Target Will Make You Into An Action Figure Now
If you've ever wanted to become a superhero but lacked the willpower to stop eating bags upon bags of pizza rolls, 3D printing technology now has you covered.
Super Awesome Me, a kiosk powered by 3DPlusMe and Hasbro, has brought 3D scanning technology from high-tech action figure sculpting labs to your local toy store. For around $60, any aspiring superhero can get scanned by the automated kiosk and have something resembling their face printed onto an an existing action figure body, featuring the costumed likenesses of Captain America, an unmasked Spider-Man or Iron Man, or Black Widow. Wait a few weeks, and you'll have an action figure in your likeness delivered to your door. The kiosks began appearing in 2014, but have only recently begun to trickle into Target, Walmart, and Toys 'R' Us locations nationwide.
3DPlusMe isn't the first company to invite the average schmo to slap their mug on a buff hero bod, but they're the first to make the process accessible in-store, and with the support of toy giant Hasbro. Companies like My Face On A Figure and That's My Face pioneered the model of affixing a personalized, printed head onto a standard action figure body, but after competing company You Kick Ass appeared on Shark Tank to demonstrate a similar technology, the truth behind all of these companies' products was harshly laid out: 3D printed faces just don't look that good at the moment.
The technology behind 3D printing is still in its infancy, and crossing the uncanny valley into a legitimate likeness just hasn't happened reliably yet. Users of the Super Awesome Me service have reported that the resulting portrait is gritty and blurry. And if you're trying to be a superhero, only one of those adjectives is really all that welcome.
With the funding of Marvel and Hasbro behind them, we can hope that 3DPlusMe will up the customized figure game beyond a simple novelty into something really worth displaying. But for now, the evidence points towards more of the same. And for $60, Hasbro continues to use cheap action figure bodies that they already had laying around. That's $50 worth of customized head that remains unaccounted for. Maybe wait this one out and just hit the gym instead.
[Source: Action Figure Insider]