Maker’s Studio made quite the impression during it’s release at the 2015 New York Toy Fair this February, winning the Best of Toy Fair award from Techlicious, making numerous Top 10 Lists (listed below), and receiving glowing reviews for its take on open-end play. Co-inventors David Yakos, of Salient Technologies, Inc., and maker Parker Thomas teamed up with toy and game producers, ThinkFun to create the open-play concept toy. Three Maker Studio sets have been released: Propellers, Gear and Winches, and the included Engineering Challenge Cards encourage kids in problem solving and thinking outside the box. Built by engineers for budding engineers, ThinkFun’s Maker Studio puts creativity back in play.
Check out some of the great reviews at these links:
April 14, 2015: No Monsters In My Bed Blog Review of Maker Studio
April 13, 2015: The House of Boys…And a Girl Blog Review of Maker Studio
April 13, 2015: Cummin’s Life Blog Review of Maker Studio
March 6, 2015: KBZK News Piece on Bozeman local, David Yakos & the invention of Maker Studio
February 20, 2015: Maker Studio named in the CNET “Most Amazing Stuff of Toy Fair 2015” list
February 19, 2015: Maker Studio named in GeekDad’s Top 10 of NY Toy Fair 2015
February 19, 2015: Makezine is all about Maker Studio promoting the make-movement
February 19, 2015: The Maker Studio pieces “feel great, fit together well, and demand open-ended play”, says Amy Kraft of Makeroni
February 18, 2015: Kidscreen ranks Maker Studio in their favoriate non-tech toys
February 18, 2015: DadDoes places Maker Studio on the “Good” end of his article, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Toy Fair 2015
February 16, 2015: Out of 150,000 products, Maker Studio is awarded Techlicious Best of Toy Fair 2015 List along with 7 others
February 11, 2015: Reuter’s Magazine lists ThinkFun’s Maker Studio as a great toy for kids who want to “build, do and explore!”
February 7, 2015: The Making of and Inspiration behind Maker Studio
If you’re into videos, check out the Made by Bella series – where Bella and her Friends work through the Engineering Challenges of Maker Studio
Igniting Budding Engineers & ThinkFun!
Reposted from the SmartPlay blog by ThinkFun President & Co-Founder, Bill Ritchie
Maker Studio Construction Sets: Igniting Budding Engineers
We’ve got some great new ThinkFun products and programs arriving this Spring 2015. I’m proud of them and I want to take the opportunity to describe them to you. The first one I’ll describe is our new Maker Studio Construction Sets.
Our Goals Going In
We usually seek out products that build on our mission to ignite minds and give kids an early advantage. In this case, we wanted to do several things.
- Stimulate interest in engineering and creativity
- Make a product that was open-ended—not just one-and-done building
- Add challenges on top of the builds—ask kids to make their contraption actually accomplish a task
For the Maker Studio sets, we teamed up with two awesome inventors, David Yakos and Parker Thomas; both of them are active in the Maker movement. In fact, on our YouTube Channel, we feature David’s “Pitch Video” to us because the vision was so clear and aligned.
What Is Maker Studio?
Each Maker Studio set consists of a set of parts and instructions for how to build machines using discarded household items like food boxes and plastic bottles. The parts are magical—they are a collection of wheels, gears, axles, connectors, rubber band motor and instructions that show players how to build four machines.. Step 1 is to make household items into moving contraptions. But there’s much more to it. You can create many things with the parts in each set by using different containers and different decorations. The real beauty of Maker Studio is the fact that it has challenges to make your project do something. Push an apple across a table. Lift a soup can from the floor. That’s why we all it Open-Ended.
It Would Have Flopped!
It’s funny… just a few years ago these products would certainly have flopped. How do you explain something that is “open-ended” on a store shelf?
But in a world of YouTube channels and social media, we have a whole new opportunity to present the Maker Studio imagination by showcasing the cool stuff that kids are already making, then inviting our audience to join in themselves and share their own designs and builds.
And to prove our point, we’d like to introduce Bella Yakos and her YouTube Channel, Made By Bella. Bella is the 7 yo daughter of one of the inventors. Take a look at some of Bella’s videos, and you’ll see why we think Maker Studio sets are going to set brains on fire!
This is new territory for us, we’re excited! We are seeing great interest from the Maker movement, STEM and STEAM advocates, and Girls in Engineering programs. It’s the beginning of a whole new category of products for us, products that let the players tell the story.
Here’s hoping that it works! I’ll keep you updated along the way.
You can follow along with Bill and the ThinkFun team HERE!
And click HERE for more about Maker Studio in the News
Darth Vader & Vacuum Forming
What would be more geek-fun then flash freezing Darth Vader with a metal alloy mixed with tibanna gas? We thought, not much! So, that’s what we did… At least 
making something that looks like the Sith Lord suspended in Carbonite (See Star Wars – Return of the Jedi). We used an in-house process called vacuum forming to have a little fun.
Vacuum forming works when you heat up a sheet of plastic in a jig and lower it over a positive form of the shape you want to create. As it lowers onto the mold, a vacuum table (like the reverse of an air hockey table) sucks the air out from under the plastic, forming it around the mold shape. 
This is a really handy process for making cases, large panels, and packaging. Typically, we use it for work and paid projects, but when you have the toys, you might as well play every once and a while!
To create the form, we built a Vader look-a-like on a board using a mask, glove, Lego, Maker Studio parts, chain, some fabric, duct tape, a broken sled and some other odds and ends. Once we had the mold, we were able to vacuum form a sheet of plastic over Lord Vader on our vacuum forming machine. With a little paint touch up, we had Vader suspended in Carbonite-animation.
Enjoy this short video showing the process.
David Yakos is VP and Director of Creativity at Salient Technologies, Inc.
Salient 2015 Highlights
Another year has gone by, and here at Salient, we have a lot of things to be excited about! Here are just a few (in no particular order):
- The “inherently leak free” valves developed by Salient for Big Horn Valve passed
two of the most stringent tests for oil and gas
valves validating the technology as “emission-free” and the “Best Available Valve Technology to keep our environment green and clean”. - Salient President and Co-owner, Steve Sanford was recognized in the Southwest Montana 20 Under 40; people, entrepreneurs and employees in southwest Montana who have achieved success and improved the quality of life for others in their communities.
- Salient’s David Yakos and maker, Parker Thomas, co-presented “The Mindset of a Maker” at PlayCon 2015
- Salient leadership team experienced HATCH2015, a summit of 100 thought leaders from around the world to HATCH a better world.
- iBike Powerpod Kickstarter Success reaching 150% of their goal, and already fulfilling orders.
- The Salient team had 4 amazing college students shadow them on real life projects as part of Salient’s mentorship program
- Launch of the award-winning Maker Studio Construction Sets to inspire youth in engineering
and creativity, co-invented by David Yakos - Kickstarter success for Hydaway collapsible water bottle – backed by over 5,700 supporters, and raising over $260,000, 13x their goal!
- The Salient team is growing with with the addition of master Industrial Designer, Kirk Turner
- Team Salient helped facilitate HATCHedu to Design the School of the Future at DSEL Labs, Montana State University.
- Salient Co-owner, David Yakos was recognized in Origin magazine’s 45 Top Creatives
- In 2015, Salient provided Industrial Design, Prototype Development and Manufacturing Drawings for over 100 client products.
