Cykapu Pop Puzzle Project Has Been On Kickstarter, click and support it.
Where did the idea come?
Cykapu has been selling pop it toys for 2 years, we cooperate with toy factories to produce different kinds of fidget pop.
One day we saw a Tetris pop it toy, which added a puzzle elements to it and made it more interesting. If we combine anniversaries, the pop fun and challenge of puzzles to create a new product, a pop it puzzle that kids and even adults can play longer. That must be interesting.
When the idea of anniversaries popped into our head: calendars, permanent calendars, by using pop it silicone blocks to spell out each anniversary, these ideas comes out one by one.
How to slove the problems we met ?
The first question is how to arrange the year, month, and Sunday reasonably in a calendar-sized puzzle box. Combined with the oriental Taiji Bagua and Zhouyi 64 hexagrams, we adjusted the bottom plate of Tetris to 8*8=64 grids. 4 year slots + 12 month slots + 7 week slots + 31 date slots = 54 slots, so there are 10 slots left on the bottom plate. How to use the remaining 10 squares is our second question.
But we have overlooked a problem. If the year is displayed in the form of a floor puzzle, it will require 4 changeable floor grids, that is, 4*10=40 grids. Adding 40 squares to complete the year change is completely beyond expectations. We need to redesign the program.
One afternoon, the youngest daughter of the team member Steven was playing the ice cream pop it. She found that each pop button has a small thumbnail printed on it. God, we have been obsessed with realizing the effect of the puzzle through the bottom plate, but we've forgotten the silicone puzzle piece itself can also be engraved and printed artistically. That's right, we achieve the arrangement of the years by engraving numbers on the bubbles, so that only 4 years are needed to achieve the effect.
The next design problem is the reasonable partition of the bottom plate, the confirmation of the appearance and number of the puzzle pieces, and the verification of each date solution, which took us a lot of time to verify, because this is the first time we make pop it and Puzzle combined. Finally, we confirmed the preliminary design layout.
After the design plan is confirmed, it is time for factory to confirm the feasibility of the design implementation. We insist on using environmentally friendly raw materials, The pop it puzzle pieces should be made of food-grade silicone.
The difficulty is the choice of the material of the bottom plate. We refer to the plastic bottom plate of Tetris, which is not a good choice. It is very light and flammable and not environmentally friendly.
After 3D printing the sample, the owner of the factory gave us a negative answer. A separate hard silicone base plate can be used, but the partition part on the base plate cannot reach the hardness of the hard silicone material under the huge pressure of integral molding, and it will stick to the mold, the success rate will be lower than 50%.
Is there a material that is both environmentally friendly and whose hardness can meet the requirements of integral molding?
A few days later, we looked at our 3D-printed silicone blocks and baseplates. Can we use this 3D-printed material as a baseplate? 3D printing uses ABS resin, which can be recycled and reused compared to plastic. It is now widely used in automotive products and high-end machine parts in offices. The only disadvantage is the material price is a bit expensive.
The follow-up is to test the mold with the production factory, adjust the size of the engraved numbers and the hardness of the material on the food-grade silicone block, all of which are gradually becoming more and more proficient, and finally we completed the permanent calendar puzzle version 1.0.
1. Product introduction
This product consists of a base plate and a total of 25 pop puzzles.
① bottom plate
The bottom plate has a total of 8*8=64 spaces
It has been divided into 2 areas, the first area is the calendar area with a total of 50 squares.
The calendar area can be further divided into 3 areas, the 12-month area, the 7-week area and the 31-day area.
The second area is the year area with 14 squares. The year zone can also be divided into 3 zones.
There are 4 squares in the puzzle area, 1 square in the isolation area, and 9 squares in the bench area.
② Pop puzzle
There are 25 puzzle pieces in total, divided into 2 categories.
The first major category is the calendar area puzzle. There are 11 pieces of puzzles, each piece is unique and features a rainbow-colored design. (Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple.) The numbers are (1)~(9). Last and most important, there are 2 universal puzzles in a delicate grey. It is useful together with the nine unique puzzle pieces in the front, so that more than 100,000 special anniversaries can be spelled out. The number of these two blocks is special (0) number.
The second type is the year area puzzle, which consists of 6 types of 14-piece puzzles, the white block is used as a separate piece in the isolation area. There are 5 puzzle pieces left, with different numbers engraved on the front and back. The numbers can be spelled from 1666 to 2110 (444 years in total) in the 4-square puzzle area. Place the remaining 9 alternate year puzzles in the rihgt area.
How To play?
You can do it yourself first and then teach your children, there are 3 steps,
1.Select a specific year, month, week, day. Check and confirm by mobile phone or computer.
2.Spell out the year at the bottom of the puzzle using the number blocks on the right.
3.Last and most important, put the 11 silicone puzzle pieces into the puzzle body of the permanent calendar, make sure the year, month, week and day displayed in the end are exactly the same you select at first step, Please note that the silicone puzzle pieces can be flipped over, so there is more than one solution.
It can spell out all the years, months weeks and days for a total of 444 years (1667-2110), such as the different birth days of children, the anniversary day they learned to walk for the first time, the first time they learned to call Dad or Mom's day etc.
Children will not only have fun from the toy, bite it, squeeze it, pop it, but also help to develop their intelligence.
When kids play the pop puzzles, their logical thinking ability, reasoning strategy, mathematical thinking, mental arithmetic, hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills can be cultivated and exercised.
After experiencing a hearty puzzle battle, relax by pressing the bubbles and listening to the decompression sounds, everything is so satisfying.
We will make two colors plate, white and black. This pop puzzle has a certain educational intervention effect, which can improve young children's communication , spontaneity, and enhance social skills.
By catering to the needs of children, it can also effectively reduce early ADHD, autism symptoms and bad behavior.
