The 3D printer market is booming among companies but is struggling to grow with the general public. For one simple reason: people don’t know what to print with a 3D printer.

To prove the possibilities offered by 3D printers, Dagoma decided to attack the issue of toys. Indeed, every year 2 billion toys worldwide are thrown away because they aren’t repairable. For one simple reason: toy manufacturers don’t supply spare parts. A broken toy can’t be fixed. For toymakers, it’s a licence to print money. Consumers are obliged to buy a toy again instead of repairing it.

Dagoma decided to fight this ecological disaster by launching operation Toy Rescue.

A fun and useful way to generate brand preference around a responsible and committed vision of 3D printing.

To counteract the wilful inaction of toy manufacturers in the face of this ecological disaster, Dagoma launched operation Toy Rescue, a website dedicated to spare parts for toys.

The most commonly lost or broken parts from the biggest selling toys of the last 40 years were scanned and modelled, to be made available to the general public.

Over a hundred parts were finally put online for anyone to access.

And for people without a 3D printer, we developed a partnership with France’s biggest toy chain PicWicToys. 3D printers are set up instore so that anyone can print a broken or missing part.

Also, toys that were impossible to fix were shredded and melted to produce a new filament reel. This new reel makes it possible to repair other toys.

With the Toy Rescue operation, we decided to show the general public the possibilities of 3D printing, namely letting them repair toys.

The Toy Rescue campaign reached 3 different targets: the general public, the community of 3D printer owners, and companies that manufacture toys.

Firstly, we informed the general public, raising awareness on the problems of plastic pollution directly linked to the obsolescence of toys that can’t be repaired.

Then, thanks to the campaign, we united and significantly grew the community of 3D printer owners and Dagoma makers so that they would agree to help people who couldn’t find a part they needed, or who didn’t own a 3D printer.

Finally, this operation also called on toy manufacturers and brands to offer solutions for repairing their toys.

The campaign took 8 months of work. First, we identified the biggest selling toys of the last 40 years: Barbie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Polly Pocket, and more.

Then we modelled the parts most frequently lost or broken: arms, legs, heads, weapons, ammunition, tokens...

And made them available to the public on the Toy-Rescue website.

We made the site participative so everyone could take part in the fight. You can request modelling of a part missing from the site, request a part to be printed, or become a maker by printing or modelling a part for others.

On 10 December 2019, we launched the operation.

Immediately, the campaign was picked up by the international media.

Convinced by Dagoma’s commitment, a community of 3,000 makers was formed to facilitate modelling, repair and printing of parts among individuals.

Without any media budget investment, and in under 2 weeks, the operation was relayed in France and internationally on 15 TV stations, notably TF1, M6, France 2, and Al Arabiya, and in dozens of articles.

The campaign generated over 426 million media impressions in more than 25 countries (France, Brazil, England, USA, Turkey, Japan…).

The general public began to change its behaviour because after only one week, more than 1,200 toys had been repaired.

Visits to the Dagoma website increased by 87% and 3D printer sales increased by over 41%.

Dagoma developed a partnership with France’s biggest toy chain: PicWicToys. This enabled toys with broken and missing parts to be repaired in 45 stores thanks to 3D printers set up onsite.