look for.
All in all it seems to have been a very worthwhile investment for the kids. One is getting interested in engineering aspects and will likely be going for a more capable printer at some point. The other with lower interest might not have even tried with a more capable printer right off the bat but hard to say. It didn’t happen that way.
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To be fair, there’s more to it than just the printer. Toybox’s app has LICENSED many popular characters that are available to print. In addition, the app is pretty much fire up the printer, load the filament (they call it food), and select the model you want to print.
Don’t get me wrong, when my son in law asked about a printer for the upcoming (at the time) 14th birthday of my grandson (it was actually yesterday), I recommended Bambu. But he’s 14, not 8. There’s a market for the Toybox printer. Keep in mind, there are those more experienced users that made fun of those who purchased Bambu because they were easy to use.
BTW, the grandson is getting his A1 Combo tonight. But my wife and I also bought a Toybox to get used to it for the other grandkids.
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My take on things like this Toybox printer is not that it is bad per se but that things like 3d printers in general, and it applies to other devices is that it is a machine, it is not a toy in the classic sense that I think about what a toy is.
Some adult is going to buy that “toy”, wrap it for Christmas or a birthday and hand it to a child. I was already tinkering with machines when I was 8. Most of my peer 8 year old friends were not. Back then when I took something apart and then reassembled it, I generally had extra screws. In typical 8 year old fashion, the proof was in the pudding. Did it run without those extra screws, nuts, bolts or whatever.
I’m 67, still take things apart but never have extra screws when I reassemble these day. There are also things like modern auto engines I leave to professionals even though I have built a supercharged big block boat engines back in the 1980’s
It is a rare child that is going to crank out a print from that Toybox printer without guidance from some adult. Pallet sized stacks of Toybox printers in Sam’s club is dependent on volume sales to adults, many of whom have no idea themselves as to how a 3d printer works.
If I go to Microcenter, the ones I have been to, have a Bambu Lab printer on display making prints with a sales person at the printer to answer questions.
The goal at both Sam’s Club and Microcenter is to sell printers. I suspect if one did a survey one year out regarding satisfaction with their printer purchase, Microcenter probably sells less printers but has a higher satisfaction rating than the Toybox printers sold out of Sam’s Club. Just my opinion based on the level of machine understanding among the average consumer.