I decided to go with a toy that references a mythical creature Dragon Turtle (Lóngguī). However, I put a twist. Since we are going with toys, I think it would only feel natural to try and target a children audience. Once particular reference I based my design on are Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Specifically, the baby dragon card and other baby legendary cards. I think it will be a fun design to 3D sculpt and I am going to keep this design with little details to minimize the time it will take to 3d print. I will be adding the extra detail using paint.
I think it would be really interesting if you printed this out of TPU because then it would not be as hard/would be more the texture of a rubber duck which could be interesting.
I would suggest maybe making small ones that could fit on a keychain
I would suggest maybe making the creatures pose more dynamic like the card
this is so cute! im a huge fan of older yu-gi-oh cards so i love that inspiration. i was about to suggest printing in TPU and adding a hole to try and make it rubber-duck like, but it looks like Sage beat me to it XD. i do think that could be really fun, but if not that, maybe you could try to make the limbs and head moveable? that may be too complex, but its a thought.