Almost everybody who asks for a custom duck means a duck that looks custom. Those are different products with very different price tags.

What a custom mould actually buys

A silhouette nobody else has: a mascot’s body shape, a helmet, a posture, a character that is recognisably yours from across a room.

It needs its own steel tool, which is cut, sampled and approved before any production runs. That is a real one-off cost and a real lead time.

What a dressed stock body buys

A stock duck with printing, colour, a costume, a hat or moulded accessories. From two metres away most people cannot tell the difference, and it carries no tooling cost at all.

On a run of a few thousand, the money saved usually exceeds the entire rest of the budget.

Where the crossover sits

Divide the tooling cost by your run size and add it to the unit price. That single calculation answers it.

And remember the tool is held for reorders, so an annual event that will run for five years should do the sum across five years rather than one.

The safety footnote on accessories

Anything applied to a duck for a child is a small-parts question. Hats, glasses and props must be moulded in or fixed so they cannot be pulled off.

If a supplier is glueing accessories onto a toy for under-threes, that is the end of the conversation.