This article originally appeared on Vulcan Post.
We’ve seen our fair share of high-tech toys around. From iPhone-controlled Furbies to some next-level Lego and glowing spheres that let you play augmented reality and mixed-reality games with them, it seems that just about anybody can partake in playing with toys. And then there’s Codename Colossus — the one toy to rule them all.
Codename Colossus is the ambitious project of local toymaker Michael Sng of Machination Studio, and he has one massively impressive product to show. The HMC Boudicca — the first in the project — is described as a “made-to-order, kinetic toy line set in Europe in an alternate history during The Great War”, and stands at 20-inches tall. It is entirely assembled from 400 hand-painted, 3D-printed parts, and utilises open-source electronics platform Arduino to make it an interactive project — in short, this thing moves.
While not much is said on the fictional background of the HMS Boudicca, the moving tank would not look out of place in the steampunk landscape of games like Bioshock or Dishonoured. The best part of this neat product is that you can actually purchase it. Yup, it’s available for sale at a staggering USD$5,000.
Sng explains that the product is fully 3D-printed, which makes up the bulk of the cost. A lot of time is used to paint and assemble the parts, and he adds, “This is not a commodity item and I need to ensure that it is priced fairly for both my time and risk.”
The creation is a labour of love by Sng, he says on his website, “Unlike many people who are looking for some way to make money without doing stuff, I am looking for something to do. To make and build stuff with my hands. So Machination Studio is as much a life decision as a business. I started this to acquire skills that I can use to make fun things for the rest if my life or at least until solar flare storms or alien EMP devices fry all our electronics.”
