Gobz™ Stands began with a question: what if tabletop gamers could satisfy their deepest desires by eating their enemy minis after defeating them? Actually, as deliciously evil as that sounds, it’s not entirely true.
As a traveling dungeon master, I grew tired of hauling around miniature figures for my battlemat encounters. Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely love minis—but there could never be enough of them and keeping my supply sufficiently stocked would have required extra money (and trunk room) I didn’t always have. So like many other DMs, I used whatever was convenient: coins, dice, peanuts, and one day, gummies.
I quickly learned that gummies were perfect substitutes for plastic tabletop enemy minis. They are mini-sized candies that come in cool creature shapes and a variety of colors and tastes. In fact, once I started using them I developed a single rule: you beat ‘em, you eat ‘em. Soon, my players’ battle tactics were forming around the desire to consume specific foes. Sometimes a player would give their kill to another player who had already done most of the work. When I forgot them one session and caught a death stare from my table, it became obvious that gummies had changed the game forever. Soon, my reserves grew to include every color, flavor and creature type I could find. Best of all, they were cheap and easy to transport.
As inexpensive and fun as it was to use gummy tabletop minis in my games, there remained a few issues. For one, gummies could make a mess of the battlemat. They often left residue, and stretched or were nudged over grid boundaries making combat messy and confusing. There was also the matter of handling them. Hand sanitizer was always a session staple, but there was still a lot of touching that couldn’t be helped. No one complained, but I still wanted to improve things.
So, I started experimenting with 3D-printed stand designs that could hold a gummy firmly upright and allow it to be moved around the battlemat with a minimum of contact. At first, the task seemed straightforward: create a sharp, sturdy stem that could penetrate the gummy base. However, I soon learned that no matter what you do, “gummies gonna gummy” – meaning their resilient texture insists on maintaining its original shape. Not only was it nearly impossible to poke a stem into a gummy, the gummy almost always pushed itself off. It was then I realized my idea was going to require some actual engineering!
After a dozen failed designs, an effective solution was finally discovered. The patented “F-Tab” not only takes advantage of the gummy’s natural inclination to retain its shape, it presents a wicked sword and buttress vibe that gives the stand a medieval fantasy appearance while providing a simple way to squeeze a gummy into place. I also thought it was important to leave the majority of the gummy details unobstructed so that the piece looked and performed as much like a real mini as possible. These stands do all of that, while accommodating almost any thickness or size found in today’s commercially available gummy products.
Dubbed “Gobz™ Stands” for their service to hungry gamer mouths everywhere and their seamless interaction with the upcoming Gummy Gobz™ goblinoid-themed gummy candy, a 3D file was printed and playtested in dozens of gaming sessions. Much to my delight, they were an instant hit. Not only did players enjoy the colorfully outrageous element upright gummies brought to the battlemat, they loved the visceral sensation of plucking the gummies from the tabs and gobbling them down. The sense of vanquishment, it would be said, was “primal, ultimate and complete”.
Now, at last, for the first time – Gobz™ Stands are available for your tabletop games! Made of food safe polypropylene that’s easy to wash and reuse, they come 6 to a pack in three different colors—bone, stone and steel—for rugged terrain simulation and improved initiative tracking. A pack or two with a single bag of gummies gives game masters an array of enemies to choose from and an impressive amount of color-combination flexibility. Gobz™ Stands keep your games fresh, fun and exciting – and sweeten the already satisfying experience of taking down a foe.