A Mammoth Undertaking

So, on 1/19/2011 Rebecca Watson spoke these immortal words: “In ten years there will be baby mammoths with jetpacks” (48:20). And then in April, the Skeptical Robot store started selling baby mammoth jetpack buttons.

And of course that got me thinking about building one. The mammoth itself was pretty easy. A bit of googling located a Webkinz wooly mammoth.

The jetpack, though, required a bit of improvisation. So I headed over to the craft shop and started wandering around, looking for things about the right shape and size. I ended up with two water rockets, some assorted dollhouse bowls, big plastic buttons, leather scraps and some silver paint.

I cut the nozzle and one fin off each rocket and glued them onto an old jewelcase, with the bowls glued on as new nozzles. The whole thing was painted silver.

Yeah, a bit too shiny. So, neat trick: paint the whole thing with watered-down black paint and then wipe it off. You get a nice grubby look and the textures stand out better.

Add some leather strips and some logos printed on sticker paper and you get this. The goggles are buttons glued to a piece of leather.

And here’s the mammoth wearing the jetpack and goggles.

“But wait, what are those two wire loops on the jetpack?” you ask. Well, what’s the point of a jetpack-wearing wooly mammoth if it doesn’t fly, right? So… Wooly mammoth on a zip line!