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Balloon Hovercraft

richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662
edited June 15 in Freebies

May I offer a little prop of a toy I made for my daughter's birthdays when they were young. It is a little balloon hovercraft. The balloon is blown up through the little hole on the underside, then you put it on a floor or hard surface and it then scoots around on a cushion of air when you knock it. It stops when the balloon goes down.

It turns out it was much more fun for the adults who came to the parties than 3yo kids!

There are 3 morphs, Shrink (of the balloon as air goes out), and balloon bend or side-side to simulate inertia as you knock the balloon. The model is texture mapped, but no textures are used.

In reality it's a cheap & fun toy to make if you have a lathe and a few spare CD's (use the lathe to knock up a coupler to glue to the CD and interface with the baloon). Definitely something the kids will never have come across before.

I know it's a silly toy, but I hope someone gets enjoyment from it.

Regards,

Richard

Balloon Hovercraft.png
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Balloon Hovercraft.zip
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Post edited by richardandtracy on

Comments

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,048

    That is an awesome idea. If my adult kids ever have any kids before I die, I'm gonna have to keep this in mind. Well, as you said, it sounds fun for an adult to mess around with too.

  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,623

    That is a cool idea and now that I have a new grandchild, I have something to show her

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662
    edited June 17

    For a page of instructions to make it, take a look at my Hovercraft web page.

    Post edited by richardandtracy on
  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,623

    Thanks I'll check it out

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662
    edited June 18

    Just a little image of two grown up children playing with their hovercraft:

    Regards,

    Richard

    Edited to add: The room, dining table, crockery, cutlery & chairs are all Ness Period Reproductions Regency Dining Poser sets updated to DS, and the remainder of the furnishings are LaurieS Victorian Furnishings. I thought the juxtoposition of antique furnishings, serious ancestral portraits with a couple of obviously modern adults behaving like children was fun.

    Balloon Hovercraft Promo R01.png
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    Post edited by richardandtracy on
  • Faeryl WomynFaeryl Womyn Posts: 3,623

    LOL very nice render Richard

  • WandWWandW Posts: 2,819

    I hadn't thought about those in decades!  They sold them in bags at the party store.

    There was a baloon helicopter too..... smiley

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662

    I have never seen a helicopter. I'm intrigued & will investigate.

    Thanks

    Richard

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662
    edited June 18

    Oh my. Just looked at a video of a helicopter & it nearly reduced me to tears.

    We had a cat called Gryff who was a silly, soppy, huge Maine Coon. He loved chasing after little Skyrocopters and would have so loved that too. He'd ask for one or two skyrocopters to be pulled every morning before I took my daughters to school. After pouncing on them and bringing them back for another pull, he'd be so mindlessly happy that he set us all up for the day.  That's him in the attached image. The tiles in the fireplace are 6" square for a sense of scale. He died just before his third birthday.

    Just got to model one of these.

    Regards,

    Richard

     

    gryff04.jpg
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    Post edited by richardandtracy on
  • PhthaloBluePhthaloBlue Posts: 40

    I love this!

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662

    Glad you like. It's but a silly little model that took a lot less time to create than it took to create the promo image.

    Regards,

    Richard

  • SilverGirlSilverGirl Posts: 832

    richardandtracy said:

    Oh my. Just looked at a video of a helicopter & it nearly reduced me to tears.

    We had a cat called Gryff who was a silly, soppy, huge Maine Coon. He loved chasing after little Skyrocopters and would have so loved that too. He'd ask for one or two skyrocopters to be pulled every morning before I took my daughters to school. After pouncing on them and bringing them back for another pull, he'd be so mindlessly happy that he set us all up for the day.  That's him in the attached image. The tiles in the fireplace are 6" square for a sense of scale. He died just before his third birthday.

    Just got to model one of these.

    Regards,

    Richard

     

    What a beautiful furbaby! I belonged to a rescue who was, best the vet could figure, half Ragdoll and half Maine Coon. He was a floppy lovebug, as much a giant sofa cushion as a cat, but he'd sit on the bathroom counter and sing to us until we tossed cotton swabs up for him to knock out of the air. He was mostly blind in one eye from an infection he got at the shelter, but wow he was a crack shot at "killing" those things anyway. He would've loved those skyrocopters.

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662

    Love your story about batting swabs. Our Ginger & white MC does that with tinsel balls, chasing them round the house. We're quite nuts about the cats - they have a toy box in the living room, and often root through it for something to play with.

    I've been utterly smitten by Maine Coons. At the moment we have two cats. Our older one is a black & white mog. He's now 18 and three quarters, and has two cancers that are not bothering him yet, but I don't think he's got long. We're going to replace him with a rescue cat so our 11yo Maine Coon can be boss cat for a while in his life. We think we may get another Maine Coon too. They aren't hugely common in the UK, but I'd love another - there's something about them. Gentle giants with a huge personality too.

    Regards,

    Richard

  • SilverGirlSilverGirl Posts: 832

    richardandtracy said:

    Love your story about batting swabs. Our Ginger & white MC does that with tinsel balls, chasing them round the house. We're quite nuts about the cats - they have a toy box in the living room, and often root through it for something to play with.

    I've been utterly smitten by Maine Coons. At the moment we have two cats. Our older one is a black & white mog. He's now 18 and three quarters, and has two cancers that are not bothering him yet, but I don't think he's got long. We're going to replace him with a rescue cat so our 11yo Maine Coon can be boss cat for a while in his life. We think we may get another Maine Coon too. They aren't hugely common in the UK, but I'd love another - there's something about them. Gentle giants with a huge personality too.

    Regards,

    Richard

    They are so sweet and so very smart... and it sounds like any kitty who finds your family has found a piece of feline paradise. I hope the time you have remaining with your mog makes good memories, and his passing is gentle.

    Our household is without kitties at the moment... my last darling passed in December at 17 & a half years old after a long decline. He had heart problems, so I hadn't wanted to introduce the stress of a new cat when his companion had preceeded him a few years earlier.  I'm not sure who will find us next, though I'm leaning towards either MC or maybe a Siberian if I choose. (This one was from a friend's farm, mostly Russian Blue with a little Siamese and likely other things as well. Not what I would have turned my eye towards if I was looking, but he informed me that he was my cat, and I had the good sense not to argue.) 

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662

    @SilverGirl, good luck with your cat choice. I've never regretted one, but I must admit some have been nicer than others.

    Regards,

    Richard

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,050
    edited June 28

    That's a brilliant idea... too bad I didn't know about this back when my girls were little, it would have been a great use for some of the hundreds of AOL* disks I accumulated... (they actually have lots of other uses... coasters, spacers, shims and projectiles for my now defunct Deadly Disc Launcher 2000**)

     

     

    * I don't know if the UK had something similar but back in the late 90s and early 00s, America Online was like the only major internet provider and they'd give away free "Minutes" of internet (60, 90,120) on plastic CDs... they'd junk mail you these disks in tin cases, cardstock sleeves, plastic cases and a couple of times in an amazingly clever wood case... Sans case, they'd come in magazines too... there were free CDs in bins next to grocery registers... you couldn't swing a dead badger without AOL discs flying everywhere (apparently badgers were packed with CDs back then)... unfortunately 120 minutes was probably the average time it took to connect to any website back then, so they were fairly useless, but apparently AOL was determined to flood the environment with more plastic than all the world's flimsy shopping bags combined.

    ** A CD disk launcher I made to shoot AOL discs... (This was before I had kids)... apparently deer mouse urine is bad for super high-speed motors and storing it in a damp outdoor shed was probably a bad idea too.

    *** There was no third thing I just like asterisks... I feel that they are an overlooked character these days and need a little love****.

    ****Plutonic, mostly... but whatever folks are into, it's all good.

    Post edited by McGyver on
  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,662

    The UK had AOL too. Lots & lots of AOL CD's. Never met anyone who used it, though.

    We used their discs for bird scarers in the vegetable patch amongst many things. Was never impressed by the use of CD's as coasters, they didn't last well.

    Our first internet provider was a crew called 'Screaming.net' who did internet for free, and shortly thereafter went bust.

    Regards,

    Richard

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