A few weeks ago, my mermaid-obsessed 2-year-old had her first exposure to perhaps the most well-known mermaid of them all, Ariel, via her TonieBox. She stared at the figurine of the red-haired Disney princess, perched upon her little burst of water, and smiled. Then, she placed her atop a squishy gray device, and was introduced to the iconic song, Part of Your World.
Itâs an experience that sheâs had several times now in her life. She first learned about Frozenâs Elsa and Anna this way, and was delighted to discover that there was a whole movie about them when we let her watch several hours of television on a flight months later. Same with Moana, and Blueâs Clues, and even Elmo, who she shocked us once by recognizing in a store when she had barely ever watched Sesame Street. All of them, to her, were not universally beloved characters for toddlers, but Tonies that she played with on her TonieBox.
If you have or know of a toddler, you probably are familiar with the TonieBox, a German device that launched in the US in September 2020. A small square media player about the size of a box of tissues, tactile and puffy on the outside, with two mismatched âears,â the box serves as a player for the actual âToniesââsmall figurines that stick to the top and play songs, tell stories, or both.
The idea behind the TonieBox is rather simple. It provides kids with all the entertainment of both classic and trendy childrenâs programming, without the dreaded screen that so many parents these days are desperately trying to avoid.
âI joined the company because I truly believe that it is such a marvelous product that inspires imagination and accelerates the development in a way that screens simply do not,â Christoph Frehsee, the president of Tonies North America who oversaw the deviceâs rollout to the states, tells me. âSo I’d say the optimist to me was always like, yeah, that’s a total home runâ¦[but] I really certainly was surprised by the level of organic virality.â
Frehsee is chatting with me from his home in Santa Cruz, California, and joining him on the Zoom call is his young son, who boasts probably one of the most impressive Tonie collections in the world (preschool was closed due to a COVID outbreak, Frehsee explains). Frehsee, an entrepreneur who has worked in industries from fashion to engineering, was first introduced to the TonieBox by his mother, who bought one for his older son.
The company was founded in his native Germany in 2013 by two entrepreneurs slash dads Patric Fassbender and Marcus Stahl, who first met at their childrenâs preschool, and according to Frehsee it makes sense that such a product would emerge from his home country. As he explains, Germans culturally enjoy audio storytelling.
âWe have in Germany this kind of childhood memoryâall parents have this childhood memoryâof listening to their favorite kids’ books and characters on a cassette recorder,â he says.
