About
Toyi: Transform Everything into Unique Toys!
$23,778
334
Toyi is a limitless creative play kit without instructions that enables children to transform everything around them into unique toys. Make the world children's playground.
With Toyi every child is a toy designer. A water bottle can turn into a rocket, an old box to a train compartment or a pine cone to a cute monster. Children can design their toys on their own or along with their friends, improve their creativity by making their dream toys come to life with Toyi. They become real explorers interacting with their physical and social surroundings, and their inner worlds.
Featured
Buy One Gift One!
As Toyi, we believe every child has the right to play. To took responsibility on this we got different civil society organizations on our side as operation partners: for every Toyi kit claimed on Kickstarter we will send a Toyi kit to a disadvantaged child. A detailed list of our partners and target locations is on our website.
Rewards
Every Toyi kit comes with all the necessary parts to begin to play:
Flexible Connectors, Foot, Hand, Wheel, Eye, Joint, Stick.
Shipping is not included in the kit prices.
World Children’s Day Special Edition Toyi Ambassador Pin
We wanted to do something special for the World Children’s Day! With this reward, you will receive a Toyi Ambassador Pin and we will be donating a Toyi kit to a child in need with the operational partnerships made with civil society organizations around the world.
A Toyi Ambassador proudly wears the Toyi pin, supports children's creativity and advocates child-led play and child's right to play in order to make the world children's playground. Please visit our website to become a Toyi Ambassador.
How to Play
With a kit consisting of flexible connectors, foot, hand, wheel, eye, joint, stick, children aged 6+ can transform any object around them into a toy of their own creation.
There are no instructions or rules in Toyi kits. The entire process is left to children’ imagination. With the open-ended play experience Toyi provides, children can make a limitless number of toys using their creativity.
What Play Experts Did
We believe children are the sole play experts. That's the way we consulted them in every step of the design process of Toyi.
Our Approach
The toy of every child
Toyi is a toy for every child regardless of their sex, language, geographical location, and socio-economic status.
More room for children and play, with an open-ended play experience
The play and toy industry is shaped by grown-ups whose creativity is limited compared to children. Play rules are set by grown-ups; they tell children how to play and what toys to make. Even with toys composed of construction blocks, the end product is shown to children beforehand. Toyi is giving priority to children’s needs, and supports free play; it contains no instructions or rules and the entire play process is left to children’ imagination. Toyi reminds parents, teachers, and all grown-ups that child-led play is a great way for children to develop lifelong skills.
21st-century skills improving through play
Toyi is designed not only to ensure that children will not lose their creativity as they grow up but also to enable them to develop many skills that they need in this century.
Our Story
The concept of Toyi originated with Elif's desire to design toys for children who can't access them. She explains: "Especially in regions with many disadvantaged children, it is hard to send them the desired toys; so we thought we should make something that allows these children to transform the materials around them into toys." Toyi, which has come to life following this idea, has been developed by realizing that all children who can’t use their creativity in full due to the urban lifestyle, pressure for academic success, parental instructions, and the restrictions of the toy industry, can benefit from this approach and product.
The first prototypes of Toyi were produced in 2017 out of clay. Since then we improved it in many ways by making dozens of prototypes and eventually, we put into final form for production and market display by April, 2018.
Throughout this design process, we played with hundreds of children in many workshops and we developed our product according to the feedback we got from them and their parents and teachers. We also consulted with pedagogs, play therapists, and play designers to improve the play experience of Toyi.
In June 2017, we graduated from imece, incubation for social enterprises and we became a social enterprise aims to produce play experiences that will make play accessible for every child by connecting social entrepreneurship and toy industry. We attended a crowdfunding training programme of UNDP AltFinLab. In July 2018 we partnered with ATÖLYE, an Istanbul based transdisciplinary innovation platform in order to expand our impact and reach many children as possible.
After 1.5 years of work which started with Elif's hand sketches, we've come a long way and we are now ready for boutique mass production of patent-pending Toyi and worldwide sales with our competent team.
Team
Project Timeline
Why Kickstarter? Why Now?
As the Toyi team we've been working on developing the Toyi parts by creating a system allowing maximum connections with minimum elements for 1.5 years now. During this process we've organized workshops with children to improve the play experience of Toyi. In April May 2018 we manufactured our first version molds in order to start boutique mass production. We're now ready to introduce Toyi to new play friends!
We believe that Toyi is more than just a packaged toy. We want to build a community including parents, teachers, toy designers, and everyone interested in play, around Toyi as a social enterprise advocating child-led play and equal play opportunity for children worldwide. This is one of the reasons we joined the Kickstarter family because we observe that Kickstarter is not only a place for crowdfunding but also a rich ecosystem where such communities emerge.
Let's create an alternative in the toy industry supporting child-led play!
Let's make the world children's playground!
Stay in touch! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Website
Press
Wonderful people are supporting Toyi <3
- Fast Company: Turn trash into toys with this maker kit for kids
- Design Week: Toyi: the play kit without rules that lets children make their own toys
- Huffington Post: The Best Toys Of 2018: A Gift Guide To What Every Kid Wants
- Trend Hunter: Imaginative Toy Kit
- Design Milk: An Imaginative Play Kit for Kids to Transform the World Around Them Using Everyday Objects
- Creative Bloq: Kids become toy designers with this creative kit
Risks and challenges
Manufacturing
Almost the biggest risk in a Kickstarter project is manufacturing and delivery.
We sorted out manufacturing and got our first molds ready! This means we’re ready to deliver all Toyi kits backed in Kickstarter.
The only risk we have in mind is reaching a triple amount of backers we envisioned. If that would be the case we can start manufacturing 7/24 instead of 5/8 hours and this will shorten our manufacturing process more than 3 times.
Delivery
We’re starting manufacturing before receiving funds from our Kickstarter. We have a wonderful manufacturer we’re working with so we took a promise that he can wait for a month :)
Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ
Support
Funding period
- (30 days)