Print Happiness: The Kids Company 3D Toy Campaign

Print Happiness was a six-day Christmas campaign run by Kids Company and advertising agency AMV BBDO in London from 13 to 18 December 2013. Six Ultimaker 3D printers turned £5 text donations into brightly coloured toys while the public watched in a Soho shop window or by live stream.

Short campaign summaries usually compress Print Happiness into a paragraph and a few images. The fuller story includes the dates, people, machinery, donor journey and physical limits of the original proposition. Historical donation instructions are deliberately not repeated as something a reader could use today.

Print Happiness at a glance

How the donation-to-toy system worked

Print Happiness gave an otherwise invisible donation a sequence the public could understand. A person selected one of the available character designs, sent a £5 text donation, and the campaign placed a corresponding toy in the print queue. AMV BBDO supplied the production effort; the finished object was intended for a child supported by Kids Company rather than posted to the donor.

The text instruction varied by selected design. Contemporary reports mention characters including a monkey, panda, bear, submarine and retro robot, while the campaign artwork preserved by Ads of the World includes a submarine, monster, panda and robot. The useful historical fact is the design-linked mechanic—not the obsolete keyword or short code, which could now belong to a different service or no service at all.

The recovered Kids Company landing page made an important qualification. It said all donations would go to Kids Company and AMV BBDO would print a toy for each order placed, but if requests exceeded the number of toys that could be printed, some donations might remain monetary contributions. In other words, £5 activated the campaign story; it was not a retail contract for one guaranteed object.

People in London could see the process in the shop window. People elsewhere could watch the printers through an embedded live stream. That combination closed the gap between a mobile action and a physical outcome: the donor did not merely receive a confirmation screen, but could see the production line responding in real time.

What happened in the Soho pop-up

The temporary site placed six Ultimaker printers where passers-by could watch layer after layer of coloured plastic become a recognisable toy. Contemporary visitor reporting describes illuminated machines and finished figures in vivid, sometimes glittered or ultraviolet colours. The unpainted objects came directly from the printers and could retain small traces of supporting material, which is typical of fused-filament fabrication.

The shop also accepted in-person support and displayed larger examples. A first-hand report from The Toy Chronicle describes physical donations, toys priced by size for visitors, and a warning that the printed figures were unsuitable for children under three because of small parts. That shop-floor retail activity should not be confused with the central remote mechanic: the £5 text donation commissioned a toy for Kids Company, not for the sender.

Design authorship made the output feel less like a technical sample. TADO’s contemporaneous account says it contributed designs alongside animation studio Aardman and toy designers Triclops. Recognisable character language gave the printers something emotionally legible to produce; the public saw a present emerging rather than a machine demonstrating itself.

The six-day deadline was part of the design. Every printer had finite capacity and each object took time to build. The installation therefore made scarcity visible: there were only six machines and only the days immediately before Christmas. The former page’s overflow warning was not incidental small print; it acknowledged the physical limit at the centre of the idea.

Why Print Happiness stood out in 2013

In late 2013, consumer 3D printing still carried the novelty of seeing a digital file become a physical object. Ultimaker’s desktop machines were known in maker circles, but the technology had not become an ordinary household appliance. Even in February 2014, technology reporting treated Hasbro’s exploration of 3D-printed toys with 3D Systems as a notable attempt to bring the process closer to mainstream children and families.

AMV BBDO used that novelty as the medium rather than decoration. The strongest element was not “a charity uses new technology”; it was the one-to-one visual grammar:

1. Choice: the donor selected a character rather than entering an abstract amount.
2. Conversion: a £5 text became a place in a physical print queue.
3. Proof of activity: six visible machines and a live stream showed production happening.
4. Recipient separation: the object went to a child, keeping the action recognisably charitable rather than turning it into merchandise.
5. Deadline: the six-day run created urgency that belonged to actual production capacity.

It also had a useful tension. Additive manufacturing suggested limitless digital replication, yet every toy still required machine time, material and finishing. The campaign made that constraint part of the spectacle. A generic donation counter could rise instantly; a physical bear or submarine had to grow line by line.

What the campaign did particularly well

• Made the consequence visible. The public could understand the intended result without reading a long appeal.
• Joined street and screen. A Soho window attracted footfall while the live stream let remote donors see the same process.
• Kept friction low. In 2013 a text donation avoided a long mobile checkout.
• Used collaboration honestly in the creative. The agency, printer maker and character designers all contributed an identifiable part of the experience.
• Set a bounded promise. The archived copy acknowledged that print capacity could be exceeded.

What should not be inferred

No surviving public source located for this record gives a complete audited total for texts received, toys successfully produced, print failures, objects distributed or money retained after the event. Campaign descriptions establish the proposition, dates and machinery; they do not prove a final fulfilment rate. A photograph of multiple printers also does not establish the safety testing or age suitability of every design.

Likewise, “100% of donations went to Kids Company” described where the donated money was intended to go; it did not mean the campaign had no production cost. AMV BBDO’s commitment to print the objects meant agency time, material, premises and equipment support existed outside the £5 charitable gift.

The credited team

The most complete surviving campaign credit lists AMV BBDO as the London agency. It names Michael Hughes as copywriter; Dalatando Almeida as art director; Adrian Rossi and Alex Grieve as executive creative directors; Mario Kerkstra as designer and illustrator; Louise Nolder as planner; and Gregory Roekens and James Rowley in the innovation team. Account, art-production, television-production and digital-production contributors are also recorded by Ads of the World.

Those credits matter because Print Happiness depended on more than a slogan. The text platform, live broadcast, print queue, shop installation, designed models and physical fulfilment had to operate together. The campaign is best understood as a small service system with an advertising idea wrapped around it.

What survives, and what is closed

Kids Company ceased operating on 5 August 2015. The Charity Commission’s present record describes Keeping Kids Company as a former registered charity, number 1068298, removed from the register in May 2021. Print Happiness therefore belongs to advertising and charity history. It is not a live appeal, and KidsCo does not accept a donation on the former organisation’s behalf.

Common questions

What was Print Happiness?

Print Happiness was a Kids Company and AMV BBDO Christmas campaign in which £5 text donations triggered 3D-printed toys for children supported by the charity. Six printers operated in a temporary London shop while the process was shown online.

When did Print Happiness run?

The public campaign ran for six days, from Friday 13 December to Wednesday 18 December 2013.

Where was the Print Happiness shop?

Contemporaneous accounts place the pop-up on Great Windmill Street in Soho, central London. The printers were visible in the shop and through a live stream.

Which 3D printers did the campaign use?

Campaign records identify six Ultimaker desktop 3D printers. They built the toys layer by layer from coloured filament.

Who designed the Print Happiness toys?

Contemporaneous records credit designs from Aardman, TADO and Triclops Studio. Preserved campaign material shows characters including a submarine, monster, panda and robot.

Did donors receive the toy they selected?

No. The selected design was printed as a present for a child supported by Kids Company. The £5 was a donation rather than the online purchase price of a toy for the sender.

How many toys did Print Happiness produce?

No complete audited final total was found in the recovered page or reliable campaign records reviewed here. The former page also warned that demand could exceed printing capacity, in which case some donations might remain monetary contributions.

Can I still donate through Print Happiness?

No. The campaign ended in December 2013 and Kids Company ceased operating in August 2015. Do not send money or a text using an instruction copied from an old article or image.

Explore the Kids Company archive, read the sourced Camila Batmanghelidjh biography, or learn what the present KidsCo publishes.