Client: Mookie Toys/TP Toys
Role: Lead Designer
Disciplines: Industrial Design, Material Research, Factory Liaising, Business Research, Branding, Prototyping, Ergonomics, Trademark/Patent Study.
Year: 2024
When the idea of relaunching ActiveTots was first floated in 2024, the brand had been around for the better part of 2 years and had seen measurable success.
Following that, we decided the time was right for both a rebrand and some new products to reflect what we had learned in the past, and cement our direction for the future. More designers were now involved in the brand, but for myself the brief came in the form of two products: a Helper Tower and an Easel Accessory. It was great to return to this brand after so long and reflect on my own career journey during that time.
My experience from past Active-Tots products allowed me to tackle a more complex project such as this, and when it came to designing the Helper Tower, stability was key. Any product that is tall and thin naturally risks issues with toppling, so in order to mitigate this we employed a few techniques: first, we kept the platform relatively lower than some competitors to keep the centre-of-gravity lower. We also used the two front "penguin" feet to further ground
the structure.
Space in a modern UK household is at a premium, so having a product that could be easily stowed was a big point. The balance between easy folding mechanisms and stability was not trivial, and a number of prototypes were made to check whether the Tower was suitable for the task.
In the end it was a matter of contingency safety-features that gave us the confidence in the final product.
We'd learned and improved massively since our first Active-Tots outings, and were able to employ new features not available before, such as matte-black fixings, more complex wood geometry, and use higher quality materials throughout the range.
It's been great to see these changes occur in real-time throughout my tenure.
The Tower folds away when not in use, and I was keen to make sure safeguards were in place to prevent collapse even if proper assembly methods weren't followed.
This meant making the wooden frame impossible to fold beyond a certain point through it's own natural shape.
Alongside the launch of the Tower, we wanted to create an "expansion" piece not just for the Tower, but for most of our Core Range. This Wooden Easel pack could be used on the Tower, Triangle & Cube and features both a chalkboard and paper-roll.
It was a fun accessory to make and I enjoy the simplicity of the shapes involved alongside the multi-use context.
The graphics-team rebuilt the brand from the ground up with a new logo, new fonts, new palette and so much more; if the Active-Tots of old was about value in an expensive market, Active-Tots of 2024 was about value with class.
Gone were bolder blues and teals, in is tasteful whites and sage-greens. This reflects the bump in quality of the range as-well as a need to offer feeling of investment in a child's future, rather than just creating a cheap product to throw out as-soon as the child is too old.
There's still a lot of work ahead, but it's been surreal watching my first brand become a linchpin of our Winter sales. The pivot from outdoor products to this hybrid of indoor and outdoor is in no small part due to the work of a lot of designers in the R&D team, and it was great to be a part of it again.