Creature Feature Toys Q&A 2

Welcome to our second full Q&A blog! We asked our Discord to submit their questions about Creature Feature Toys and the team. If you've ever wondered what a breakfast of dong champions looks like, or want to hear about our future projects - this is the blog for you!

What got the Creature Feature team into dongsmithing, and why this specific niche (monsters, creatures, indie design)?

We all had a love of monsters and storytelling, and had already been working on big game ideas together. From the beginning, we wanted to create immersive monster romance opportunities tied to real toys - which led us to creating our own! All the research and hard work that went into dongsmithing has taken up most of our days, but we still fit in time to work on our games together.

What’s the team’s favorite project you’ve worked on so far?

It would have to be our Dungeons & Dildos event we did to hype up our new model release for Black Friday 2025! From creating the party personality quiz to the big introduction of Bastien the Wyvern - we made some good memories while working on this project together, including watching Dungeon Meshi for some inspiration! :)

Any favorite pours from the past year?

It’s always hard to choose favorites, but here are a few that stand out to us!

Cherry Blossom Tea
Syzygy
Stargazing
Koi Fish on Laguna Pen (pictured below)

Zenith’s emblem on the shaft is on the “backside” on the regular, but it's on the opposite side on Emblazoned Zenith. Is this just a design choice or is there any deeper meaning?

This is a fantastic observation, and something we loved when we first saw the design up for sale! It is very reflective of some of the visual storytelling we like to incorporate into our characters! Emblazoned forms are meant to be alternate versions of the character, and we have plans to show this in character art that’s specific to the Emblazoned characters.

As for meaning, Zenith represents the “beginning” of a celestial event, while the Emblazoned Zenith is the “end”. In a way, the design element being on the opposite side for each model is an effect of these being two sides of the same character!

Are there going to be more options for customs or any big handpainting plans in the new year?

We’re always cooking up new pours and handpainting ideas!! We recently added a brand new MTO in response to demand and as a final surprise for our anniversary month, Cherry Blossom Tea. This is just an example of the fun ways we experiment with pours and concepts, and end up making things orderable based on what YOU guys want to see! <3

Are all of the original hand sculpted models going to be remastered digitally? How do ya’ll feel about that, or are there any models you plan to keep as is?

Another fantastic question! Originally, we wanted to keep as many of the handsculpted models as possible and only remaster the ones that needed the most love. Fuzz put a lot of hard work into those sculpts, as did Araphre with finishing them up with our signature glossy finish. We still have a soft spot for our handsculpts, but we recognized we were hitting our limit with how quickly we could release new models and have a full size lineup to be more accessible for everyone.

As of right now, we are slowly evaluating each model based on if there’s a demand for exploring further sizes, or if we want to breathe new life into a loved character when interest in the design wanes.

Is Kose remaster still planned to release this winter (2026)?

Kose remaster IS still planned for this winter, along with a few other Kose surprises… so long as everything goes well with the printing and finishing process! You didn’t see this from me…. 

What is it like working with a sister company like Tailends? How involved are you with each other’s productions, and do you have any future plans with them you can tease?

For those who don’t know, Creature Feature Toys and Tailends Studios work together in the same studio space and are an employee owned business where all of our work goes towards supporting everyone on the team! While Fuzz, Peach, and Araphre are usually working on Creature Feature Toys, we all have our tasks that aid the entire team. Fuzz is often working on YCH custom art, Araphre heatpresses most of the fabric, and Peach & Fuzz help with shipping for both CFT & TE! While the silicone side is tricky to have folks jump in on, we occasionally get the entire crew’s help with handpainting a large batch of toys. You may also see some of the Tailends crew vending with us at conventions, it’s a huge group effort!

(Illustration below by Matt)

What does a breakfast of champions look like to Peach & Fuzz? The people need to know!

Recently we’ve been making our own chia seed pudding with strawberries, bananas, and praline pecans! Dunkin is always our backup if we run out of time to food prep… or if we need a little pick me up the morning of a huge drop! In that case, a Dunkin’ Zero Blackberry Tangerine drink, a cheesy bagel twist, and a doughnut is the best!

What’s a day in the life of the team like? How much of your workday is dedicated to customs, prep for drops, admin, etc.?

Our day to day changes based on what’s going on, but it’s always go-go-go around here! We typically spend the first hour or two of the day on admin and emails, before diving into whatever tasks are needed.

If it’s a drop week, we stop pouring around Wednesday so we have enough time to wash, photo, and list every toy by Friday. Otherwise, we’re always working on making new drop stock and customs (Peach), master and mold prep (Araphre), and sculpting/marketing/pour planning/more (Fuzz).

What are your favorite types of customs to receive?

We love to experiment here, so unique combinations of colors that compliment each other that we never would have thought to put together! I regret not getting a photo of it, but recently someone ordered a simple fade of Topaz to UV Orange on Boroboro. The shimmery yellow fading into the bright orange had such a cool effect, and isn’t something I would have thought to pour myself!

Does CFT have any plans for silicone eggs or an ovipositor type toy?

Yes, we absolutely want to make ovipositors!!! We have made a few attempts before, but were a bit too ambitious with the designs and ran into a few snags. It is still actively under research & development though!

As for eggs, we have been experimenting off and on over the years for the perfect formula for vegan DIY eggs, and we would create uniquely shaped egg molds to match characters or themes.

It has been tricky to find a mixture that’s body safe for this purpose, easy to make, not sticky or smelly, and will dissolve properly - all with ingredients that are affordable and easy to find. I’m still determined to figure this out someday as we find the time to keep trying new things!

Is there anything you want to offer but logistically can’t? Or anything you plan to offer but have no timeline on?

There’s a loooooot of dream features we’d love to offer, like cumtumbes, inflatable knots, full ovipositors, and cored/split firmnesses…

The hardest part to making these a reality is time. It just gets trickier to develop and dedicate a budget to spend the time and materials to test complex projects when we already have full plates.

To some degree, there’s always RnD going on in the background, but new engineering takes a LOT of trail and error. Sometimes we get something perfect on the first go, sometimes designs stay in development for a few iterations as we try to make a design that we are really confident in.

But each time we succeed in one project, it opens the door to making future ones easier and quicker!

How do you go about designing characters, especially for pre-designed models like Bastien and Zenith?

Fuzz is our character design master, although we all work together in deciding species and theming! We typically start with monsters in media we’re inspired by, vibes we’re interested in, and gaps in our existing catalog. Sometimes our plans for character design need more time before a model is ready to go, so we decide it’s worth putting it out after the model releases. That said, we have characters in mind for all our adopted models!

For Bastien, we wanted to expand our catalog before adding more feline inspired characters, while keeping true to the original sculpt! Our main influences for character design were Nargacuga (Monster Hunter) and Noviern (Pokemon), along with a general vampire bat aesthetic. We had a great time expanding on this character with the event itself, and hope we can do more events like this!

For Zenith, the original sculpt was based off of a certain video game brush god, which is one of Fuzz and Peach’s favorite games of all time (Okami). In this case, we wanted to balance the inspiration with our own originality, similarly with how our character Zian is inspired by Rauru (Legend of Zelda). From the original inspiration, we kept the idea of Zenith being a celestial creature, with fluffy fur and a tail that reminds us of the source material’s aesthetics! We might have taken a little bit of inspiration from another popular creature, Mitsuzune (Monster Hunter), but the rest of the wing details and eclipse related motifs were Fuzz’s touches.

We love doing things that are subtle nods to popular monsters–those who know, KNOW, but things are still different enough that they stand as original characters as part of the world of Creature Feature Toys.

What is everyone’s favorite cartoon?

We all love animation and tend to give a lot of media a chance to at least see the work put into it! In this case, we’re going with general favorites that we’d always be down to watch.

Peach - Probably still Spongebob, the first 3-4 seasons!

Fuzz - It’s really tough to pick a favorite, but I have to go with Courage the Cowardly Dog!

Araphre - Family Guy has to be my favorite!

Do you have any ideas for next year’s anniversary event? How far in advance to ya’ll plan for big events like this?

We always have some ideas rolling around in the back of our minds, but currently we’re keeping it flexible! For our Anniversary, we tend to float ideas and solidify them a month or so ahead of time. Around then, we tend to know what conventions we are attending, what themes we’re feeling, and what models might be ready, so we go from there.

Generally, we all get together after our final event of the year (Black Friday), and map out ideals for general themes and release goals we want to hit through the next year. Along with our other event-specific planning documents, we even have a running list of model and merch goals by month, although we’re extremely ambitious with this and plan for flexibility when things don’t go as planned! We had at least 1-2 model releases planned per month this year, but most of them had to be moved to later releases.

Anything planned for next year you can tease?

We have a model adopted from another sculptor in the vault waiting to be released, although we want to keep this one a complete surprise (as tempting as it is to share)!

Otherwise, we have more plans to keep remastering older models like Phaethon and Zian.

Thank you again to everyone who submitted questions! It was a lot of fun to gather the team together and answer them. We really appreciate ya'll for sticking with us these past 6 years and we can't wait to show you what's in store!

Who knows, maybe next year is our "lucky year"?👀