Toy, Titan industrial robot arm, orange painted wood, PapaFoxtrot, 2014

Toy representing an industrial robot arm, made from wood painted orange and black, with a flexible black plastic tube attached to represent wiring.

With the toy is its plywood box and folded card packaging.

Displayed at Hong Kong HKTGF in 2014.

Purchased by the V&A in 2020 [2020/161]

PapaFoxtrot was a collaboration between London-based design firm PostlerFerguson and Hong Kong-based ADDA. The offbeat subjects of their toys were inspired by the designers’ personal passions for modern industrial technology, such as satellites, oil rigs, container ships, which in the words of PostlerFerguson’s Ian Ferguson are ‘grown up versions of Star Wars spaceships’. The aim of PapaFoxtrot’s toys was to foreground the often overlooked but essential machines and services which have become integral to daily life.

The collaboration began in 2010 when PostlerFerguson worked with ADDA to produce a limited series of metre-long models of the three largest ships in the world, for Oscar Diaz’s Translation exhibition at the London Design Festival. This resulted in offers to purchase the ships, which led to the creation of PapaFoxtrot in 2011 to manufacture smaller versions for commercial sale. The brand’s unusual and thought-provoking toys received a nomination for the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year award in 2012.

PapaFoxtrot’s products highlight the unseen but essential parts of daily life, which many a great people rely on and take for granted: oil, power, communications and manufacturing. Reducing these complex machines and supply lines to simple but beautiful wooden toys has created products that are provocative and contemporary. Their pieces also celebrate the work of Modernist toy designers who worked with wood, such as the Abbatts and Fredun Shapur. Most importantly, their intention is to introduce notions about where things originate from (and how far they might have to travel) to whoever happens to be playing with them.

PapaFoxtrot ceased producing new designs in 2015 following the death of Herman Cheung, the founder of ADDA.

Based on the Titan, the world’s largest industrial robotic arm, used on assembly lines for many products, including cars.

B.943:1 to 7-2020