About a year ago, Cranium Grand Poo-Bah, Richard Tait, received a personalized action figure of himself (courtesy of his best friend, made by yours truly) and loved it so much he came back for seconds, but this he brought Cranium Co-Founder and Chief Noodler, Whit Alexander along for the ride. A lot of time and effort was put into every aspect of these figures. I'm especially proud of the head sculpts and the accessories. The pogo stick and scooter were both constructed out of wooden dowels and cardboard, using a cannibalized fingerboard for the scooter base. The biggest challenge and greatest success was the Cranium hat. Sculpting the actual brain wasn't so hard, but carving the letters was nearly impossible. As you can see, several letters can fit on the face of a penny. It took a lot of patience, a thin sheet of styrene and a very sharp exacto-knife. Once the letters were carved, I attached them to the brain with clay and then made a mold of the whole thing so I could cast it in one solid piece.

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One of my favorite things about the packaging is the comic strip. Being a comic fan and just having re-read Scott McCloud's "Reinventing Comics" I was excited to see if I could make one, plus it seemed to fit in nicely with the playful inventiveness that Cranium encourages. The top comic is the comic that appears on the back of the packaging. The comic below was my first attempt. All you really need to know to understand the joke is that in the questionnaire, I found out that one of Richard's favorite foods is chocolate chip cookies.

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