IS IT POSSIBLE TO EXPLOIT THE NATURAL SHAPE OF BAMBOO CREATING CUTE CHARACTERS TO PLAY WITH?

Shark Fishery is one of my favorite bamboo toys I have designed because it takes inspiration from a toy I used to play a lot as a child, Frog Fishing. This last one used magnets for the fishing. The brief was just “create a bamboo toy” so the question for me was “how to exploit the natural pipe shape of bamboo in a cute and cost-efficient way?”. I concentrated on designing a character that would employ the least cuts in order to create it and it was not affected necessarily by the diameter of the bamboo (issue much more important in the Helicopter and the Plane where plastic parts and bamboo had to match precisely).

It happened kind of naturally to imagine an open mouth and at that point sharks came to life, with their eyes and gills. For the fishing I designed wooden fishing canes with hooks attached to a rope. Have fun!

Client: Hape International