Features

PowerStation Studio US’ Sharon Weisman, The Toy Guy’s Chris Byrne and Alsop Design’s Joe Alsop give us their verdict on the brands ripe for a pre-school collab.

Exactly fifty years ago to the day – April 13, 1970 – Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell and John L. Swigert both said these words to NASA Mission Control. Usually misquoted in the present tense, the sentence marks the start of one of the most extraordinary stories of creativity on or off the face of the planet…

“The aim of this event is always to encourage new designers to think about toy and game design as a future career, and it was great to see so many students enthusiastically getting stuck into the challenge and expressing excitement about our industry,” said Mojo Nation’s Billy Langsworthy.

We asked the toy and game design community for their thoughts on the issue of copycats (products that attempt to convince the consumer it’s a cheaper version of an existing popular product) and how retailers support them.

With shoppers becoming more environmentally conscious and the industry boasting the potential to become more eco-friendly, we asked toy and game creators what the design community can do to help make the toy space greener.

We asked figures in the toy and game design community for their thoughts on Tru Kids Brands, and the potential return of Toys R Us.

Last week saw the launch of Mojo Nation’s inaugural Play Creators Festival, a three-day event encompassing the Toy and Game Design Conference, the Mojo Pitch and the Student Conference.

A recent study by the Press Association has revealed that the number of teenagers being entered for creative arts subjects at GCSE in England has dropped significantly in the past five years.

We headed to the Business Design Centre in London to see what this year’s crop of design rising stars had been creating.

We asked several key figures in the world of design for their thoughts on the issue, and whether this gender ratio reflected their own experiences in toy design.