For anyone who's ever wanted to build their own ninja-shaped plush toy with three eyes, reindeer ears and no legs, your time has come.
Happy Toy Machine, a startup which describes itself as "Build-A-Bear on steroids," lets the finicky plush toy owner design his own stuffed masterpiece on its website. For the cost of $30 for a mini toy, or $50 for a full-sized one, Happy Toy Machine manufactures the toy and mails it to the owner.
Happy Toy Machine was born when Scott, one of the founders, saw his kids designing fantasy cartoon characters on websites like Disney and Nickelodeon, and thought, "What if we could suck that out of the computer and give it to them?"
And so he founded Happy Toy Machine, which won the audience choice prize at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley conference on Monday.
Scott kept his six-year-old in mind when he helped build the site, so really anyone should be able to use the interface to build a toy, he told the audience at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley on Monday.
For the moment, the company's small, and to prevent being overrun, they've kept the site invite-only. With the confidence boost at TechCrunch Disrupt, they hope to get bigger and plusher.
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