#misionalien

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[Video] Interview with Andrea Cuadra, De Sol a Sol

November 4, 2014

Yesterday, Andrea was invited by De Sol a Sol to come in and talk about Misión Alien: she discussed the Nicaraguan innovation and announced upcoming events at TOYS in Managua. Check out the ten-minute segment below.

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Misión Alien Cake Pops

October 15, 2014

A surprise that made all of Crazy Machine smile really big: hand-made Misión Alien cake pops! From Amanda Luna, an amazing family friend.

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Milestone accomplished: first Misión Alien games ready to be sold

September 19th, 2014

We set out at the start of this summer with one goal: to invent a game and put it into stores by October. On September 19th, we sealed the box of our first Misión Alien game!

-Andrea

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Assembling the Zupper Uppers

September 13, 2014

This week we started assembling 200 Zupper Uppers for the 100 copies of Misión Alien that we plan to have ready to be sold in next month. 

One of my friends whom I met while volunteering in San Jorge, Rivas in the summer of 2010 saw our article on the newspaper and texted me to congratulate me. One thing led to the other, and in the end, he decided to come over to Managua and help me out! Thanks so much, Beto!

Assembly is usually long and tedious, but for us, even though it was a lot of work, it was fun. Here are some of my favorite things that Beto came up with this week:

1) Peeling the plastic from the acrylic pieces using an exacto knife instead of our fingernails. 

2) Using the leg of the ping pong table to triple the speed at which we made sliding knot for the Zupper Uppers.

3) Imagining each knot we completed was actually a black puppy.

Isn't that a cute little puppy? Have a good weekend, everyone!

-Andrea

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Why we built a giant spaceship out of cardboard

August 31, 2014

This weekend one of Nicaragua's best toy store, TOYS, was having a big sale, so they were expecting many customers. We were lucky to have been offered space to show off our game and start promoting our brand. And so, our first marketing lesson happened. 

We set up a table, wore the same color, and brought some giveaways:

The kids that played loved the game, and that was awesome. However, something felt wrong—kids were not automatically drawn to us even though they were to other toys in the store. Reflecting on this observation, I had an AHA! moment (which was more like a duh! moment)—What do kids see? Two big, strange people, a big, boring table, and an unknown, whited-boxed game. What do they want to see? A big, fun, and cool thing. 

I emailed my team my realization and a very, very basic sketch of something I thought was cool, and we could make quickly.

Like that, our Sunday morning turned into a do-it-yourself (with whatever you can find while everyone is asleep and all the stores are closed) kind of Sunday morning.

As soon as we were done, we went to the store excited to showcase our new set up. 

And it was COMPLETELY worth it:

The big, strange people magically became more approachable,  as more kids on their own discovered and started loving the unknown, white-boxed game.

-Andrea 

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First batch of parts

August 20, 2014

We got our first batch of parts for Misión Alien! They are laser cut in 2.5mm clear acrylic (the blue and white stuff comes off.)

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Final steps towards a complete product

August 11, 2014

We are already fabricating our first product samples for Misión Alien. This week we are visiting a few printing presses to evaluate our packaging options. Today we went to two, and brought with us a sample we put together by hacking an old jigsaw puzzle box: 

One of the big things we have to test is if the white background of the box is as appealing to 10-year-olds as it is to adults. We will be trying out different backgrounds next week.