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You're probably going to want a design firm, rather than a manufacturing firm, to get you to the point where you have a physical prototype, CAD files of manufacturable parts, and choices of materials and processes. Then they can guide you to a contract manufacturer.

Some resources:

Design firms that work on toys:

http://www.dexigner.com/directory/cat/Toy_Design/Companies.h...

MIT product design course:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-783J...

Berkeley's course covering rapid prototyping and manufacturing, including lecture videos:

http://bmi.berkeley.edu/Me221/me221_resources.htm http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906...

The Berkeley videos totally opened my eyes - I was a computer science guy with no clue about making physical products.



I'm a lone entrepreneur with an idea, don't think I can afford professional design firm. I will check out the MIT and Berkeley courses though.


You still might want to get the bids and see what you can afford - even $10k might get you pretty far if you're willing to do a lot of the work yourself, using the design firm as consultants to guide you through the process.




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