Company Profile - Toikido

Fast thinking and action at Toikido

the star of this month’s front cover, continues to make a name for itself by leveraging disruptive, content-led IP that wins with kids and retailers alike. In this exclusive piece, CEO and founder Darran Garnham speaks to Rachael Simpson-Jones about why it’s so hard to pin down what Toikido does – and why it does it so well.

For many, 2022 was a year of challenges and tightened belts. For Toikido, however, it was one of exceptional growth. The team has grown from just two at the start of last year – founder and CEO Darran and CPO Jeff Hall - to 12 at the start of this year, including Nick Clark, a Panini veteran who had started as product development coordinator on the very morning of Toy World’s interview.

The additional bodies are needed to handle Toikido’s rapidly expanding slate of own- and third-party IP, which continues to enjoy huge global success. 20m Among Us products have been sold in the past 18 months, distributed to more than 70 countries and over 100,000 stores, and Toikido has just agreed an extension to its current agreement with Among Us’ creator, Innersloth Games, that will run through to 2025. Understandably, Darran sees this an endorsement of his company’s success with the property so far. Gang Beasts, meanwhile, which launched in Q3 2022, is now distributed in more than 25 countries and 25,000 stores, and VeeFriends, another Q3 launch that marks the first ever NFT project to be turned into physical toys, launched exclusively with 400 Macy stores across the US last year. More recently, Toikido has signed an exclusive master agreement for Bare Butt Boxing (well worth a careful Google) with the first range due to hit retail in the middle of this year. However, the big news is that this year

sees the full 360-degree launch of Toikido’s very first own-IP, Piñata Smashlings. With a Roblox Game coming out in June, supported and amplified by a raft of top-tier influencers and social media stars, as well as an animated series following in 2024, the foundations for the brand are very strong. Licensing deals have now been agreed in Toys, Apparel, Homewares and Publishing with more to come very soon. On top of all this, PMI International has been named official toy manufacturing partner and Character Options is on board as distributor. It’s a far cry from this time 12 months ago, as Darran explains.

“When we first put Piñata Smashlings on the front cover of the February issue of Toy World, exactly one year ago, all we had was that piece of artwork and nothing else,” “However, I knew we had the creativity and contacts to make something special happen.”

One of the most interesting things about Toikido is that it politely refuses to be pigeonholed. When asked to explain where he sees his company lying within the wider landscape, Darran compares it to the likes of Spin Master and Moose, toy companies that create their own IP and content but work seamlessly to also expand and boost those of external partners. However, Toikido can’t really be compared to many, being an investor, games developer, licensor and much more (as well as also being a toy company). As Darran says: “If you were to ask me what Toikido’s mission statement is, I’d tell you that’s a really good question. We’re still trying to work it out ourselves. We don’t want a mission statement to hold us back, because we operate at the speed of culture.”

“Penguin, for example, is a pure licensee for us, making us the licensor,” he elaborates when pressed further. “I don’t know anything about publishing and that’s OK. Penguin does, so I am handing that over quite happily. The Roblox game sees Toikido become an investor: we’re fully funding it because Jeff [Hall, Toikido chief creative officer] has a game studio background, and therefore this is something we do know about. We’re happy to take risks in areas we understand, and let others take the risks in the areas they understand.”

Darran uses Among Us as an example of how far his adaptable team’s creative skills stretch. When they signed the deal, it was a 2D game. A very successful 2D game, but a 2D game nonetheless. Toikido then developed the 3D creative, the toy line packaging and style guide assets and much more, taking it from 2D game to fully-fleshed IP. Gang Beasts, the next big hit in Toikido’s stable, followed a similar path, starting out life as PlayStation/Xbox/Switch game before Darran’s team got involved and transformed it into the IP it is today by, as he puts it, ‘adding value from the ground up’.

The Toikido team enjoys working in partnership with studios that lack the expertise it has assembled within its team to create a block of assets, which the founder and CEO says is far more satisfying than simply going in and bagging the finished property.

Darran adds: “We’re working on an online and mobile gaming acquisition, while also looking at how we bring AI into the toy space. And that’s not all: we’re going to do something in the sandbox this year, and I want Toikido to be the first company to properly take VR into the toy space as well – actually, we’re already pretty close.”

For Darran, much of Toikido’s approach to business stems from having sat on both sides of the table. After a brief stint at Tesco, he became a licensor at 4Kidz Entertainment, then moved to Moshi Monsters (also as a licensor), then Universal (licensor again), before switching teams to become a licensee while at Thinkway Toys, master toy partner for the Toy Story franchise, Minions and more. His experience at these companies showed him that with a few simple, easy to implement tweaks, the traditional business model could be made much better - and more fun - and so Toikido was born.

Darran goes on to explain that Toikido is run very much like a game studio, making use of ‘stand-ups’ and ‘sprints’ to create a culture in which communication is second-to-none. Each of the 12 team members have daily touchpoints, while routes to certain goals are very tightly managed and run on fast-moving timescales. Where other toy companies might reel at same-year requests for product, Toikido merely suggests a month for delivery.

His time at other licensors has taught him that communication is key so at Toikido, there’s an internal team agreement in place which stipulates that someone will reply to your email within 24 hours. Many other licensors, by comparison, hardwire a 10-working-day response time into their contracts. Darran says he wants to be a ‘disruptor, but in a good way’, noting that the toy industry shouldn’t - and needn’t - be a difficult place to work.

Piñata Smashlings, according to Darran, will be what makes people ‘sit up and take notice’ of what Toikido is capable of this year, if they haven’t already. It’s one of two own-IPs making their way into the spotlight in 2023, bolstered by a further six external IPs. The other own-IP is Bad Eggs Co. This property was originally intended for the world of NFTs, a space which Darran tactfully describes as ‘having its winter’. A mobile Bad Eggs game has already been developed, along with some short, animated sizzles, and a deal with Eolo Toys to bring the property to life has been agreed too. This collaboration will see both companies work closely together on a toy range while at the same time working out the best route to market. Having been developed as an NFT concept, there are already a staggering 10,000 unique characters that can be pivoted quite easily to become toys instead of digital art.

In 2024, meanwhile, the plan is for five new own-IP announcements and seven external deals. I was keen to find out how Toikido avoids cannibalism of its own properties, and how it manages to identify new areas into which it can inject its own way of doing things.

Using a quadrant it’s developed, the company can see that Bad Eggs skews towards Boys, while Piñata Smashlings skews more towards Girls. Others lean into the Pre-School space, or Kidults. Spreading its bets in this manner, explains Darran, future-proofs Toikido against the pitfalls of specialising in just one age category/demographic. As a company that’s only three years old, there’s lots to look forward to for Toikido. Its nimbleness and relationships lead to discussions in new areas all the time, such as indie game development. Take Bare Butt Boxing, which hadn’t even launched before Toikido spotted it and signed a global partnership deal with its Canadian developer, Tuatara Games. Being involved from the very start gives Toikido unparalleled scope to guide and advise Tuatara on decisions that, later down the line, could have very positive consequences for sales of physical toys, a very different kettle of fish to retrospectively creating a toy range based on a finished, cast-iron IP.

unparalleled scope to guide and advise Tuatara on decisions that, later down the line, could have very positive consequences for sales of physical toys, a very different kettle of fish to retrospectively creating a toy range based on a finished, cast-iron IP.

From a retail perspective, Toikido is also able to add value in new and innovative ways. For example, it has recently created a very cute Smashling based on The Entertainer’s mascot, Jack, which will be exclusive to that retailer. Other retailers are invited to get in touch if they, too, would like to see their brand immortalised in Smashling form. Toikido understands that retailers require footfall and has therefore also created half a dozen giant Piñata costumes for meet & greets and in-store events. (Darran has tested them out himself, becoming one of very few CEOs ever to have donned a chicken outfit for a visit to their own office.) And if a retailer needs a TV commercial to help attract customers, no problem: that can be arranged too. Darran says: “There’s scope for all possibilities at Toikido, because we like to say ‘yes’ and craft a way forward.”

“Later this year, we’ll also be revealing another string to our bow that will make people think ‘Wow, are they doing that as well?’,” finishes Darran cryptically, as the clock ticks down towards the end of our meeting. “All I can say is that what we’re working on marks the first time we’ve been used as a creative agent, and what we’ve done will be pulled into the world of Piñata Smashlings. We can’t wait for what comes next.”