Where Ensky Comes From

A short account of who we are, written because people ask and because the answer explains most of what is odd about the products.

The name

To ensky something is to lift it into the sky. It is a real English verb, rare enough that most dictionaries file it under archaic, and it is the only word that describes what happens when four flat sheets of printed card turn into a lit scene you can look into.

We took the name because the trick is always the same one. Flat goes up.

Saitama

We design and manufacture in Japan, out of Saitama, just north of Tokyo. The board is cut there, the plastic is moulded there and the print runs there. That is the reason a 300-piece set from us behaves differently in the hand from a 300-piece set bought anywhere else — the cut is tighter and the face stock is heavier.

It is also the reason some of what we make never leaves Japan in large numbers. The runs are small, the licences are specific, and a box that sells out does not usually come back.

How the licences work

Every character on every box belongs to somebody else. We hold direct licences with the studios — Studio Ghibli, The Pokémon Company, Toei, Sanrio and a dozen more — and the artwork is signed off frame by frame before it goes to print.

That approval step is slow and it is why the colour is right. A Totoro forest on our board is the colour it was painted, not an approximation someone matched by eye.

Paper theater

The format is ours. We worked out that a scene could be cut into layers, shipped flat and assembled with nothing but glue and patience, and we have been refining the die-cutting ever since.

It has spread, and some of the imitations are good. The thing to look for is whether the parts drop free under thumb pressure: a kit that needs a knife was cut by somebody who did not understand what the format is for.