Bud (Gravitational Toy)

 

Selected and exhibited in the first stage by

iF Design Award (Germany) on March 2nd, 2011.

 

Online exhibition on YANKO DESIGN.

 

“Bud” is a decorative toy that plays with gravity—the force we always depend yet unintentionally neglect in most of the time—for players to enjoy the simple beauty of structure and the pure fun of colors and randomness.

 

From one to ten, even more than ten, the number of player is totally unlimited. Furthermore, from minutes to months, the time of playing this game is also unlimited and depends on players’ taste or wish. Simple rules and intuitive objects make this an all-age game. It’s not just a toy, but also an wonderful decoration for the space people live in.

 

Players alternately join one twig to the other twigs which are connected to the corm, to make the tree grows bigger and bigger. But the junctions of two twigs must share the color. The tree will tilt toward any direction due to unbalanced center of gravity during its growth. As long as a twig touches the surface of tabletop or floor, or one twig is detached due to overweight of the structure, the game is considered over.

 

There are tiny light-emitting diodes (LED) inside every “fruit of end-twig” which will illuminate as soon as it is attached with other twigs. The power source of LED is a battery inside the bottom of the corm, which also provides suitable weight to make itself a tumbler-component of the whole structure.