Moodles creator Joanna Paul and LoCoco Licensing’s Peter LoCoco on building the brand beyond toys

Guys, it’s great to catch up. Joanna, before we dive into the origins of Moodles, do you have a background in toy design?
Joanna Paul, Founder & CEO, Moodles: My background is actually in branding and design. I worked in New York for some amazing agencies, working with everyone from the Childhood Cancer Foundation to Bath & Body Works, to technology start-ups… You name it!

So I had a very fulfilling, fast-paced life in New York, without children, building my career. Then my husband and I decided to start a family and we relocated to Colorado. I had my first child there and I had no real creative outlet, because there weren’t a lot of great design firms where we lived just outside of Denver. So, I found myself just diving into parenthood, playing with daughter and making up stories… And through that came the idea for Moodles!

Ah, what sparked the idea?
Joanna: I felt it’d be fun to create a toy that could respond to some of her play scenarios. When you think about your typical plush toy, it’s got one face and it really doesn’t respond… So the thought was there, and a few years later my son was born and he was starting to learn emotions. He wasn’t really responding to the traditional books that show happy faces and sad faces. We later learned that he had some developmental delays and that led us into early intervention speech therapy and occupational therapy.

During that time, I really got to know the autistic community and I learned they have trouble recognising facial features. That made me think back about the idea I had years ago… The more families I met in the autistic community, the more I was passionate about the idea.

What did your first steps designing Moodles look like?
Joanna: It took a while! I’d go into Home Depot and get random parts to throw together, trying to figure out a way to make the turning mechanism work. And it started out as a three face toy. I took it to an attorney and they realised that, in that form, it had been done before in the Sixties.

Oh!
Joanna: Yes! There is this very odd toy called Hedda Get Bedda. It was a girl who just got sicker and sicker. I think she had consumption or tuberculosis. It was kind of a creepy doll.

Sounds it!
Joanna: Ha! Well, that meant I couldn’t do a three faced doll… I thought: ‘Well, it was a good idea while it lasted!’ Then, I was sitting on a plane and I thought: ‘But what if I flipped the faces…’

So rather than three faces that just rotate, there’s three faces – but each of those is ‘double-sided’ and can be flipped… So there’s six faces.
Joanna: Exactly! And Moodles was born! I launched in 2019, went to my first Toy Fair and it was such a success. We were in discussions with a few companies but then, in February of 2020, the whole world shut down and I instead embraced a direct-to-consumer model.

It really resonated with families, therapists and educators. I had a successful year, but it’s a difficult to do on your own. So I decided to pursue licensing again and that’s how I met Peter, at my first Licensing Expo in Vegas. He then introduced me to a wonderful toy company that he had a relationship with – Sunny Days Entertainment. I met them and the next day we shook hands and said: “Let’s do this”. Now we’re in Walmart, on amazon, in Coles. It’s been fantastic.

Peter, let’s bring you in! Before we talk about your work with Moodles, LoCoco Licensing is 30 this year – how did you come to launch the agency?
Peter LoCoco, CEO, LoCoco Licensing: Before launching the agency, I owned a company in Italy, publishing greeting cards and stationery. In a very short amount of time, it became the number one greetings card line in Italy.

My distributor approached us to discuss expanding. They wanted to expand it onto 30 different products. I said: “I don’t have the rights to expand it on to 30 products. Let me go back to the licensor!” So I asked the licensor and he said: “Pay me this and you can do what you want.” And I did… And that became the first deal that I had ever done in licensing.

Sometime after we decided to move back to the US to be closer to our families, so I was running my company from Atlanta. And, you know, going over to Europe for three months, coming back… And at that point, I had a child… It was unfair, so I made the decision to close that business and focus just on licensing. That’s how LoCoco Licensing started.

What sorts of brands did you focus on in the early days?
Peter: I found a gentleman who was a kitten and puppy photographer. He was an unknown, but I said: “I’d like to work with you. It’s a slow process, so I need you to be patient, but let’s try to figure out how to do this.” Now, it took years, but that brand ultimately became the number one kitten and puppy photography line in the world. We were in over 80 countries. That experience gave me a good idea of how to pioneer something.

Then the kitten and puppy photography market got saturated, so I had to think differently. I found an Italian artist and together we have developed a brand. And, again, we have grown it significantly. But it’s been a process.

What gives something brand potential? What do you look for when evaluating whether to represent an IP?
Peter: We have to be convinced that the novelty of it – the uniqueness of it – can stand out. I tell my artists “There is no room for mediocrity.” Then the other thing we do is look at our existing database of clients and ask: Do we have clients that would be interested in this? That’s what happened with Moodles and Sunny Days Entertainment.

What is the wider brand plan for Moodles?
Joanna: We want to take Moodles beyond toys. We want it to become an ecosystem for parents; a place you come to you for parenting advice. We can be the resource that tells them that the more you can expose children to empathy, the more you can explain emotions and help them understand why they’re feeling. It builds such resilience for their future. We’re trying to educate parents on things to do now to help their kids in the future.

Was this always the plan for Moodles?
Joanna: You know, it really wasn’t! It only hit me was when I started getting feedback from families. I got an email from a woman who had developed a debilitating neurological condition which meant she’s not able to express any emotions. All she can do is cry. She emailed and said: ‘I bought your toy. This is literally my face to the world now. Even though I’m crying, I can tell people if I’m happy or sad’.

Wow.
Joanna: That kind of feedback helped me realise this was actually helping people and could do good beyond the toy aisle. We have plans to do books and hopefully entertainment content that is healthy for children.

These sorts of toys can sometime be labelled as specialty rather than mass, but as a brand do you see this having broad appeal?
Peter: It really covers specialty and mass market. That’s the uniqueness of this. We’re still in a very early stage and we’re trying to be open as possible with regards to what direction we take it in. And that may be different depending on the market. And with Moodles, yes our goal is to be successful. But how great is it to be financially successful and do something really good for people? That’s ultimately what we’re trying to achieve.

And licensing-wise, I imagine there’s potential to do licensed Moodles characters?
Joanna: Absolutely, we can use this mechanism with licensed characters.

Peter: We can license the patent to a company if they’re using their own brand. So we’d love to have conversations with brands with characters that are a good fit for this mechanism. I would name brands that I feel are perfect for this, but there’s so many!

It’s probably easier to make a list of brands that couldn’t use it!
Peter: Absolutely! We want to work with everybody who can help us develop this brand and make it a household name, because truthfully, it should be one. It has an incredible opportunity, but it’s about finding the people who believe in it. And that includes the retailers. It’s a process and we’re optimistic.

Guys, this has been a pleasure. One last question for Peter – your surname, LoCoco. Does it have a meaning?
Peter: It does. It’s Sicilian and it means ‘the cook’… Now the question you might ask is, well, do you know how to cook?

Ha! Do you?
Peter: Yes, I do! And I’m one of the few Americans that know how to make a pizza in a pizza oven. Lots of people put them in their gardens, show them off, but no one knows how to use them! It took me a while, but I learned… So, yes, I know how to cook!

Haha! I’m glad I asked! Thanks again guys and congrats on everything you’ve achieved with Moodles so far.

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