I would not say this toy is very sustainable, because it was made almost solely out of plastic, besides some axles, the screws, and the inside of the wind-up gear box. This is the type of material that lasts thousands of years without decomposing. The toy is designed to be held together by a system of interlocking parts that snap together rather than are secured with screws or glue. For the entire toy and all its moving parts, only 5 screws were used, and they were just used as reinforcement for parts that snapped together.
Three ways the design of the toy could be improved is replacing the plastic material with something that is more biodegradable or sustainable. A simple search for plastic alternatives returns wood or bioplastic. Even if the gear box and some essential parts need to be made out of plastic, the other non-functional parts used for decoration or the shape can be made out of wood or metal. Another idea is that the toy could possibly play music as well. Since the mechanism for a wind-up music box is the same as a wind-up mechanical toy, turning the handle could wind up both mechanisms and the music would play at the same time the toy moves. Finally, being connected to the wheels allowed the nose piece to move back and forth, so maybe the hair and tail pieces could also be animated to move along with the wheels as well. They just need to be connected to the gear box with plastic arms, possibly indirectly so that it doesn’t weigh down the wheels too much, and that would allow the tail and hair to wiggle as well.
When taking the toy apart into the smallest possible pieces, I was worried that my partner and I wouldn’t be able to put it back together again. Moreover, many of the pieces looked like they needed to be secured more by screws or other reinforcing parts, but in the end, all the pieces would be held in place by adjacent or interlocking pieces. I realized that a lot of time went into the design of the toy to minimize the number of screws used, since the pieces themselves fit together without being additionally secured. I imagine this must’ve been quite difficult because some pieces needed allowance to move and wiggle around even though they were secured at certain joints. So although I deemed this toy to be unsustainable, it seems a lot of work already went into the design to reduce the cost of production and materials.
Additionally, breaking the toy down into its simplest parts and putting it back together again about 3 times made me pretty familiar with all of the parts and their functions. The inside of the wind-up box was simpler than I expected, with 4 gears and a metal strip. It seems like the metal strip is what keeps the gears taut when it gets wound up, which is also why if the strip comes loose, it affects the entire mechanism. It’s mind-blowing to imagine that this toy only cost about 6 RMB and would not be considered technically impressive by today’s standards. It’s considered a relatively simple toy, but the design and innovation behind it definitely took a lot of time.