Chocolate Space Invader

Mark Kizelshteyn says:

I've been a hobby maker for a few years, and I recently worked at a FabLab where I learned the "tools," my favorite being the CNC machine. I began experimenting with a chocolate maker friend and we started making all kinds of funky chocolate molds. After lots of experimentation, we decided to share one of our bars: a space invader chocolate bar!

See how the are made here.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Brian Damage

The perfect gift for that special someone whose chocolate space you’d like to invade.
Alvis

TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS?!?

Chocolate bar. Twenty-five dollars. Chocolate.
http://homebiss.blogspot.com/ Saidul A Shaari

Hmm… Made perfect for geeks! :)
OldBrownSquirrel

What the world needs is a chocolate Stanford bunny.
penguinchris

In high school there was a technology class (an elective) revolving around a CNC machine. It was actually quite awesome because the teacher wasn’t that experienced with it – it was brand new to the school – which sounds like it shouldn’t be awesome, but he let us nerds do basically whatever we wanted with it and figure out how to use it.

One of the early assignments we had was to make chocolate molds. My partner and I first decided on making death stars (two solid halves that you could stick together with frosting or something). That didn’t work, so we tried lightsabers (again with two halves for the handle, but this time with a sucker/lollipop handle placed to look like the lightsaber blade). That didn’t work either, so we made Tetris pieces. That worked. Still have the mold somewhere.
prophylaxis

Awesome!
It’s a huge shame they don’t ship outside USA. I’d love to have a few sent over to Ireland.
http://twitter.com/kizel Mark Kizelshteyn

Exactly! Thanks
Alvis

Oh, really? Crap; I wasn’t aware of the market for higher-end chocolate, having not been to a store for the past decade.

Seriously – TWENTY-FIVE dollars is well-past a fair price for such a thing.
http://twitter.com/DahliaGraham Dahlia Graham

If you don’t think it’s fair, don’t order one. Not only is it the chocolate itself, but it comes with the laser-engraved box, a sticker, a poster, and a postcard. Spend some time on chocolateinvader.com and tastefruition.com before judging.
robuluz

AND its not even an actual space invader! Its a made up low pixel count character that resembles but is legally distinct from space invaders!

Hey Mark, bet you weren’t ready for the heated controversy your nicely made chocolate novelty was going to generate on Boing Boing! I’m sure you hadn’t counted on what a bunch of complete dicks we are!!!
Alvis

It’s totally cool looking, don’t get me wrong, and I’m sure people WILL pay $25 a pop for these babies, but there’s still a line in my mind labeled “reasonable candy prices” that this is far on one side of.

I don’t mean to sound like more of a jerk than I’m certainly already coming off as, but four days of work per batch? Unless I’m misreading your site, isn’t most of that just sitting around while the cocoa grinds?

If you wouldn’t mind sharing: just what does it cost – ignoring manpower and the one-time effort to make a pixel-art mold – to produce 50g of chocolate, ethics and all intact?

Certainly, if we’re talking $15 dollars of raw materials per piece, my complaints are soundly without merit, but I’ve really no sense of scale – it SEEMS like it should still be dirt-cheap, even with decent beans, but I’ve got no experience in the field for comparison.
Antinous / Moderator

I don’t mean to sound like more of a jerk than I’m certainly already coming off as…

Then you might want to talk to your people about re-evaluating your media strategy.
http://twitter.com/DahliaGraham Dahlia Graham

A LOT more work goes into making it than you think. We don’t have a zillion oompa loompas! It’s just one creative artist, Mark, and one chocolate maker, Bryan putting their ideas together to do something cool. It sounds like you don’t really understand chocolate making. It doesn’t just sit there for four days. It’s a four day PROCESS> roasting beans, cooling beans, sorting beans, cracking beans, winnowing beans, grinding beans – adding nibs, sugar, and cocoa butter in particular quantities at particular times along the way. Then, the chocolate has to be tempered and molded. There are only two invaders per mold and the chocolate maker needs to make each one just right. Once the chocolate sets, the invaders are tapped out of the molds by hand. After that, the invaders go into plastic sleeves and are heat sealed shut (one at a time by hand). Next, is the packaging. The craft paper needs to be shredded for the filler. The invader needs to be carefully placed into the box. The sticker needs to go in. The invader poster needs to be cut to size. The lid needs to slide into place. Then, the bottom sticker needs to go on. After all that they need to be packaged and shipped out. It’s actually a lot of work. When you buy a product it isn’t all about ingredient cost, it’s also about labor, creativity, and artistry. Really, if you are interested in this, you should visit a big chocolate factory where chocolate is mass produced, then come to Fruition Chocolate which recently opened in Shokan, NY and see the difference.
penguinchris

On the contrary, I’m guessing that he knew damn well that this would happen when he noticed the price. Seemingly over-priced arty stuff like this is prime boingboing comment criticism territory.