This year the concept of “diversifying your toy box” is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. And, as The Toy Coach, toy companies have been reaching out to me asking what they can do to rise to the occasion and diversify their product lines.

On December 16th, 2020 at 1 PM EST time, I joined Kit Hoover and Scott Evans on NBC’s Access Daily with a holiday toy segment featuring toys from companies that are centered around inclusion.

Not only do these toys promote diverse play, thinking, and come from diverse entrepreneurs but they ALSO crush the four Toyetic Principles which are the rules to making products that kids love to play with.

If you already caught the segment, and you’re looking for links to BUY some of the amazing toy products, I covered then you’ve come to the right place. I’m going to share a summary of each toy covered and a link to you can shop, hopefully in time for the holidays.

#1 The Fresh Dolls and The Fresh Squad

The Fresh dolls are created by a company called World of EPI. The creative mind behind these gorgeous dolls which I dubbed “the Fenty of doll lines” is a woman known as Dr. Lisa, an educator turned doll creator.

Dr. Lisa decided to take on the mission of empowering young black girls to love the skin they’re in, by watching a doll study in which a little black girl said she hated the color of her skin and it just broke her heart.

Dr. Lisa’s Fresh Dolls are created to celebrate diversity.

Not JUST black diversity, all diversity.

Fresh dolls have CUSTOM one-of-a-kind face sculpts, CUSTOM blended skin tones, and realistic body types.

Fresh dolls embody Toyetic Principle #1 which is all about having distinct character personalities that kids can relate to. I LOVE this line.

I’m not the only one who loves Fresh Dolls, because they have been nominated for a Toy of The Year award (the Oscar of the toy industry), AND they were named in Oprah’s Favorite Things of 2020.

Click here to shop The Fresh Dolls

#2 My Family Builders

The story of My Family Builders is so inspiring. I didn’t have time to cover it in my segment on Access Daily, but I’ll tell you now.

The creator, Ezequiel, is Latin American and his wife is French. He told me that one year he was searching for a Christmas gift for a family friend and he couldn’t find ANYTHING that could represent their multi-cultural family. He just couldn’t find anything that came close. And thus, these colorful, culturally representative magnetic stacking blocks, were born.

My Family Builders has many sets and the 45-piece set, features a GAME that will start conversations and teachable moments around race, gender roles, and diversity.

I love that this product focuses on Distinct Character Personalities which is Toyetic Principle #1. And when applied correctly, that Toyetic Principle makes sure that kids can really see themselves and with My Family Builders, even their family in the product.

Click here to shop My Family Builders

#3 Little Rebels

Little Rebels are a 2020 TAGIE toy award-winning SUPER soft plush that celebrates and tells the stories of female trailblazers like Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Malala Yousafzai. You won’t want to put them down once you pick them up they’re just that soft.

Little Rebels were created by Marjorie Spitalnik, a Latin mompreneur who just didn’t see enough female role models highlighted in textbooks for her daughter.

But these plush aren’t just your standard plush, they also feature augmented reality. Little Rebels interact with an App that makes learning about these trailblazers, fun, creative, and engaging.

And as a toy expert what I am impressed most by with Little Rebels is that THIS line is Scalable which if you don’t know, is Toyetic Principle #2. And what that means, is we could easily imagine growing this line with SO many more incredible plush versions of historical trailblazers, am I right?

Click here to shop Little Rebels

#4 Animoodles

 Animoodles is another fantastic plush in this line-up, but instead of an education focus, this line gets destructive—

But, in a good way!

If your kids have ever taken apart their toys and put them back together with other toys (like Sid from toy story), yep well  Animoodles is the perfect plush for them. The designer behind Animoodles is an Asian American designer, Marissa Louie.

This plush line can be taken apart, mixed and matched, in 1 TRILLION ways. You can make a kitty-panda, or a kitty-pup, or even a unicorn-kitty-panda-pup! Let your imagination run wild with this one.

And as a bonus buy, Animoodles even offers cute little character-specific accessories, which are Toyetic Principle #3 if you didn’t already know! And you can buy these cute orange capes to add on for more customization.

Click here to shop Animoodles

#5 Rigamajig

Rigamajig is an entire system, created by Cas Holman, a queer toy designer who really truly values and pushes for diversity in representation on her packaging but even more importantly her play.

The Rigamajig Jr Builder Kit is designed for at-home use while the Big Basic Builder kit is designed for use in public spaces. The whole point of ALL Rigamajig kits is to inspire exploration.  

You won’t find any instructions inside, you are supposed to take pieces apart, experiment, and see what happens.

The BIG Basic Builder kit is actually intentionally designed to be so big that kids can’t play with it alone to encourage collaboration. And that challenge creates Surprise Conflict which is Toyetic Principle # 4!

But why make a toy that requires other kids to play? Well, I asked Cas Holman exactly that.

Her answer?

The reason for that is we can be diverse but not respect and understand each other, so this toy helps kids understand each other through collaboration. Coming back from the pandemic it’s going to be so important that kids re-learn how to collaborate and remember that other kids and other people can be close to them.

Click here to shop Rigamajig

From diverse cultures, play patterns, gender-roles, all the way to diverse toy entrepreneurs, this segment highlighted not only the top holiday toys but the top toys that focus on inclusion.

If you missed the segment, check my Instagram www.thetoycoach.com/instagram for a clip.

Want to learn more about The 4 Toyetic Principles?

Make sure to listen to the full episode of Making it In the Toy Industry on How To Make Your Ideas More Toyetic here.