How Italian Brainrot Took Over the 3D Model Sites

Search Cults3D for Tralalero Tralala and you get 568 results. Search MakerWorld, Bambu Lab’s model site, and it stops counting at “999+.”

A shark in blue sneakers first appeared as an AI-generated TikTok clip in early 2025. Less than two years later, it is one of the most modeled characters in consumer 3D printing. We wanted to know how far the rest of the cast has spread, so on September 18, 2026, we ran the same searches on four model sites and wrote down what each one reported.

What we counted

Here is what each site showed for eight of the best-known characters.

• Tralalero Tralala: 568 models on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Tung Tung Tung Sahur: 540 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Lirilì Larilà: 228 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Brr Brr Patapim: 138 on Cults3D. 934 on MakerWorld, the only one under the cap.
• Cappuccino Assassino: 129 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Ballerina Cappuccina: 125 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Chimpanzini Bananini: 121 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.
• Bombardiro Crocodilo: 103 on Cults3D. 999+ on MakerWorld.

Two sites didn’t make the list, and the reasons are worth knowing. Printables showed its count only once, 31 free models for Tralalero Tralala, before its search page stopped rendering for us. Thingiverse returned numbers that swung from 3 to 3,744 between similar characters, which looks like loose keyword matching, not real models. A count you can’t trust is worse than no count, so we left both out.

A search count is also not a census. It includes remixes, near-duplicates, and anything that mentions the name. It still tells you where the attention went.

Flexi animals won

Scroll the results and one format keeps showing up: the articulated toy, often called a flexi. It prints in one piece with the joints already assembled, then wiggles off the bed.

The most popular one we found is Hiko 3D’s Tralalero Tralala articulated toy on MakerWorld. On the day we checked, it showed 6,832 downloads and 1,505 prints posted by people who made it. The same designer’s Bombardiro Crocodilo showed 1,697 downloads and 408 prints.

Keychains are the other staple. So are single-color figures meant to be painted, and designers often suggest marking the eyes with a black pen to save a filament change.

Why these characters print so well

This part is our read, not a finding. Italian brainrot characters are two objects glued together: a shark and a shoe, a crocodile and a bomber, a log and a bat. That makes them easy to model, easy to recognize at 5 centimeters tall, and easy to split into parts that print flat. The AI images they came from already look like plastic toys. A 3D printer just finishes the job.

They also arrived at the right time. MakerWorld reported about 10 million monthly users and 2.6 million uploaded models in 2025, with more than 7,000 new models a day from roughly 280,000 designers, according to 3DPrint.com. No source we found credits memes for that growth. The two just grew up together.

Who owns a shark in sneakers?

Nobody knows yet, and a court may decide.

In August 2026, NPR reported on a California case over Tung Tung Sahur. Do Big Studios, the company behind the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot, sued to establish that AI-generated brainrot characters aren’t protected by copyright and belong to nobody. Mementum Lab, a French startup representing the character’s creator, countersued for trademark infringement.

According to court records cited by NPR, the creator is a young Indonesian man named Fernanda Bagas Indrastata, known online as Noxa. He made the character in 15 minutes with seven prompts to an AI image generator. And the thing that looks like a log is a kentongan, the wooden drum Indonesians strike to wake people for sahur, the meal before a Ramadan fast. The drum’s sound gave Tung Tung Sahur its name.

Mark McKenna, a UCLA law professor, told NPR the courts are “still in the middle of figuring out” how much human involvement AI art needs to be protected. The case was unresolved when NPR published.

For printers, our advice is simple: print these for your own shelf, the way fan art has always worked, and don’t sell them. The model licenses and the lawsuit both point the same way, and a printer does more good making things that teach or help.

Brain rot as a gateway

A kid who wants a Tralalero Tralala on their desk has to learn what a slicer does, why thin legs need supports, and what happens when the first layer doesn’t stick: a real skill, picked up because of a joke about a shark.

We can get behind that kind of brain rot.

Sources

• Cults3D, search for “Tralalero Tralala”, and the same search for each character listed, September 18, 2026.
• MakerWorld, search for “Tralalero Tralala”, and the same search for each character listed, September 18, 2026.
• Printables, search for “Tralalero Tralala”, September 18, 2026.
• 3DPrint.com, “Bambu Lab Says 2025 Was a Breakout Year: 10 Million Monthly Users and Real Business Growth”.
• NPR, “A battle over ‘Italian brainrot’ could shape who owns AI art”, August 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Italian brainrot”.