The Butterfly

Wood Stacking Toy

2021 / Children’s Toy

The Project

On Etsy there is a thriving market for handmade wooden children’s toys.

This project’s objective was to design a relatively inexpensive wooden children’s toy for a defined age range and fits into a gap in Etsy’s market.

Whilst completing existing market research, I found that stacking toys are a popular toy category however many of the existing products are similar and so I decided to develop this concept further into something new.

My proposal was a stacking toy aimed at children aged 2-4yrs loosely inspired by the lifecycle of a butterfly. First the child can build the caterpillar by connecting the body segments, and the wings can be added on afterwards to transform it into a butterfly.

This toy was designed to allow young children to develop their spatial awareness skills and dexterity.

The young age of the target audience meant it was important to design a toy without any small parts which could be broken off easily. The antenna design was changed from small wirey threads to thicker pieces made from dowel to address this.

As seen in the image on the right below, I experimented with different methods of connecting the body segments including using different shapes that the child would need to match. I found that this design was rather disconnected from the rest of the concept and limited the child’s freedom when playing. In the end I decided on dowel connectors- each segment has a short dowel attached to the top and a slot on the bottom.

This is a project that I would like to continue developing in the future. I can see the opportunity to incorporate the cocoon stage of the lifecycle so it leans more into the educational side of the toy.