Party Favors

Mini-Foosball, Skee Ball and Mad Libs party favors.

This was sent by a friend a while ago. It's a cell phone photo - a little chopped off, but it's three party favor games that we had our hands on in designing for Tara Toy. We did a revised Foosball field and Mad Libs accordion fold fun-books. Much of it is restricted by the rules of style guides, but some fun was had in designing the Skeeball board.

Skee Ball design and mock-up.

Tara games

I finally got around to posting these pictures. I designed the logos and cards for a number of games for Tara Toy in 2008. Games is a fairly new category for them, so I am happy to see that of the seven or so games I worked on, these three went through to production, and can be found in stores.

Product logos and illustrations are the most fun part of this job.

First Day at first Expo

Elaine and Kurt in the Monkey Doodle Dandy booth at our first Licensing Expo.

Kurt and the Squarey Monsters banner.

Elaine and the Wudjadoo banner.

The Jitterbutter banner and Betty Bones' skateboard concept.

The Squarey Monsters display.

Our first day of Licensing Expo went very well… even better than either of us had expected it could. We met manufacturers and producers from all over the world. Sometimes inventors had a product they thought would work well with our images. Sometimes an agency wanted to know what was available. There seems to be pretty even interest among all four of our properties, Jitterbutter GirlMonsters, Wudjadoo, Squarey Monsters and Squaredy Cats.

Today is the second day, and we don't know what to expect. We hope it can go half as well as it has already. I can't wait to see what the end result will be, and how these new connections will affect Monkey Doodle Dandy. 

We haven't figured out if our ad in Art of Licensing has sent anyone in our direction. It's possible, when everyone browses their papers from the show they can find us then. Not like we had many free moments yesterday. It seemed like someone was always stopping at our booth, and we're thankful for that! Even the heads of Tara Toy stopped by to say hello.

Let the GAMES begin!

This link is to iVillage hottest toys of 2009 based on Toy Fair. #8 Of 15 is a Tara Toy game called Meatball Madness. It’s not something we worked on here at Monkey Doodle Dandy, but we have done games for Tara Toy, and even a few for other companies. It’s great to see Tara move in the direction of games.
We’ve done a lot of work for Tara over the years. We had our monkey paws all over some of what you see here.

Here’s a game we designed for INI, Inc. Last year I did this illustration for INI’s successful drinking game. It was repackaged with this illustration on the box.


Since the game is based on a classic, it made sense that it should be applied to kids. Pictured below is the game we designed for INI’s kids’ version. It will be in stores soon, but here’s a link so you can buy it now!

Paris loves Tara

One of our very first clients was Tara Toy Corp. in Hauppauge, NY. Elaine used to work there, so that’s where I got my first taste of freelancing in the toy industry.
Recently, we got an email from a friend at Tara who attached the above picture. Apparently Paris Hilton was photographed buying one of Tara’s items – the Barbie® Giant Activity Floor Pad. It was this email that got me thinking we need to start a blog. There’s always some goofy thrill that we’d love to share, but we don’t. We’re busy working, and by the time we get around to sharing stories with our families and friends we find ourselves acting like zombies with no interest in Paris Hilton. I guess that makes sense, though. She hasn’t any tasty brains to offer for a snack. Crayyons. Craaaayyyoooons!!!
We can’t necessarily claim with any certainty that we took part in any of the designs or illustrations in Paris’ particular choice of Barbie® Giant Activity Floor Pad, but we like to think that some pages we worked on may have made it in that one. Don’t worry about staying in the lines, Paris.