Children love drawing monsters. And, let’s face it, so do a lot of parents. You should see the teeth on my crayon-fuelled creations… Now there’s a new app that takes these impulses into the realms of 3D printing.
That’s right: a new app called My Little Monster – Make it Real not only gets children to make a monster on an iPhone or iPad, but can also be used to get that creation 3D printed into a real figure.
Here’s how it works: children can start with one of 11 “starter” monsters, then customise their colour, eyes, teeth and accessories from “thousands of combinations”.
The monster character can be played with on-screen, and in Talking Tom Cat style, he’ll repeat what your children say into the microphone. They can even take selfie photographs with him.
If they – and you, crucially, since this involves spending money – want to go further, the monster can be posed and then ordered as a 3D-printed figure.
How much does that cost? The prices are initially in dollars: $19.99 for a two-inch figurine, plus $5.50 for first-class shipping in the US. We’re in the UK, though, and when we entered our address, the currency switched to pounds: £12.71 for the model and £6.04 in shipping costs.
Payment is handled via PayPal rather than an in-app purchase here in the UK, although in the US, My Little Monster is one of the first apps to use Apple’s new mobile payments system, Apple Pay.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because My Little Monster is a relaunched version of Monstermatic, an app we covered in January this year, when it was only available in the US.
It’s now published by Crazy Labs, a division of large children’s apps publisher TabTale, which means it has more welly behind it for things like worldwide shipping of the figures.
Anyway, we love the idea, and £19 for a monster created by your child may make a great birthday or Christmas present. My Little Monster – Make it Real is a free download for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, although to unlock all the monsters and accessories, there’s a one-off in-app purchase of £1.49. An Android version will follow in the coming days.