New family games – and stickers you can put on any surface! Alex Tongue on Vango’s new products

Tell me, Alex Tongue… StyleStix! If you had to give me the elevator pitch for that, what would it be?
StyleStix is a type of ‘sticker’ that goes on any fabric with no water, no heat and no effort… It goes on as almost as though it’s been printed. If I showed it to you on a shoe, you’d think it was printed on the shoe at the factory.

Well, you did. And I did! Before you explained what the product was, you handed me a shoe – and I thought the sticker was printed on.
Right! So it’s a unique, different and special kind of sticker. In fact, our tagline on StyleStix is ‘Not a normal sticker’ because one of the big hurdles we think we’ll have with this line is that we need to communicate that this is – well, not a normal sticker! Ha!

Early on in the development of StyleStix, we played around with the idea of chaos packaging to address that. We thought maybe we needed to catch people’s eye… Get them asking what it is, and then we could communicate it. After a while, though, we realized we don’t need to be so clever. We can just tell them that it’s not a normal sticker.

I like that the tagline makes you more curious! Even so, ‘not a normal sticker’ somewhat understates the case! I’m amazed to see stickers that adhere to fabrics like that. No peeling off, no cracking… What’s the secret?!
It’s a proprietary, patent-pending invention but, essentially, it’s like a stack of layers that goes on without a paper layer – so you get the ink, but it’s not sticky on top – and that then releases from the backing. So just think of it as being like a cake of really, really, really thin materials. And as you saw when you felt the stickers on different surfaces at the show, there’s almost nothing there…

No, it was like I was just feeling the fabric. Remarkable! And how has this line come about?
It came about because – as you know – we have our Loveté range, which you interviewed Makenzie Elliott and I about last year… In the line at Target, we did a shoe-charm product and that included some stickers to put on shoes. That’s what inspired this. And you know, in researching that, I ordered a bunch of transfers from amazon to put on shoes and stuff… My goodness, they were awful to put on! You had to spend ages scratching every little corner to get it on there. The application was so horrendous…

Eventually we worked with our partners in China to find a way to make it easier. As you can imagine, we went through quite a few iterations to get the alignment of the glue and the ink perfect – that’s really important. We don’t have the luxury of a bleed so there’s no margin for error. Then we had to play around with the elasticity of it because we couldn’t have it cracking. We also couldn’t have it getting gooey and sludgy… So it took a while to figure out how to make it effortless to put on a shoe or a basketball, or a backpack – whatever.

And effortless is exactly the right word. One thing I’m curious about, though: what happens when that sticker gets wet? Like in a shower of rain?
Nothing happens if it just gets wet like that. It doesn’t dissolve or anything. However, if you wanted it to dissolve, it does come off clothes in a single wash cycle… So hot water mixed with detergent would break it down and dissolve it – gone!

Also, I’ll answer one question that comes up a fair bit in case you were going to ask… No, it doesn’t dissolve into microplastics or anything like that! It meets the European Environmental Regulation. Also, if you want to remove it from your sneakers, you can use a vinyl rubber – like a pencil eraser. That rubs it off because nobody’s putting their shoes in the washing machine. At least I hope not!

Brilliant. You can put sneakers in a washing machine though, can’t you?
Can you?

Can’t you?
I don’t know!

Now I’m doubting myself… When I was much younger, my whole family was into athletics. We always had sneakers going around in the washing machine!
Maybe they weren’t super-heavy sneakers? Otherwise, they’re just clanking around…

Well, now that you mention it, we did get a new washing machine once a week – maybe you’re right.
Ha! Well, I’m going to throw my kids’ shoes in the washing machine straight after this call! Let’s find out!

Alright! Keep me posted… So! As soon as I saw StyleStix, my first thought was licensing. Is that something you want to explore?
Discussions are being had, Deej! But we wanted to launch the brand with our own designs for the initial few series, so we’re launching with four introductory skews. The main one’s going to be the foil blind bag. There’re 20 stickers inside this nice little blister. That’s $5 at retail. And the way we’ve set it up is like a collectible format, but more like what you see with Pop Mart than what you traditionally see in toy…

So Pop Mart does a 12-plus-one collectible. There’re 12 themes, and the likelihood of getting all 12 is the same… Then there’s a secret one to chase! We don’t show that on the packaging or even in the collector’s guide. And only that one is rare because we want kids to be able to trade these with one-to-one value. We didn’t want kids to have to figure out how to trade one more-common design for a range of more-scarce ones. When it’s one-to-one, it’s easy to trade if you have a duplicate. It makes it a lot more predictable.

I like that!
Yes, Pop Mart was onto something there. So that’s the foil bag for $5. This is the blister card – the 40 pack. This one has an exclusive theme, and also an additional mystery theme from series one. Then, for the fall, we have a mini-match decorator bag. That’s our $19.99 Q4 item… It’s like a mini-backpack charm, but the way it’s set up is that you get little stickers for the backpack and then matching big versions for your bigger backpack. In other words, it looks like you have a little mini version of your own backpack. And that’s the introductory line.

You must’ve been spoilt for choice, really, when choosing your lineup, because the stickers can go on almost anything…
Yes, which is partly why licensing is going to be a big part of it in the future. In fact, one of the problems – and it’s a great problem to have – is that, because the applications are so widespread, the breadth of categories we can go into seems endless. We could be doing craft kits, collectibles, sport…

There’s a basketball down here in front of me with a sticker on it! So we can go in the direction of sporting goods; kids could put it on baseball gloves, soccer balls, shin pads – there are so many possibilities. The stickers just sort of mould to the texture. It’s brilliant… So we’re exploring all sorts right now and figuring out where licenses fit into it.

Perfect! And was there anything else I missed on the Vango stand this year?
We have a few games launching, including two new family games… Gummy Grab is going into Target this fall. Also, do you know the inventor Jordan Goddard?

Not personally… I think he’s been nominated for Mojo Nation Play Creators Awards, but I don’t think we’ve interviewed him.
He did Gummy Grab for us, and Smack N Cheese. They’re just amazing games, both launching this fall – and then we have an outdoor item. You saw
Cone Toss on the stand, I think?

I did! I loved it! Absolutely bloody useless at it, but I loved it! That’s your first outdoor game?
Right. We’ve been expanding and moving into a few different categories – and we’re now doing more licensed inventor items. We’re about to send out a request for some games that we’ve been wanting to do for the fall. I’m going to send out an email and say ‘We’ll pay you for just the ideas, and if we like the idea and we want to go forward with it, we’ll license it.’

Amazing! Maybe we’ll have a separate conversation about how Mojo Nation can support that. Now, Alex, I have to remind you about the last time we did an interview… To wrap things up, I asked what the most interesting object in your office or on your desk was. Your response was the most anticlimactic answer in the history of Mojo!
Ha! I was just surrounded by boxes!

Well, happily, people can still read that interview here. But what is now the most interesting object in your office or on your desk?
I’m ready this time! I have a game here, a puzzle, from a trip I took in 2014. Back then, I used to be a downhill skateboarder. One year, one of the World Cup races was in France… We went to a crepe restaurant, up in the French hillsides and they had this little puzzle. It’s a pyramid that you build using four pieces. It’s more challenging than it sounds! Everyone I’ve met who tries to solve this finds it much, much harder than they think it’s going to be! It takes some people – even really smart people – a good half an hour to assemble it.

That looks fiendish! Brilliant, Alex! The shambles of your previous answer is fading to a dim memory! Out of interest, how did they use that puzzle in the creperie?
There was an extraordinary waiter there… He would say, “Here’s how you do it!” – and just put it together in front of us. And we were like, “How are you doing that?” It was like a magic trick because he made it look so easy.

Fantastic! Well, thank you, Alex: You’ve redeemed yourself! Thanks again for making time.

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