The History of Mold-A-Rama Inc., Brookfield, Illinois

Admit it, a trip to Brookfield Zoo was incomplete if it did not result in you coming home with one of these. “At one time in the early 1970s, Mold-A-Rama machines were ubiquitous in museums, zoos, and other attractions all over the US. They were injection molding machines, and the plexiglass bubble allowed you to see a little part of the process — basically, the two halves of the mold coming together. Then, when they separated, you saw your molded statue in all its shiny plastic glory as a spatula-like device scraped the statue off the base underneath, dumping it into a slot for your convenient retrieval.”