In a nutshell, tell us about your business

PUKACA is a company committed to the design and manufacture of unique paper toys and paper products that are made for children, designed by us thinking as children. We are based in Portugal and have a wonderful worldwide following, including The Vintage Toy Box in Australia.

Tell us a bit about you

We are two designers,  Isabel Vaz & Nuno Dias and we founded PUKACA in 2005.  We met at University and straight away we started working together after discovering that Isabel loves to draw small creatures and Nuno loves to make them come alive.

Some years later we decided to create our own brand - PUKACA - and we began to put our ideas into practice.

What inspired you to set up your business?

We’re always delighted by the traditional tales, the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tales, the La Fontaine Fables, medieval stories, the natural world and all other worlds that belong in a child’s imagination.

What do you make?

The main products in our range are paper toys. We also make Alphabet & Numbers Posters and 3D Paper Postcards - all made with 100% recycled paper.

How do you make them?

We start the design of all of our paper toys by drawing out the ideas that we would like to see built.

After choosing the design we like the most, we start building it by hand – it’s an old school method that makes our paper toys so unique. We build countless prototypes - all by hand - until we reach the final toy.

Depending on the product, the illustration will be made by hand or in a computer and then applied to the final design already vectorized.

After that, the final product and packaging is printed, all in our own facilities, and we make the final assembly, always by hand.

Let’s just say that from the initial idea to the final product there are countless prototypes and hours of hard (fun!) work.

Describe your artistic style

Simple and straight lines, colorful and playful.

What do you love about your business?

In a world full of technology, our paper toys bring back the pleasure of constructing your own toys.

Our toys are meant to be built using the hands, increasing manual dexterity and spatial perception. We believe that constructing and playing with our toys allows families and generations to interact together, share experiences and create lasting memories.

It’s that need to see things take shape, to create, to learn and to play.

Our toys aim to enhance in the child, or in anyone who handles them, an active and creative intervention. We believe in the principle that difference enriches us. It’s important to have toys that raise creativity, provide new experiences, highlight the human individuality and allow interactivity with others.

 Where would you like to see your products?

Over the last few years we’ve sent our products to the five continents on the planet.  We like to say that we love to see our products wherever there’s children or people that want to play with them.

Favourite toy as a child and why?

Isabel loved her bicycle and to cycle around the neighborhood with her friends. She loved to go to a nearby farm and to climb trees.

Sara loved to construct her own toys with pieces from other ones.

Nuno loved building blocks that allowed him to create fantastic places to play, transforming rooms into play grounds.

To check out some of Pukaca’s fabulous range, and to learn more about them, drop into The Vintage Toy Box. We can guarantee their paper toys will make you smile!