Jeff and Stacy Staab, owners of Arlington, Vermont-based Cremation Solutions, offer a product for storing the remains of loved ones unlike anything you’ve ever seen: fully customizable, 3D-printed, life-sized head urns that look exactly like the recently deceased.
“With personal urns, you can have a lifelike bust of your loved one that doubles as an urn for the ashes,” the company website says. “For people with longer hair we will use a wig to match. Shorter hair can be made as part of the urn itself… They are the perfect way to secure and store the ashes of any loved one.”
“Personalization has been a big trend in the industry,” Jeff Staab told Breitbart News. “When I saw this technology, I thought, ‘What could be more personal than a full-sized head that holds the remains of your loved ones?”
Staab has operated Cremation Solutions for the past ten years. Before his work creating memorials for loved ones, he served as a funeral director for two decades.
For the personalized urns, Staab explained that the company collects a few digital images of the deceased from the bereaved, and then uses software to turn the images into a 3D model. The company then sends the designs to the family for approval, and begins 3D-printing the bust. Staab said orders are usually completed within two weeks.
In addition to the personalized urns, the company offers life-sized busts of several different famous figures, like Superman, Robot Man, and Indiana Jones, with the heads doubling as urns. Staab recalled that his supplier once sent him the wrong order.
“I got President Obama as a sample, and that was a mistake,” Staab said. “I was supposed to get [George] Clooney. So I get some hate mail about that, that I have a sitting president as an urn. I’m not political at all, so I hope it’s not an insult.”
Despite the company’s accuracy in producing the life-like urns, Staab conceded that they have startled people in the past.
“They look a little too real, so sometimes they creep people out,” he said. “They just freak people out a little bit.”
Staab became excited when discussing his latest product for scattering ashes, the Loved One Launcher, billed on the company website as “the only device of its kind that will shoot earthly remains over seventy feet into the air!”
“We fill it with confetti and streamers, it’s really cool,” Staab said. “I think I’ll sell a lot of them. People are always looking for new and creative ways to scatter ashes. Talk about ‘out with a bang.'”
“I was on Joan Rivers’ show a little while ago, and she told me she wanted a Loved One Launcher. Said it right in the camera. And now she’s gone. That would make my day if I get to go and scatter Joan Rivers’ ashes. I’m still waiting for the call.”
