A decade or so ago kids didn’t have mobile phones, heck, many adults didn’t. Then the devices became must haves for teens, and now tweens. These days babies know how to play on tablets, so mobile and connectivity is important, but are screens too pervasive?
That question is one of the things that lead Gauri Nanda and Audry Hill to create a contemporary toy, but one that doesn’t put a child in front of another screen. Their solution is Toymail, a mailbox-animal mashup with a message component built in. The toys are synced to an app via wifi so grown ups can send a message to their children via their own app.
Is Toymail a mobile device or a toy? The mailmen are cute enough and durable enough to encourage play, and the messaging aspect is a clever add on to enhance the child’s attachment to not only the toy, but the message sender. As the Toymail is the conduit to the grownup(s) it develops a special place in the child’s world.
Creativity is nothing new to inventor Nanda. She’s the genius behind Clocky, the alarm clock on wheels that zips around the room when it goes off so there’s no hitting the snooze button, you have to get out of bed to find the bugger and turn it off.
I’m not sure Toymail is as clever as Clocky, but that’s not the point. In Toymail there’s an application that lets parents share a thought or a moment with their child when they can’t be there in person. You can find one of the Mailmen (named Buck, Fairfax, Milksop, Rochester and Snort) on their website, for around $59.
