Reddit users plan hunt for 3D printed toys scattered around SF

Perhaps the holidays have put everyone in the mood for toys and games, or maybe it’s San Francisco’s natural whimsy bubbling up again. Either way, on Monday some local Redditors hatched a plan to scatter hundreds of 3D printed toys across the city.

It’s not a promotional stunt or even a charity drive. Rather, it’s a game: The idea is to leave amusing plastic constructs in various places (monkeys in trees, frogs in fountains, etc), which when recovered will send finders to a web site via URL or QR code.

If you stumble on one of the little fellas in the near future, take a picture of yourself and where you found it, upload the image to the site, and then hide the prize elsewhere to see who finds it next.

The still nameless San Francisco-based game has no objective beyond seeing how far the little fellas spread and how diverse of a group of locals will end up playing.

Keith Kissel

The whole gimmick is still in the planning phase; Reddit user “illiterit” proposed the idea almost idly on Monday morning, saying that 150 upvotes would indicate enough interest to make the plan worthwhile.

As of Tuesday morning, the thread has more than 400 votes, so it looks like the game is on for 2017.

If you want to get in on the ground floor designing the toys, site, and rules (of primary concern: Factoring for people who will keep the found objects rather than spread them on, as sometimes happens in similar games played in other cities), there’s a Slack channel for planning.

Otherwise, keep your eyes opened in the new year. And if you happen to spot a brightly colored badger, sloth, or dinosaur on the way to work, don’t walk by and don’t squirrel it away. Instead, pass it on. You never know where it might end up.

• Creating a Game In The City [Reddit]
• SF Game Channel [Slack]