Toy Take Apart: A Strange & Beautiful Struggle
In the last week and a half, my ARTT 2372 class went into a 2-part material inquiry where we were to take apart a toy that had some kind of moving mechanism and then “remix” the toy into something new.
I was never really the type of kid who tinkered. I was, and still am, somewhat of a daydreamer. I was always thinking up stories and scenarios for my toys to take a part of, and not really thinking about what was in the toys themselves. As an adult, I have been even more averse to thinking about how things work. If I thought too hard about what made my smart phone or computer do all of the complex tasks I set it out to do, I would find my mind overtaken by some kind of strange anxiety about how intricate it all was and would just shut it down before I thought too much about it.
However, this semester has been all about getting out of that mindset and actually learning about the building blocks of technology. It’s been illuminating and completely new, but not as scary as I perhaps feared it would be.
One thing I’ve had to make peace with over the semester is not knowing what the heck I’m doing, but pressing forward anyway. In these projects I have always found roadblocks and frustrations, but I’m also learning how to work through them. This toy project was absolutely no different.
I became acquainted with my little ice cream friend here the night before the project began, happy with my choice of toy because she had so many different things going on in her design. She moved her neck/head, all four legs, made sound, and even had an LED-lit horn.
However, once we actually started in on the process of taking our toys apart, it didn’t take long to wonder if I had made a big mistake. I was watching my classmates around me, with mainly toys that had a plush outer “shell” that was easily removed with scissors, and then looking back at my toy, whose mechanisms were encased in a hard, unforgiving plastic prison.
I was able to find solace in that one of my peers had happened to buy the exact toy I had. There is, indeed, strength in numbers, and had she not been in the exact same position I had been, I may not have gotten very far before giving up and getting a new toy. Sitting beside her, talking to her as we both encountered similar problems and bouncing ideas off of one another was an incredible help in pushing through this process.
We began semi-optimistically. I noticed that there were seams in the plastic, and was already beginning to form ideas on how to pry the toy open by them. After unscrewing the casing on the small battery pack, and removing the batteries, I started thinking that would be the easiest way in. I began using blades to cut a line on the back seam of the toy, hoping to get it nice and shaved down. The plastic, however, proved to be very tough and unyielding, and we were sweating in no time.
Around this time, completely by accident, I popped out one of the small plastic covers that hid a cavity in which a tiny screw was housed. Eureaka. A much simpler way in was found.
The problem, however, is that a simple solution is only simple if you have the correct tools. We located the tiniest screwdriver we could find, and began the arduous task of trying to get the stubborn little things to budge. I think we were only successful once — maybe twice — in removing a screw… the rest remained firmly in place. Even their little plastic covers were tough to pry off! After my partner-in-crime had all but stripped the screws from trying to get them to come loose, we realized this may not have been the easy in we were hoping it would be.
Not wanting to lose any more time (I couldn’t help but notice how far ahead our classmates seemed to be at this point), I decided to return my focus to those back seams. Our professor had noticed us struggling to break into our seemingly innocuous looking ponies, and gave us a simple piece of advice: sometimes you just have to use a little brute strength.
Though we were both a little afraid to be too rough (we could see hints of wires and a microchip and the thought of damaging them was a bit nerve-wracking), nothing to this point had worked. Though I was pretty frustrated, and definitely wondering why I didn’t pick a simpler toy, I also felt a stubborn determination start to grip me. I was going to get those mechanisms freed from their plastic prison no matter what it took. (And I was already sporting a battle wound on my finger.)
Using a combination of that tenacity, some needle-nose pliers, and an exacto blade, I hacked and pulled and pried open the back end of my little friend until I could finally see a hint of what was inside her. By the end of class, I had pulled off almost an entire side of the shell, and removed one of her legs. She was not yet free, but it was progress. Enough to make sure that I would take it home and finish the job.
Though it took me a couple of days to return to it, that is exactly what I did. I happen to live with a partner who has many crafty hobbies, and therefore owns many tools that were now at my disposal. With minimal guidance from her (safety first, friends!), I got to work. I was surprised to find that my screws were not stripped, and was fortunate enough that we had an even smaller screwdriver to work with. Getting those little guys finally out definitely made the process a lot smoother. However, there were still a couple of stubborn parts.
I wanted to make sure the major parts attached to the motors would stay in-tact, as I wanted to see how it all moved without the shell attached, so I refrained from just forcefully ripping off the head of our friend when I had most of the plastic prison shed. Using a vice, I carefully locked what I had left of my little unicorn into place, and started using a hand saw to work open the head at the snout.
Once I had that thick plastic shaved down enough, I decided to try to pry it open with a flat head screwdriver. It would open, but not enough to pull it apart. So, I was gifted a rubber mallet to force the split wider and wider until finally…. it came off!
Finally!!! Our mechanisms were free!!! The feeling of finally having it completely separated from the plastic shell after so much hard work was exhilarating. What was even better was the fact that it was all still in-tact, even the battery pack! I popped some double A’s in to see if she still functioned, and was practically over the moon to see that she did. That half of the project, I could finally say, was a success.
After so much struggle, I felt like the hardest part was behind me. Now came the time to “remix”.
We had only one class period to transform the guts of our toys into something new. At the end of it all, we had to clean up and then present our creations to the rest of the class. The pressure was on. Suddenly I found myself staring at this thing, and feeling completely frozen. I spent so much time just breaking into this toy, I had absolutely no ideas on what to do next. I was beginning to panic.
One of my peers had commented how the insides of my toy now looked like some kind of angler fish… I took that image and ran with it. After all, the clock was now ticking.
First thing was first. I could not very well have a fish that still neighed like a pony, so what was I going to do with these sound effects? My first instinct was to try my hand at some sound mixing. After all, we have been experimenting with micro:bit, and I knew it was possible. However, I had no idea where to even begin with something like that, and I feared there would be no time. I quickly scrapped the idea, though not without some reluctance, and started thinking about structure. (I later removed the speaker altogether with a quick snip.)
I sketched out what I had left of my original toy, and then the image of an angler fish. I had to look at the parts I had and how I could use them to make my fish move.
We had many materials at our disposal to use; cardboard, wood scraps, chipboard, paper of all kinds, wire, pipe cleaners, you name it. I began grabbing cardboard and tried to map out what I could do with it. I was thinking wire could be attached to where legs had once been, and then glued onto a cardboard fin. The way the part moved, I hoped, would make it look like the fin was flapping a bit. I had the same thought for a tail, and suddenly I was in business.
I constructed fins and a tail by cutting out cardboard and coloring it slightly with chalk pastel. I used thick wire to to wrap around the plastic loop once connected to the unicorn’s front legs, and angled it backwards. I used hot glue to attach my cardboard fins, and I used a piece of wire to go through two loops so I could join to pieces of cardboard on either side of the body to form the tail.
At some point I realized that my fish was not going to be steady if it did not sit on a base, so I located a wooden scrap just the right side to glue down my battery pack to. Once all that was done, I was tasked with figuring out how I wanted to make my fish’s body.
I knew I wanted the LED once in our unicorns horn (and it’s wire) as the angler fish’s signature illuminating lure. Now I just needed some kind of body to attach eyes to and enclose our fish’s insides. I began by using some wire used for simple wire sculptures to create a round, cage-like skeleton. The wire was a bit flimsy, however, so I decided to cut thin strips of cardboard and glue those to the wire for some structural integrity. I had also wrapped white pipe cleaners around the wire and tip of the unicorn horn so my lure would be disguised.
It was at this point when I was faced with a dilemma. Time was running out, and I wanted to cover the skeleton I had created with some tissue paper so it would look enclosed. However, the button I needed to press in order to make our fish move was going to be deep inside of fish. I would either have to cut a hole big enough in the paper for a finger to push in, or somehow extend the button outward, which would likely take more time than I had.
However, Dr. Justice was to the rescue. He pointed out that it might look kind of cool to have my cage skeleton bare. After some thought I decided that would have to be my solution.
Some quick adhering of final touches (cotton ball eyes, and pipe cleaner teeth), my slightly clumsy looking fish was complete.
Once I had the time to finally catch my breath at the end of this hectic creative process, I found myself feeling slightly regretful about what I had created. For one, I was worried that I didn’t do enough to make our toy new. After all, I didn’t rewire anything… I only attached new parts. I also worried my scary little friend did not look “good enough”. These are struggles that I have been facing this entire semester. Always doubting what I’ve done, or looking at my final product as not being good enough.
Though it’s hard for me to do, I’m trying to learn to let go of expectations and arbitrary standards my brain sets for my end goal in these projects. After all, these experiments are about learning and the process of it all. If I look at it that way… I can say that I have learned a lot. I can also give myself a break by looking at my projects the way I hope to look at my future students’ work. If I can do that, bypassing whatever biases or expectations I seem to have for myself, I can take a more objective approach. I can say, man I really did a lot!
So what did I learn through all of this? Well, the biggest thing I learned was how to be patient and persistent. Materials are going to push against you in anything you can create or, in the case, take apart. Instead of throwing in the towel, you can simply try something new. If the tools you’re using aren’t working, let’s find some new ones.
I always have a good time after these projects reflecting back on the process and trying to see it in the perspective of a child. That feeling of fascination I got watching the mechanism move without the outer shell, the feeling of accomplishment at successfully breaking into the toy, the thousands of different thoughts that ran through my head when trying to think of how these moving parts could be used to make something new… these are the kinds of things I think will really have children engaged. I’m fascinated by the thought of what a child in my place could come up with.
I’m also happy to note that my fear of the unknown that is “how does this thing work???” is much smaller than it used to be. I’m already beginning to look at things around me and think about what is making them tick. I’m looking at toys at work in a new light. And if I can inspire the two words “I wonder…” to pop into a child’s mind when they engage with things in the world around them, I think I will be a successful teacher.