I’ve had this idea for a toy or game that involved characters randomly moving around an enclosed area and flipping board game tables… which may or may not have happened in my childhood a few times.
TL;DR – View the final Tiktok video
So, when I recently decided to go to TantrumCon for the first time this year and learned that they actually have a table flipping competition I felt that the universe was telling me to turn my “BIG” idea into the smallest pocket sized table flippers anyone had ever seen.
With all the recent discussion around AI I chose to theme my flippers as robots that represented a wide range of emotions. Even the most sophisticated coding would have a hard time processing a bad die roll or losing a close game by one victory point!
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These are 4×6 cards that I could easily hand out to everyone at the conference as a fun piece of swag this weekend.
I also bought a bunch of miniature travel scissors to give to anyone that might want to cut their cards out during the conference.
This may look a bit fiddly but I thought “Surely the steady handed folks that can paint an eyeball on a miniature would have no problem cutting out a checkerboard the size of a blueberry!” The smaller pieces are a bit tedious but I have faith in you!
This is what all the parts look like after cutting along the dotted lines that are marked by scissor icons.
Bibi, one of our studio cats is always on alert in hopes that I abandon my station so she can get her giant paws on all these wonderful bits!
After cutting the four lines where the arms are simply fold them up as if the robot is about to give someone a hug. Please no making fun of how poorly I missed the lines on this one. My excuse is that I was also taking a photo at the same time.
Next, fold the four tabs next to the head and legs backward.
Fold all four table legs down and continue cutting the additional robots.
One small tip I’ve found to help the robots stand up better is to cut the base upwards at a slight angle so they will tend to lean back a bit and counterbalance the weight of the arms. You can also bend the head back a bit for the same reason too.
Ok, Bibi REALLY wants these paper meeple standees. Intensity increases!
This is what the entire set looks like cut out.
And here are all the components set up on a table… ready to be flipped by MADBOT 3000!
Click the image below or here for the video on my TikTok.
