SubscribeHarken back to yesteryear...
Where did that saying come from anyway? But I digress before I even get started. I came across a web page that was amusing. Who amoung you is old enough and experienced enough to remember the Mold-A-Rama ?
The Mold-A-Rama, MAR, is a plastic toy injection molding machine, designed as a vending machine! Originally designed back in the 1960's for a World's Fair, then sold via vending machine distributors. I've read the service manual and it actually is a complete molding machine with one twist. After injection molten plastics is blown out of the center, making it hollow. Shades of Gas Injection. Maybe we can revive some patent fights, eh? Just kidding!
Kids put in some quarters and while a countdown commences, the toy is made and delivered, still warm.
It melts pellets, injects into a mold, cools, ejects, recycles to repeat the process. And that cool hollowing trick. Simply amazing. Seems it now has quite the collector's community around these. Just google mold-a-rama and you'll find them.
Now I want one of these for my plastics collection, if I had a choice it'd be the Steam Locomotive since I collect train stuff too. A twofer! Ha. I'd also love to see the National Plastics Center have a machine donated somehow. The schoolkids would LOVE it.
A Florida firm, replicationdevices.com, continues to make refurbished and new machines.
Some more inks I found
- BillySeven Site
- Mold-A-Rama Menagerie
- LA Times Article 1962
- Mold-A-Rama Road Trip
- See it work, and malfunction!
- moldaramaville.com
- thepete.com
Seems Disney has come full circle, from Disneyland MAR figures in the 1960's to Epcots new Fantastic Plastics exhibit at Epcot in the 2000's.
Machine Photo Courtesy Of W. AGRELLA
Mickey Photo Source here
Click to visit our partner MFG.com ...
Click to visit the Injection Molding 
Click to visit the Engineering Plastics
Click to visit the Plastics Training
Click to visit the Contract
Click to visit the Extrusion 
I remember getting a toy from one of these years ago. It was an indian in a full headdress. To watch the process was amazing. The feeling of the warm plastic just cemented the memory.
Posted by: glass sparrow | November 24, 2007 at 09:29 AM
Thinking about the Mold-A-Rama provided one more bit of motivation for the design of machines I build now. A machine weighing 150lbs delivers a 20gram shot of any resin with 30,000psi of injection pressure, its not a toy and it runs on very little power. Prices run from $20k to $30k. Email [email protected] I remember well seeing a Mold-A-Rama machine at a county fair in the mid-sixties when I was 8 or 10.
Posted by: Rick Fitzpatrick | March 27, 2008 at 11:40 AM
Would be a great living room conversation piece...I'd like to have one of the old presses where "hold pressure" is turning a big wheel to force plastic into the cavity. Seen one of these on display in the Van Dorn lobby...TOO COOL!
Posted by: 4plastics411com | November 18, 2008 at 08:58 AM
Incredibly inspiring article, Thank you !?!
Posted by: NFL Jersey | April 04, 2012 at 11:19 PM