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The Picadoos was one of the more creative of
the thingmakers sets. This is the sort of toy that Jan Brady would
have though was 'groovy'. Although primarily intended for the girl
thingmaker crowd, it did have some apeal for the boys as well.
(Molds were a grid of squares, or dots, that filled up the mold,
so you could make designs by using different colored goop. You
could also put the grids together to make a bigger picture.) The
molds might be described as bas-relief graph paper. Like a
needlework sampler, by putting different colors of goop in the
'pixels' you could make a picture. It's just pixels rendered in
goop! You would fill in your dot pattern in one color, bake a
while, then fill the rest (background) with another color. These
blocks could be combined to form larger pictures. "Decorator dots
combine for endless designs."
I would imagine that many pixel pushers of today started out
plotting out large pictures using thier Picadoos.
There was also a large booklet with many large patterns to
attempt. This may have been sold seprately as it was much larger
than the instruction manual shown in the box below.
The mold from this set were rather dull. Suffice it to say that
some were double sided and most looked like some kid of graph
paper. One looked a bit like a cross stitch pattern. At some
point, when I get ambitions and have tons of time to kill I plan
on making a very large picture of Virtual Vikki with my Picadoos
set and hang it on the wall. In the photo below is shown the
plastic seal on the inside of the Picadoos box. I understand that
these seals (present on many thinkmaker kits) were sometime very
detailed. and finding one on a set is very rare. Also note the
card insert on the top of the Thingmaker's heating element. Anyone
remember reading those?
Special thanks to Don Dortmund for the follwoing information. The
set came with the following colors pink, green, yellow, red,
black, white, orange, clear goop! The 8 colors mentioned above,
in 3/4 ox bottles. The bottles have the 'oversized' top on them
that was used on all the larger bottles. The goop has a 1966 TM
on the label, although the Picadoos set is 1967. The labels have
red or orange Mattel logos on them and do not have the goop color
printed on the label,... EXCEPT for the clear goop.
