About The Toy Coach®

Who We Are

The Toy Coach® Inc. is a creative consulting and education company that partners with innovators, brands, and cultural leaders to shape meaningful, commercially viable play experiences.

We work at the early stages of ideation and brand evolution, helping clarify opportunities, refine concepts, and guide ideas into the right toy, game, or play-based format for today’s market.

Since 2020, The Toy Coach has supported 250+ creators and teams worldwide and helped guide over 100 toy and game concepts toward pitch-ready and retail-facing execution.

Our work sits at the intersection of play, culture, and commercial strategy, supporting ideas that start as a feeling, a point of view, or a story and deserve to be experienced through play.

Our Mission

To make the toy industry more accessible, more consumer-led, and more playful.

We believe the most impactful toy ideas come from people who understand kids deeply — parents, educators, creatives, and cultural innovators — and we exist to help those ideas take shape with clarity, intention, and confidence.

Two women are at a booth with dolls on display, talking and smiling. One woman holds a doll in her hand. A camera is set up in the foreground, recording the scene. There is a person in the background observing the booth.

What We Do

    • Toy Creators Academy®
      Our flagship education program teaching the full toy development process, from early concept through pitch and positioning.

    • 1:1 Strategy & Creative Intensives
      Personalized support for refining concepts, avoiding costly missteps, and aligning ideas with real-world market opportunities.

    • Courses & Toolkits
      Practical resources, including the Toy Trade Show Handbook, designed to support smarter launches and stronger industry engagement.

    • Product Development & Creative Consulting
      With over 12 years of experience in toy design and brand leadership, The Toy Coach supports select clients with toy and game development, consumer product design, and early-stage concept refinement on a project basis.

    • Speaking Engagements & Workshops
      Keynotes and hands-on sessions designed to reframe how teams think about innovation by applying toy industry frameworks such as the 4 Toyetic Principles, Toy Math, and proven creative systems from the world of play.


      These engagements help organizations unlock new ways of thinking about play, storytelling, and consumer connection, translating toy industry insight into practical, creative breakthroughs across product, marketing, and brand teams.
      Formats range from high-level keynotes to interactive workshops tailored to spark collaboration, fresh perspective, and more playful, toyetic ideas.

      Example: “Unlocking Creativity” talk at Science Museum Oklahoma.

    • Signature Play Experiences
      A highly selective, white-glove creative service for brands, authors, and cultural leaders seeking custom toy and play-based experiences. Projects range from one-of-a-kind toy creations to curated play experiences designed to align with a client’s personal brand, story, or moment.

We also produce the award-winning podcast Making It In The Toy Industry®, with 149,000+ downloads and a 4.9⭐ rating, making it one of the most trusted resources for emerging toy inventors and entrepreneurs worldwide.

Three women sitting on director's chairs, engaged in conversation, with a large screen behind them displaying 'Hasbro Women Innovators of Play September 12, 2023' with colorful gear icons
People at a toy showcase booth with stuffed animals, dolls, and toy posters displayed on the wall.
A smiling woman with purple hair in braids, wearing a black dress and carrying a black backpack, stands inside a modern building with marble floors. Behind her is a large gold-colored sculpture and a sign that reads 'N T OYS' in colorful letters.

Meet the Founder

I’m Azhelle Wade, Founder and Creative Lead of The Toy Coach®.

I began my career in the Toy Design program at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, where I became deeply interested in how childhood play shapes the way we learn, connect, and express ourselves throughout life.

That curiosity led to a 15+ year corporate career spanning toy design, brand strategy, and product leadership for companies including Toys“R”Us, Madame Alexander, Party City, Horizon Group USA, and Creative Kids where I served as the VP of Brand & Product managing global teams.

Across my career, I’ve:

  • Earned 3 U.S. patents

  • Built and led multi-million-dollar toy lines

  • Guided hundreds of SKUs from concept to retail

  • Received honors including the Mojo 100 Award (for top 100 people in the toy industry), the TAGIE Game Changer Award and the WIT Wonder Woman Storyteller Award

In 2020, I founded The Toy Coach to bring my corporate experience, creative leadership, and passion for consumer-led innovation into a more accessible and collaborative model.

Most recently, I collaborated with NBC’s On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, further reinforcing my belief that play, creativity, and storytelling are powerful tools far beyond the toy aisle.

Today, I lead The Toy Coach as a platform where strategy, creativity, education, and culture meet — helping ideas take shape in ways that feel meaningful, thoughtful, and commercially strong. Read my story.

Azhelle’s Toy Portfolio Highlights

  • A young girl sitting on a purple stool at a craft table in a bright room with a window seat, pillows, and a woven ottoman. She is smiling and surrounded by colorful jewelry-making supplies and jewelry she has made.

    Totally Me Craft Desk for Toys R Us

  • Four dolls dressed in equestrian clothing with three horses in a field with a white fence, green grass, mountains, and a partly cloudy sky background.

    Journey Girls Product Design for Toys R Us

  • A pink toy car with three doll passengers and yellow wheels, parked on a white surface next to a picnic blanket with a small basket and utensils, with a blurred window in the background.

    Happy Together Car Design for Toys R Us

  • Colorful indoor cat tree with plush cat toys, a small slide, and bowls, set against pink wall and sliding glass door showing a garden with a stuffed animal outside.

    Journey Girls Kitty Condo for Toys R Us

  • Three plush dolls with brown and blonde hair dressed in pastel dresses holding hands, sitting on a white bench near a window with a blurred green background.

    Plush Dolls for Toys R Us

  • Display of various screen printing supplies including adhesive sprays, stencil sprays, and themed screen printing kits on a pegboard.

    Product Invention, Zip Screens for Horizon Group USA

  • Display of colorful packaging and examples of creative, monster-themed embroidered iron-on appliqués for Halloween costumes. The designs include various cartoonish monster faces with different eye and mouth features, inspired by kids' drawings and 1980s colors.

    Line Creation for Blumenthal Lansing

  • Display shelf with craft supplies and kits for creating tie-dye items, with a large colorful tie-dye cloth hanging on the left, and a sign that reads 'Craft Vibes Only' at the top right. Some products are in small boxes, jars, and bottles, with decorative flowers and craftsmanship themes.

    Brand Development Craft Vibes Only for Creative Kids

  • Trade show booth for Wrap 'N Wear featuring pink and purple decor, mirrors, product displays, a mannequin head with wig, promotional posters, and a retail table with tools for hair styling, all set on pink rug in exhibit hall.

    Brand Development, Wrap N Wear for Creative Kids

  • Colorful illustration of a fantasy scene with a girl fairy and a green monster in pajamas. The girl has red hair, fairy wings, and a crown, holding a magic wand. The monster is green with blue horns, big eyes, and is smiling. There are images of a sleeping girl, a fairy costume, and a decorated door with a monster face. The background features stars, curtains, and text about Zorbies environment and features.

    Concept Sketch, Zorbies

  • A black-and-white coloring page with instructions for a plush sheep toy named Sleepy Sheepy. The page shows a large illustrated sheep with a screen on its tummy, a smaller plush sheep in bed, and a hand pointing to the sheep's plush features. There are text explanations of the toy's features, including a sparkle touch technology, speakers, and a sheep counting display for sleep aid.

    Concept Sketch, Sleepy Sheepy

  • Two young girls playing with a pink toy kitchen set with dolls and pretend food in a bright room with large windows.

    Product Design, Play Kitchen for Toys R Us

  • A booth with stuffed teddy bears on display, a woman with long hair and a lanyard, and a large poster featuring smiling children and a psychologist named Dr. Erica Gergely. A laptop showing a teddy bear and logo, with a man sitting behind the booth. A pink speech bubble sign reads, "We talk press our P."

    Booth Design for Soothing Snuggler

Awards & Features

Featured In:

NBC · History Channel · Forbes · Essence · Access Daily · The Toy Book · Women In Toys · TAGIE · Mojo Nation + more. Click here for full press page.

Awards:

  • 2022 WIT Wonder Woman Storyteller Award

  • 2021 TAGIE Game Changer Award

  • 2021 Mojo Nation Design Champion

  • 2016 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal

Patents:

My Story

I didn’t come to the toy industry by accident.

I studied Toy Design at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, where I first began to understand how deeply play shapes the way we learn, communicate, and connect throughout our lives. That curiosity led to a 15+ year career inside the toy industry, working my way from designer to VP of Brand & Product and helping bring hundreds of products from early idea to market.

But my path hasn’t been linear…or easy.

In 2012, a serious car accident left me with lifelong back injuries and forced me to slow down in ways I never expected. A few years later, in 2016, I was diagnosed with cancer. That moment changed everything. It pushed me to step back, reassess what mattered, and think more intentionally about the kind of work (and legacy) I wanted to leave behind.

Surviving became a turning point. I realized I didn’t just want to build toys. I wanted to help reshape an industry that often felt closed, confusing, and inaccessible to the very people with the best ideas.

In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I launched The Toy Coach and the Making It In The Toy Industry® podcast. At a time when the world felt isolated, this work created connection. It was a place where creators, parents, educators, and innovators could learn, ask questions, and take real steps toward bringing ideas to life.

Since then, I’ve supported 250+ emerging creators through Toy Creators Academy®, dozens of high-end clients, and continued to work alongside brands and cultural leaders to shape play experiences that are thoughtful, inclusive, and commercially sound.

In 2025, becoming a mother added a new layer of clarity and purpose to my work. Now more than ever, I understand how meaningful it is for kids to see themselves reflected in the toys they play with and for adults to remember the power of play in shaping imagination and identity.

Today, The Toy Coach brings together everything I’ve lived and learned: corporate leadership, creative problem-solving, resilience, teaching, and curiosity. It’s all in service of one core belief: that play matters, and the people closest to kids deserve a seat at the table when it’s being designed.