Stuffed animals are not only for cuddling. Blast Around is a company that takes huge stuffed animals and gives them a motor and wheels. Sounds fun!
Andrew Renz created Blast Around after one of his friends saw such rideable stuffed animals at a local mall. Andrew got one to examine it and says it was “tragically horrible”.
He thought he could do much better. So he started working on his own version with many improvements. Two of them are working lights and animal noises.
Andrew builds his Blast Around stuffed animals from scratch. He creates the chassis by hand from mountain bike parts and welds them together. Of course, it takes a lot of cutting and fitting together, but he has all the needed tools.
The engines are electric. They run from 36-vold e-bike batteries. And the toys even have brakes, as most other rideable stuffed animals don’t have this feature.
The rides have bike handlebars for controls. Twist them for acceleration, squeeze the brake for… brakes. There are buttons for the lights and animal noises.
Andrew doesn’t view his creations as machines. Each rideable stuffed animal has a name and personality. There’s Poncho the pink panter, George the monkey, Simba the lion, Harry the hippo. Each has unique interestes. For example, Harry likes lawn clippings and George is curious about Li-ion batteries and loves to overtake Segways.
