More Toy Vehicles!

A crane-type construction vehicle

In addition to writing your favorite blog (:)) I am also a toymaker with a leather apron, a droopy mustache, and the desire to build impossible wonders to delight and amaze the world. Way back in 2011, I put up pictures from my upcoming book “Things that Go: Green & Groovy” which was a guide for building amazing toy vehicles out of common household rubbish, wooden wheels, and craft paint.  Some of the vehicles were really cool!  I turned common garbage into nifty-looking vehicles…albeit ones which did not run on their own (I was sort of like Fiat or Kia).

A missile cruiser!

Alas! As usual, my creativity was no match for the sinister vagaries of the world economy.  There were sourcing/pricing problems in China, regulatory fights, and goodness only knows what other sorts of business headaches for my poor publisher.  The publisher had hoped to alloy the positive aspects of the toy business together with the uplifting aspects of book publishing (toys are sold directly to retailers, whereas books, nightmarishly, are sold by consignment).  Her good intentions were thwarted at every turn and she learned directly about the anti-competitive forces the large toy companies utilize to prevent products from small companies from ever reaching market (something I learned about when I made “Zoomorphs”).  All of this happened during the great crisis in the world of publishing. Gosh!

A planetary space base!

Anyway, what this means is my cool book has still not made it to the shelves.  This strikes me as particularly ironic, since I was continually goaded to build faster—and I turned out all of the many, many toy vehicles at a staggering pace.  I thought I would share a few more of these vehicles with you here on my blog so that at least somebody gets to enjoy them!  Also to build buzz I guess?

forklift

Maybe the vehicle book will happen someday, but in the mean time I have other toy projects…and other writing projects…and other art projects.  Keep watching this space to see those projects–they are going to be amazing!  Also let me know if you need any directions on how to build a miniature cardboard wheelbarrow before the book launches in sometime in the unknowable world of the far future.

wheelbarrow