As Soggy Doggy celebrates its 10th anniversary, co-inventor Don Ullman discusses its origins – and bright future

Don, it’s always great to chat. This year sees Soggy Doggy turn 10! Talk me through where the seed of this idea came from?
At the time there was a company called SRM that was marketing light-novelty toys, like the Light Chaser. I knew the person that was working inventor relations there, and he thought it would be mutually beneficial to connect me with someone that had been showing him some concepts. That’s how I connected with Steve Calhoun from Portland who was working part-time as an inventor. Steve showed me a concept – a vibrating TPR ball with a light inside…

TPR?
Thermoplastic Rubber! And it had lots of these TPR fingers… He asked me if I thought I could do anything with it – and I said “No.” But thinking about it for a while, I focused in on the vibrating TPR and the effect that the moving fingers had. That’s when the idea of using the moving fingers as a shaking dog came into my head… And that was the idea for Soggy Doggy – which I called Shakin’ Shaggy at the time.

So focusing in on the movement of that stretchy rubber helped this come together – terrific! What were the next steps?
I went back to Steve with the Shakin’ Shaggy concept. He’s great at mechanisms so I asked if he could make a TPR dog with vibrating fingers that looked like wet fur. The first version looked good but was underwhelming as the vibrating didn’t really replicate the dog shaking motion. I challenged him to build a mechanism with a more realistic side-to-side shake. The problem was that the TPR skins we found were too heavy. We ended up using a lightweight fabric that shook realistically like a dog!

I then made the board, did the basic gameplay and made the video. Now we had a TPR version that vibrated and a fabric version that shook well. I give the team at John Adams a ton of credit for really nailing the development. They made the shake realistic with an adorably styled TPR body!

You mention John Adams – what made them a good home for Soggy Doggy?
All the US game companies I pitched it to passed on it. Ha! At the time, I didn’t have a lot of contacts in Europe, and it was out of Michael Kohner’s generosity that I was introduced to Simon Pilkington at John Adams. They were a great partner for this because they saw the vision when no one else did – and they put a lot into execution and marketing.

And Spin Master took it for the US?
Yes, Anton at Spin Master saw the item, fell in love with it and championed it! Spin Master was ‘all in’ and their marketing was spectacular – including a Giant version of Soggy Doggy that travelled around the country on the Paw Patrol tour.

How important was Soggy Doggy in your own ‘journey’ as an inventor?
No question: having a game like Soggy Doggy under your belt gives you a big lift. After that, everyone took my action games more seriously and it was the start of an incredible run for me with Don’t Step In It with Bob Driscoll, and Drone Home with Jose and Hans Leal. But it’s still all about having the right product at the right time. That opens the door for any inventor, whether new or established.

Not every game enjoys a decade in the market. What do you put Soggy Doggy’s longevity down to? Obviously, overwhelming success and awards like the TOTY give the game a better chance of staying around. But I think another thing that helped is its connection to real life. Everybody can relate to the moment when they’re standing next to a wet dog that’s about to shake. And it helps that the styling is adorable and the shaking so realistic! Having great companies like John Adams and Spin Master behind it really helps because they believe in the product and think it should be a classic.

And it is! In fact, it’s spawned a few spin-offs: Soggy Moggy, and the Soggy Doggy Friends Interactive Pet. Do you think these ‘adjacent’ launches helped establish Soggy Doggy as a brand in the industry?
We’ve developed lots of things to support the brand, including entertainment pitches. The adjacent launches were great, but – to date – it’s been very hard to live up to the original Soggy Doggy game’s success.

Last question – what’s next for Soggy Doggy? Any exciting plans?
Funny you should ask! There is some exciting news surrounding Soggy Doggy for 2026. Watch this space!

Nicely teased! Thanks Don, and congrats on 10 years of Soggy Doggy!

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