Toca Boca's First Toys Arrive

There are plenty of digital games online, just waiting to be downloaded for a small fee from your cell phone or your iPad. But how about apps that actually turn your phone or tablet into a child's toy? Bonnier Digital's Brickmark, has just released its first digital toys under the Toca Boca brand - apps available at Apple's App Store - that turn a phone into a helicopter or a tea table, letting kids and their parents load and unload passengers or serve slices of cake to their dolls (watch a movie here and here to see how they work).

"We had an eye on how kids work with technology at Bonnier R&D," says Björn Jeffery, director of digital commerce for Brickmark - before starting Brickmark, Jeffery was part of Bonnier R&D. "Along with our own reports and the release of the Mag+ platform for the iPad, we saw what a revolution the touch screen has been. For the first time, small children have the coordination to easily use a computer."

What Brickmark also saw was that there were almost no applications that addressed how children play. "Gaming is primarily what's available and while adults love this, games are only one form of play for kids," says Jeffery. "They also spend a lot of time in active play, fantasy play, creative play, manipulative play and learning play, (gaming can be part of learning play actually). And there are essentially no apps that provide this."

So the Brickmark team set out to provide what was missing. After a brief period of concept work and research at the end of 2010, actual production on the toys - coding and artwork - started in January 2011. "We basically had a two-month production period," says Jeffery. "Along with filling the niche, we wanted to create toys that were basically quick and easy to develop. Which makes them cost-effective, and we can keep developing new products with less risk if they don't catch on."

Which is the plan for the future: a long line of experimental digital toys and games that key into different aspects of kids' play.

But why would a media company start producing digital toys? "It's a matter of being responsive to our audience and adapting products with them in mind," says Björn Jeffery of Brickmark, a digital commerce company that is part of Bonnier Digital. "We at Bonnier already have a strong connection with kids and parents via our magazines, books and films, so it made sense to offer something that our customers want, not something we want to deliver."

Download Helicopter Taxi for USD 1.99 here and Toca Tea Party for USD 2.99 here, at Apple's App Store.