As Steve Walterscheid walks through his expansive Tumalo home, he passes colorful stick figures peeking out of corners and hanging off ledges.

The little bendable people cling to a metallic banister as other creatures – aliens, bugs, dinosaurs and zoo animals – creep up walls and window frames, and scale the refrigerator. Walterscheid’s family is not home, but his Benders are everywhere.

The flexible statuettes are the 43-year-old’s creation that in just six years rocketed him from a Portland bartender who tinkered with wire to an inventor of more than 100 Bender characters sold in at least 20 countries.

Below ground, in Walterscheid’s shop, Benders lie in multiple stages of assembly or destruction. They hang by magnet appendages from every shelf or curl together in piles of headless, handless or footless pieces.

A shoeless Walterscheid plays with some of the new toys he’s creating and casually points to the dusty original Benders. They are three times taller than those sold now, with enlarged genitalia.

He shrugs at their anatomically correct figures, saying he didn’t originally make them for children’s toys.