Dezeen Magazine

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

Toronto studio Hot Pop Factory has customised Pez sweet dispensers with 3D-printed heads of customers to replace the usual cartoon characters.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

The designers used a Kinect motion-sensor to scan each subject, added the connection to the dispenser using 3D software and reproduced the heads on a plastic-printing desktop machine.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

Having removed the busts of Disney princesses from 32 Pez dispensers, the designers simply snapped the replacements on top.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

"A client asked us to come up with a fun 3D-printed holiday gift for each of their employees so we decided to remix the human body to create personalized Pez dispenser heads," they say.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

Austrian confectionary brand Pez began placing heads on top of its refillable tablet dispensers in 1955, with early characters including Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

Hot Pop Factory was founded by architecture graduates Matt Compeau and Bi-Ying Miao to make 3D-printed jewellery from their ideas that were "too complex, expensive, impractical or just too wild to construct into buildings."

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

3D printing has been in the news a lot this week, with a boom in demand for 3D-printed sex toys, the race to be first to print an entire building, 3D-printed outfits on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week and Nokia becoming the "first global company to embrace open design".

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

We also recently reported on 3D photo booths that allow users to print a model of their own head or miniature models of their whole body.

Pez Hacking by Hot Pop Factory

See all our stories about 3D printing »