Paper Elephant Automata

This elephant automata from Honda is a lot of fun! Squeeze its stomach and it's mouth opens wide and the two cymbals crash together. What's more, it is an easy build at only 14 pieces. The printable PDF template for the elephant may be downloaded from the Honda Website. This papercraft is highly suitable for children! Photo instructions can be found at the bottom of Honda's download page.

Other Paper Automata:

Minecraft Steve vs Creeper
Walking MechWarrior 
Haunted Carousel

Papercraft Endangered Animals

Pictured is a sampling of some of the paper models offered by Yamaha in their "Rare Animals of the World" papercraft series. The complete list of animals available include a tiger, a California condor, a great Indian rhinoceros, a gorilla, yellow-eyed penguins, an African elephant, and a coelacanth fish. The printable PDF templates for the models may be downloaded here. Each of the templates comes in two versions: a "lines only" version meant to be printed on color cardstock and a color version meant to be printed on white cardstock.

Other Papercraft Animals:

Snow Leopard
Siberian Chipmunk
Arabian Scorpion
Reticulated Giraffe
Thresher Shark

Vintage Papercraft Elephant Pagoda

There have been copies of this antique papercraft elephant pagoda floating around the Internet for years. Now thanks to someone at Wurlington Press we finally get to see what the finished model looks like! As far as I can tell from doing a little research, a real-life building like this probably did not exist. There are however numerous bronze statuettes and incense burners that are similar. Some of them are ancient. The template for the elephant pagoda was originally published in 1928 in the Danish magazine, Illustreet Familie-Journal. A scan of the template may be found here.

Other Vintage Papercraft:
Lincoln Log Cabin
Madonna Fountain
Lone Ranger Frontier Town
Renaissance Crucifix Sundial

Circus Papercraft

The Sweet Paul Magazine website offers a free collection of circus papercraft. The templates in the collection are unique in that they are scans of hand-painted watercolors rather than the digitally produced images one usually sees. Included in the collection are the circus wagon pictured, as well as mini clown masks, playful monkey "drink buddies", and Rosamunda, a dancing elephant automata. The entire set may be downloaded as a single zip file here.

Maharaja's Elephant Paper Toy

Agence Eureka continues to post delightful papercraft from past decades. This simple paper toy is entitled "L'Elephant Du Maharadjah" (English: The Elephant of the Maharaja?). I am not sure how old the toy is, but the graphics have a 70's feel to me. The two pages of the template for the elephant may be found here and here.