A creative Pokemon fan has designed, printed, and demonstrated a 3D printed Bulbasaur with retractable vines. The creative design has impressed fellow fans and has many expressing interest in printing or buying their own.
Bulbasaur has maintained its iconic status as one of Pokemon's Gen 1 starters, gaining new fans with each generation of games released. While the series has gained hundreds of Pokemon since, the Gen 1 Grass/Poison-type has held onto fans due to its cute design, nostalgia, and the qualities the Pokemon's evolutionary line can bring to a player's team.
There have likely been hundreds, if not thousands of Bulbasaur toys produced over the years, but there's something rather special about building one from scratch. That's what Reddit user twolf201 did, demonstrating the design to the internet. The Bulbasaur is unpainted, but its design is clearly that of the Grass/Poison starter, complete with its cute smile and bright eyes. The unique quality, though, is that when someone twists the bulb, two vines emerge from either side, which any Pokemon fan will recognize as the start of Bulbasaur's signature Vine Whip attack.
Fans in the comments have showered twolf201 with praise, clearly taken with the design. For fans with access to a 3D printer, twolf201 is selling the files necessary to print the Pokemon design on their Etsy shop, which they shared in the post. One fan pointed out that they'd love to see a version of the design that can mince garlic with its vines. Twolf201 responded that they'd create all kinds of food gadgets, but due to the type of plastic the Bulbasaur is printed with, keeping it clean would be a big hassle.
3D printing Pokemon designs has become a pretty popular hobby of late. While fans have produced fanart and designs based off Pokemon since its inception, 3D printing has only become an affordable and accessible hobby somewhat recently. Fans have been creating and selling both the designs and finalized products of Pokemon they've created with this medium, including twolf201, who previously built a Lickitung with a retractable tongue that seems to use a similar ratcheting mechanism to the Bulbasaur. Others have used them to build designs that are useful around the home, like creating cellphone chargers based off of Pikachu.
Bulbasaur on its own has inspired all kinds of fanart, with fans even challenging themselves to create portraits of Bulbasaur with an Etch-a-Sketch toy, or creating new variants of the Pokemon with unique typings. Though there will be new Pokemon coming with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Bulbasaur has already maintained its popularity for over 25 years, so there's surely more creative designs based off of it yet to come.
