Unbalanced Runners

In some cases the merits of a balanced runner do not add up to a cost savings. Pictured below is a runner from a mold we made for toy soldiers a long time ago. It is obvious that the runner is not even close to being geometrically balanced. The toy soldiers were attached at the end of each branch. If you were to carefully inspect each soldier you would see sink and non-fill on these plastic soldiers in various places. The toy industry used this unbalanced runner concept in molding plastic figures to help achieve a lower cost. The molding customer understood the real customer was probably going to be a little boy on a limited income (called weekly allowance), so they had to keep the cost down.