Kid's paper robots spawn Japanese toy franchise

Kami-robo (paper robot) is a hot new toy line in Japan -- whimsical, childish papercraft robots that also come as plastic replicas of papercraft robots. Their designer, Tomohiro Yasui, came up with the idea when he was an obsessive toy-collecting 11-year-old who made paper "play-copies" of his metal robots so that he could leave the originals in mint condition. Now it's a commercial success, with cartoon and card-game being spin-offs.

Tomohiro Yasui started crafting them in 1982, at age 11, because he couldn't bear the thought of playing with his precious store-bought bots – what if the paint chipped or an arm fell off?! So he used cardboard, scissors, wire, tape, and markers to construct his own durable automatons.

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