5/20 Drop, Floppy Banana & Other News

5/22/20 Drop, Floppy Banana & Other news

Info for drop on 5/20/22 at 8:30 pm EST

In an effort to prevent my website from catching fire, I will be putting the shop pages into maintenance mode ~20 minutes before the drop happens and then taking the shop pages out of maintenance mode at the scheduled time of the drop.

As an experiment, the other pages of the website *should* be accessible during that time and I think I fixed the issue with maintenance mode not working. If the website gets slow because of user traffic, I might shut it down and then bring it back up at the scheduled drop time, but I’m hoping to only close the shop pages.

If you want any existing items, they should remain in your cart until the time of the drop so you can toss in whatever new items you want

New things available in the drop

Floppy Banana (v01) (I have about 6 at the time of writing this)
Splash (Small)
1 Large Flan
Trilobites
Hammer
XL Pudgy Tentacle
Corn
Cucumber
a LOT of 3″ urchins

There’s also the definitive last of the opal items that will be available for a while and like… 50 raviolis, most of which are inclusion noods. It’s a VERY squishy heavy drop 😛

The Floppy Banana (more info)

This is the v01 floppy banana. I am working on a v02, but this iteration has several seams (1 on each peel and 1 going down the side of the banana with the banana-seam usually being pretty negligible and the peel ones sometimes being more pronounced) and the area where the banana meets the peels is a bit goofy looking in this iteration because of an experimental way I made the mold (which I’m ditching in v02 because it’s too hard to control). There are some small ridges/creases in the area (See below for pics), but nothing that should make it impossible to clean – just rinse the ridges slightly more carefully with your finger if you’re concerned about them.

Floppy banana is also prone to some open-face bubbles on the base of the toy (pictured above) which also shouldn’t cause issues cleaning.

Because of the mold eccentricities on this version, they will be given uniform discounts, but not necessarily marked as a ‘flop’ unless there’s something up with them other than the issues mentioned above (things like pigment freckles, smaller bubbles that would be hard to clean, etc). V02 (fi it goes well) will be listed at the regular price, so for now these will be nice budget bananas.

Floppy Banana in general may be more likely to tear at the peels with consistent rough handling (especially in softer silicones). While I’ve still yet to rip the original banana, it’s something to be aware of when purchasing. Standard shop warranties (see FAQ) apply to the bananas.

3D printed banana stands aren’t included in the price of the banana, but can be purchased as an addon within the banana listing at the time of purchase. Currently only available in clear. They serve no purpose other than to display the banana in a more aesthetically aPEELing way.

Price Increases…

Will happen AFTER this drop since the price of silicone has officially increased.

I haven’t decided exactly how prices will change, but I know 2 things for sure:

The items in the upcoming drop will follow the old pricing structure / NOT have increased prices.
Pre-made items already in the shop will NOT have their prices increased in retrospect and will retain their existing prices.

I’ll update the prices for BYO/MTO listings once I crunch some more numbers, but if you were looking to put in orders for customs, you can probably slip them in before the price increase if you order soon. (I’ll probably update prices next week, but I’m still not super sure when). Buying older listings could also be a good way to save money since those prices won’t be raised in retrospect.

General Website Updates

I’m sure many of you have noticed that some of the items are missing ‘official’ spec sheets, nice renders or may be missing entirely from my catalog.

I’m working on it 😛

Over the last few months I’ve been planning some rebranding stuff and another website redo, which, frankly, I thought I’d be done with a few months ago. My plan was/is to just sweep through and update everything as I redo the site, it’s just been taking longer than expected so some parts are still a bit not-up-to-date.

I have some written specs in most of the new designs, even if they don’t show up in the catalog, but if anyone has additional questions about models, feel free to reach out via email or twitter.

Unrelated: after 2 years in business I find myself kind of sad I didn’t name the shop ‘Chaos Toys’, not only because idk what half the stuff I make even is, but as a way to poke fun at my website being on constant fire. It also would have been way easier to design a text-based logo for and I could have just called myself ‘Chaos’ which would have been really funny 😛 Plus people wouldn’t confuse me with HPE that way XD Part of me still wants to do it… But also effort and y’all know me as SST already.

NC 45 will be discontinued going forward

I used every last drop in my last bucket to finish the opal pours and I’m not buying more. It’s crazy expensive compared to the other Near Clear, more prone to demolding issues and more annoying to work with, so it won’t be offered going forward. Plus I work in a very small space, so it’s hard to store so many bespoke firmnesses.

NC 31 (NC soft) will still be available occasionally

Inclusions going forward

Will probably be offered mostly as MTO listings similar to what I did with the opals where there will be a listing with limited options set up for a set period of time and I’ll just batch pour everything at once. Extra pours will then be listed as pre-mades like usual.

I’ll probably also try to do some variations in the inclusions I offer (like different color of opals or strawberries, etc) to keep things fresh (for me as much as everyone else), but we’ll see how that works out in the end.

p.s. Since people keep asking, opals probably won’t be offered again until October and I don’t plan on doing any more until then – I kind of burned myself out on the last batch of them and want a break from them (I wasn’t expecting as many orders as I got XD)