Most designer toys cost money for a reason. They're sculpted, molded, manufactured, finished, packaged, shipped. The price reflects the production chain.
So why did we make CatKoot — a 3D designer character — free?
Two reasons
The first is practical. CatKoot is a 3D file. There is no production cost beyond the design itself. The bytes that make up his geometry don't get more valuable when we charge for them — they just become harder to access. We'd rather have a lot of people printing CatKoots at home than a small number of people paying for the privilege.
The second is cultural. The designer toy world has historically been gatekept by production economics. You needed a factory, an injection mold, a distribution network. The barrier was high enough that only established studios could put out work. 3D printing has changed that. Anyone with a $300 printer can now manufacture their own designer toys. We wanted to acknowledge that shift by making something genuinely free for that community.
Who CatKoot is
CatKoot is a small character that fuses a cat and a chick into a single playful form. The shape is deliberately simple — it prints well at small and medium sizes, on FDM and resin printers, with or without supports. We tested across a few common printer types before releasing the file.
The design is recognizable as a Toyio character. He shares the same playful-but-considered aesthetic as Hamoor and Safiya. The difference is just the format: physical limited edition vs. unlimited digital file.
What you can do with him
The download is for personal, non-commercial use. That means you can:
- Print CatKoot at any scale and color you like
- Paint and finish your print however you want
- Display the result anywhere you want
- Share photos of your CatKoot prints on social media (we love seeing them — tag @gotoyio)
What we ask you not to do:
- Sell prints of CatKoot, either as files or finished pieces
- Modify the design and release it as your own
- Distribute the file as part of a paid bundle
Standard creative-commons-style restrictions. Use the character, credit the source, don't resell.
How to print him well
A few quick technical notes for first-time printers:
Scale: CatKoot looks best around 80–120mm tall. Smaller and the details get muddy on most home printers; larger and he starts to feel like a costume prop rather than a designer figure.
Material: Resin gives a cleaner finish for detail; PLA is easier to live with day-to-day. Both work. Choose based on what you have, not what's theoretically optimal.
Finishing: If you want a designer-toy-quality finish, sand the print lightly, prime, then paint in flat colors with matte sealant. That's the same finish methodology used on the limited-edition Hamoor and Safiya pieces.
Supports: The CatKoot file is set up to print with minimal supports. If your slicer wants to add aggressive scaffolding everywhere, your orientation is probably wrong.
What's next for the Digital Toys collection
CatKoot is the first piece in this collection. There will be more — some free, some paid, some experimental. The general principle is: things that are easier to give away than to sell, we'll give away. Things that genuinely require manufacturing, we'll manufacture properly.
Download CatKoot for free →
