Hundreds of 3D Printed Toys Set to Create Massive San Francisco Scavenger Hunt
A massive scavenger hunt is being planned in San Francisco, with hundreds of 3d printed toys.
The idea spawned in a place where tons of great — and some not so great — ideas take shape: Reddit.
“I’ve been thinking about hiding hundreds of 3D printed toys around San Francisco for random pedestrians to find,” wrote Ben Baltis, a 25 year old living in San Francisco. “Toys kind of like this. They’d originally be placed in interesting spots, maybe a monkey climbing a telephone pole, or a mouse near a gutter, sloth on a railing, etc. The plan is to put a QR code or a link on the bottom of these toys for people to go to. Once the toy is found by a random passerby, they would scan the code and it would bring them to a web page describing some pretty simple rules of the game.
- Congrats and welcome to the game! The first step is to find a toy, you’ve just done that.
- Leave a comment on the page where you find the toy, maybe say something about yourself, snap a picture of you and the toy.
- Within 12 hours, hide the toy in another location for someone else to find! Take a picture of where you hid the toy and mark it on the map. The map won’t be public until the toy is found, the picture might or might not be.”
According to Baltis, the only true purpose of this scavenger hunt is to “brighten people’s day by adding a little something extra.”
Originally the scavenger hunt was only going to take place if the idea received 150 votes from fellow Reddit users, but the response was so overwhelming that Baltis — who has his own SF based toy startup — started a dedicated Slack channel (found here) for those that want to help him create this activity, made possible by 3d printing.
In true Reddit fashion however, there was some disagreement on the use of QR codes.
“Yes, can we please all agree to give up on QR codes already? Nobody uses them,” one user wrote. “Nobody wants to use them. Nobody will ever use them.”
A few minutes later, another scavenger hunter replied, “I must be weird because I love QR codes. They’re incredibly convenient.”
