West Karana

Ankeny is pronounced “ang-a-nee”, by the way.

Ankeny, Iowa. Fastest growing suburb of Des Moines. And the US base for a group of Chinese product designers that use AI and 3D printers to design products, fund Kickstarters — successful ones — and then have to figure out how to manufacture the darn thing.

My entry point into all this was the Infinity Cube Magic Eternal Dice system or something. As someone who backs a fair number of games and game accessories on Kickstarter, I get bunches of e-mails hawking the latest and greatest. This one came by with such over the top AI-generated images that made no sense whatsoever, well, I had to back it for a buck just so I could see if they ever managed to deliver the thing.

I’ve been holding off on writing about it because it looks like they are actually manufacturing… something, though they seem to have to keep restarting things after sinking a lot of money into something that ultimately doesn’t work.

Anyway, while that’s been cooking, the sharp-eyed backers who sunk considerable money into these things have discovered many other projects by this crew (who always make a new company for each product), and they all have the same watermarks — innovative design, high use of AI-generated images, a pledge manager that absolutely insanely overcharges them for fees — sometimes up to 50% of the cost of the pledge (and these are not cheap items) — and products that never seem to ship.

So I’m going to run through some of these.

This one is actually current — I just found out about it today, so I thought the time had come to cover all the similar projects which are totally not by the same people who’ve done the others. And their comments on these other projects massively distance themselves from the Infinity Cube. They claim it’s just an idea they had and it’s a total coincidence it resembles some other project which they never came across until it was pointed out to them.

This, of course, is a lie. They know it, we know it, but they really don’t want any potential backers looking at the Nexus Cube. They should stop using that same Lord of the Rings map as a backdrop if they really wanted to sell it.

Anyway this is nine cubes with spinners on, I think, just one face, and they have four magnets on each face so that you can stack them and whatever. The weird thing is, given their experience with the Nexus Cube, I think they could actually make and ship this thing. I don’t know if they will, but I do believe they know how to make it.

Since this project is still running, the comments are not yet filled with people complaining they are being overcharged.

So these are the kind of things I love. AI-generated pictures, the product randomly pasted onto the image. That Monopoly board is a work of art. Disregard that they’re using miniatures for playing pieces. Look at the colors of the properties. The railroad in the lower right corner is purple and also upside down. It’s hilarious.

I just can’t pretend your product is real if you can’t even pretend it’s real.

This campaign has finished, and so the backers have got their pledge backer forms and are complaining about the 30%-50% charges. Some wonder how a “US”-based company that had said there would be no tariffs in the campaign now is charging tariffs well beyond what Trump has actually levied.

I think this might be able to be manufactured.

I’ll add a picture of the actual product, but I just loved this picture for a lot of reasons. Lots of people laughing with that thing just — sitting there. Doing nothing.

The actual number of people in this picture is hard to count, as some of them are behind other people. There is a wine bottle in an ice bucket, but everyone is drinking cocktails. The reflections on the bucket are not reflecting people in a sensible way. Anyway.

Here’s the actual device. Look familiar? The developers claim independent, coincidental design with the Nexus Cube. The comments are filled with people who either didn’t get their surveys or feel they are overcharged.

Will this be made? They are claiming they are making them and are showing CNC machining that would be unlikely to be AI.

I wonder if anyone will tell them that fidget spinners were, like, five years ago.

I make a lot of AI images. I freely admit it. But if I were doing a Kickstarter campaign that was supposed to be featuring a real product being used by real people, I’d probably, you know, gather some friends and just take some pictures. But I appreciate these pictures. One of the players is either Brasse, or a literal fantasy dwarf. Guy in armor is holding a ball for some reason. Guy in the blue cape is just glad to be there, I guess. None of the coasters are being used. They are advertising a fidget spinner with a dice face but everyone is using actual dice. If the product is even in the picture, it’s in the middle and not near where anyone could use it.

Pictures like this are the gift that keeps on giving. The actual fidget toy is on the left; it’s showing off their new design language. Will it be made? Who knows?

The comment section is filled with people who are gobsmacked by the extra charges they layer on. The one I pasted above about someone who was asked to pay almost double for their item is representative.

This was the first Nexus Cube follow-up project I heard about, and the first one where the developers just started mass-deleting any comments that mentioned Nexus Cube. They’ve continued to do this for all the other projects.

The basic idea here is to take two Nexus Cubes, remove the dials, print a check design on the individual elements, and store the small pieces in a magnetic tray on the reverse side. The board is in two pieces, which is unfortunate as there is a folding cube design out there that could have done it in one finished piece. I have one at work (found it online) but it doesn’t fold as cleanly as this does — I know, I have a folding toy in the exact design they use right next to me.

The developers claim you can play several games with the set — chess, checkers, Gomoku, Go, Reversi and… what the hell is that last one?

The chess picture has the pieces arranged diagonally, which is weird. If the third game is Gomoku, they are ignoring win conditions. The Go board looks legit, but the Victory chess board is too small to play even the smallest game of Go I’m familiar with — only seven intersections on each side; you need at least nine.

The creator does admit in the campaign that AI images were used. Like, no kidding. Anyway, comments section is full of the same old overcharging and wondering whether the product will be made.

Honestly, this is such a simple product that I can’t see how they could not make this. I can’t see any need for this whatsoever; portable chess sets are nothing new, but whatever.

The Omendial shows off their new design language (there’s some more in this vein but I am not going to have time to write about them all). The comments section is filled with people wondering where their product is and giving each other tips on how to report Kickstarter scams.

This one unfolds, and is meant to be worn on your wrist, like one of those Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Disks. Presumably while shouting a challenge in Japanese, you thrust your hand forward, click open the beetle-like shell clinging to your wrist, and rotate the dial open and then, I guess, spin it or something.

The creators say they were inspired by the ancients.

Once carried by travelers, scholars, and stargazers, these instruments allowed people to measure time on the move. They would open the device, align its direction, read the cast shadow, and determine the hour through the position of the sun.

They… they really think the ancients had wrist sundials? Like Fred Flintstone wore? I guess they had something along those lines. Dial in your province and the date and point the pointer at the sun.

They should just make one of these, instead. (Actually, there’s a bunch of portable sundials out there).

It’s not a pen, it’s a metal pencil with different tips. You can’t see the tip because of the metal protective cover. Unlike clicky mechanical pencils, this one just wears down with use until you replace it.

They are really cagey about the fact that this is just a pencil that can’t be sharpened and needs the consumable tips replaced frequently. It has a spinning dice bit at the end for — reasons — and has a little stand it comes on that can be used as a spinning top (the “gyro stand”).

The campaign gives little tips for those who are new to pencils — for instance, press harder for darker lines, and the marks are erasable the same way a 2H pencil might be. One of their AI renders just starts rendering ordinary wooden pencils when discussing the different available “cores”.

I just looked on Amazon; they have lots of metal pencils with the same design, but without the weird spinny dice thing and spinning top. They are cheap and can reach your waiting hand tomorrow, far cheaper than the campaign offers.

The comments are mostly about the backers proposing new designs, like more dice, or all dice up and down the pencil, or custom logos and such. No way those will happen, but the developers never say no — that was a feature of the Nexus Cube as well (and all the other ones). They’ve started closing all their updates to non-backers so I have no idea if they are on track for shipping in December. If they do ship on time, that would be new for them.

The product concept looks kind of neat; a theme built from nested truncated pyramids that unnest to form two squarish cups, a filter, a basin and a cover. This is 100% a scam.

They maintain that the ceramic filter is non-porous but can filter the grounds from coffee and the leaves from tea. That won’t do a great job; there’s a reason people use paper filters.

But how I know it is a scam is because of the AI-generated images of the pots in production. Every one is fake, as far as I can tell. The one above is representative. Every single pot has a different shape. The set doesn’t come with round cups, it comes with square ones. And the cups are also all different.

I like, in the picture above, how apparently the conveyer belt on the top goes right through the kiln. The bottom conveyer belt seems to not know if it is making bowls, or maybe stacks of plates, or maybe a bowl with a plate on top and the plate is a hat or something. It’s terrible. And this was in the campaign. I don’t think I need to point out that none of the items being rendered here are part of the product the campaign is for.

Comments are all about people catching on that they have been scammed; apparently their backer surveys also had severe overcharging.

I use AI all over the place. Coding, touching up images or generating images from scratch, that sort of thing. But I am up front about it and I don’t use AI in my writing (except as an editor or proofreader on occasion).

I’m experienced enough, though, to spot AI slop when I see it. If someone is just making something for their own fun, perfect, go for it. But to make fictional products and use AI rendering to bilk people out of their money? That’s a crime, and these people are in China — you’re not going to be able to touch them there. They have your money and you aren’t getting it back, and since they make a new company for every product, reporting them to Kickstarter or the Better Business Bureau is pointless. They already made a bunch more companies while you were writing your angry comment.

Some of their products have shipped; I didn’t write about those (TinyEdge and Tavaker are ones you could look up). But the quality of those finished products is extremely low, and most people received nothing at all for their money.

Be wary. Crowdfunding, like everything else these days, is full of scammers. They are in China. If they get your money, it is gone.

• If you see AI slop, just move on. Enjoy the hilarious picture, but call that a dodged bullet
• Read the comment section!
• If this is their first product, probably should move on
• If they are based in Ankeny, immediately move on. But the scammers figured out we know about Ankeny now, so they’ve chosen other random places in the US.
• If they communicate only in ChatGPT — move on. Sure, it may be a little cruel to dismiss people who aren’t comfortable enough in English to communicate with backers, but if they claim to be based in the United States, I would take that with a grain of salt. If they claim to be from Shenzhen, well, that might be okay. They were open about it. I would still hesitate to send money to an unproven company based in China.
• Check to see if the thing you want to back already exists. It probably does! For cheaper! And you can get it right away!

The common element in all these things is to use Trump’s tariffs as a means to overcharge Americans for pledges they don’t plan to fulfill. The number of backers who said, “yeah, tariffs are pretty bad, I guess these fees make sense,” amazes me. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. They backed it, they want to believe they’re getting what they ordered at the best price.

After re-reading this, I should point out that I do not know for sure that all of these projects are by the same people; the dawn of AI is making scams easy for everyone. But the pattern of liberal AI use, ChatGPT-written text, a US base for a product by Chinese creators, overcharging with tariffs as an excuse (even in many cases for backers who do not live in the US and are not subject to US tariffs) — this is a trend. And if it’s one scammer or a hundred who just all use the same modus operandi, it doesn’t really matter. Be careful and skeptical when you back a project in crowd funding. Kickstarter freely admits that backing a project is no guarantee of a reward. If you want to use a store… go to a store. It probably exists already.