Brand Profile - Toikido

We see you, Toikido!

In December 2023, Toikido - the IP-driven company behind Piñata Smashlings – announced its second major new property, PeaKeeBoo. This animated series leans into the charm of the classic childhood game, with its unique visuals and celeb narrator making it one to watch in the competitive pre-school space. Johnny Taylor, chief creative officer at Toikido, tells Toy World why kids and adults alike will be seeking out PeaKeeBoo content when it arrives later this year.

A world away from the colourful, frenetic, high-energy Roblox gaming IP Piñata Smashlings, PeaKeeBoo is a nature-inspired show all about play and friendship. Each episode centres upon three main 2D characters, all of which have the same eyes and facial expressions: Pea, a small, green creature much like their name, Kee, a little bird, and Boo, a large, grey boulder-esque shape to whom the concept of hiding is somewhat lost. Johnny says: “Boo tries to hide very much like young kids try to hide, with this belief that if they themselves can’t see, they also can’t be seen. It’s such lovely, relatable character development and we think kids and their parents will really see a lot of their own everyday lives in it.”

A father of two himself, PeaKeeBoo’s strong focus on nature resonates with Johnny, who tells us he feels today’s kids often don’t get the chance to get out and embrace nature nearly as much as they should. The characters’ natural surroundings are central to the look and feel of the content as well as the plot of each episode, in which Pea, Kee and Boo take turns hiding among the rocks, twigs and leaves of their world.

PeaKeeBoo is the brainchild of Neil Porter, head of Creative at Toikido; it was also Neil who, alongside Johnny, devised the simplistic yet engaging character designs. Interestingly, Toikido didn’t have its sights set on entering the pre-school IP arena (which as we know, isn’t short of smash-hit IP and top-quality content). Rather, the team simply wanted to create something that both felt different and provided new opportunities for content-hungry kids.

“Initially, there was no real desire to create an IP for such a young audience, but when you strike gold – or at least feel like you have – you have to keep digging and see where it leads,” Johnny explains.

Toikido has partnered with Moonbug Entertainment on PeaKeeBoo, with Moonbug producing the narrative scripts and audio and Toikido taking the helm on in-house animation, which Johnny concedes is a little unusual for the company. However, Toikido has amassed a team of talented creatives, many of which come from Mind Candy, for whom animation is no tall order: indeed, Johnny shows me the setup he has in his studio, where photogrammetry is used to map the ‘sets’ and transform them into 3D scenes – a tray which could have been lifted straight out of a British woodland, with a cutout of Pea perched atop a mosscovered branch. Further setting apart the animation’s style, each 60-second episode is filmed in one cut, on one ‘stage’, which moves slightly when necessary and that the characters never leave. “It’s like a stage play for kids,” Johnny adds.

Despite still being in its infancy, PeaKeeBoo has secured Sophie Ellis-Bextor, darling of the music and entertainment industry, to narrate the show. Toikido was in talks with Sophie about her involvement weeks before Saltburn arrived in cinemas and that scene, featuring her hit song Murder on the Dancefloor, propelled her back to the top of the charts. Fortuitous timing, indeed. Sophie’s voiceovers, according to Johnny, fall somewhere between ‘talking to your kids’ and ‘narrating a nature documentary’. At the time of our interview with Johnny, the Toikido team had just wrapped on Sophie’s first recording and the excitement for what she brings to the table was palpable.

“When you hear Sophie’s voice in the show, you’ll immediately understand that she’s just a perfect fit for PeaKeeBoo,” Johnny enthuses. “She’s got this warm, maternal, nurturing tone that couldn’t suit the animation and its themes any better. She’s a comforting figure for a lot of adults too. When she was doing all of her Kitchen Disco stuff during lockdown, she became something of a British cultural icon. We therefore couldn’t be happier to have her narrating PeaKeeBoo for the nation’s kids.”

The short form episodes, Johnny explains, have been designed to appeal to very young children for whom anything over one minute might feel too long. Described as the ‘perfect platform’ for bitesize content, PeaKeeBoo will be arriving on the Moonbug Kids YouTube channel later this year. Ahead of the launch, enthusiastic toy partners are already in place across multiple categories – all will be revealed in the coming weeks/months. Further down the line, viewers can expect to see longer-form PeaKeeBoo content, as well as a game which will bring the world of Pea, Kee and Boo to life on smartphones and tablets.

Those who have followed the development and launch of last year’s Piñata Smashlings might be surprised that Toikido is already rolling out yet another new IP. However, Johnny tells us the team is well used to working at speed on projects such as PeaKeeBoo and that everyone feels as though the pacing is spot on.

“We’re all from industries and backgrounds where working at speed is the norm, not a challenge,” he concludes. “Everyone at Toikido wants to be disruptive and do things differently. This largely stems from the makeup of our team: as well as a vast amount of experience in toys, some of us come from the games industry, others from animation. We’re simply creating what feels right, at a time that feels right – and the time is right for PeaKeeBoo.”