Instead of buying the kids in your life some cheap plastic junk this holiday, why not make them something awesome?
Better yet, take a classic toy, fix it up, and give it a bad-ass custom paint
job. What six-year-old wouldn’t want a working Easy-Bake oven with orange flames and racing stripes? Or a pink, Barbie-themed Tonka truck? Beats the pants off this all-plastic Squinkies Cupcake Surprize Bake Shop that doesn’t actually bake anything.
To help you refurbish those old toys, open-source gadget manual site iFixit is recruiting people to create toy repair manuals. And they’re doing it with a contest. Write a toy repair manual, and you could win a prize from iFixit.
It’s similar to the teardown contest iFixit and Gadget Lab cosponsored last year. And like last year’s contest, Gadget Lab staff will help judge the winners of this contest.
The contest begins today and runs through December 12.
Ifixit’s goal is to build a useful repair manual for each of 40 classic toys, from the Atari 2600 and Barbie doll to the View-Master and yo-yo. But if you have another toy you’d like to write up, go for it.
The prizes include a few cool tool kits for cracking open and fixing consumer electronics, and they’ll be awarded to the three individuals who contribute the most to the toy repair manual overall.