Pudgy Penguins’ Steve Starobinksky on schleich, owning Valentine’s Day – and embracing ‘The Collector Couple’

Steve, it’s always great to catch up. How has the last year been for Pudgy Penguins?
My first day at Pudgy was Toy Fair last year and I wasn’t starting from scratch. The brand had a little bit of motion at retail, but it wasn’t positioned correctly. We had to take one step back to take maybe 5, 10, 50 steps forward!

Ah, in what sense?
Well, we really had to understand our customer. We have a bit of a paradox on our hands. On X – where we are prolific – our audience is 90% male. On Instagram, our audience is 64% female. On TikTok, it’s 67% female. That creates a challenge around which customer base we choose to appeal to? And what is the bridge between them? So there were certain things we had to do to prove to the industry that we’re the real deal and that we can support our licensing partners.

What has helped you prove that over the past year?
Well, one was the identification of this term I’m coining ‘The Collector Couple’. The Kidult saved the toy industry in 2025, but what’s after the Kidult – I would say The Collector Couple.

Talk me through that. What defines The Collector Couple?
Well it’s uniquely defined by the fandom of Pudgy Penguins, because I’ve never seen this phenomenon before. Both men and women, or the masculine and the feminine, see themselves in this IP. This is down to our memes – that have over 70 billion views – and our relationship-focused content on Instagram and TikTok. Couples share our content back and forward back – Pudgy Penguins has become a kind of love language. We’re a way for couples to express themselves and feel seen. And it’s not even that men like Pengu and women like Polly. It’s one plus one equals three. There’s a shared fandom.

I went to San Diego Comic-Con and I met one woman who showed me her ‘Welcome home’ soldier sign and it had Pudgy Penguins on it because it was a key part of their long-distance relationship when he was deployed. Another woman that showed me Pax and Polly on their wedding cake because they’re also the nicknames they have for each other.

How has that fandom shaped where you go licensing-wise?
I created a campaign called ‘Owning Winter’. Unlike everyone else at Toy Fair, we don’t turn off our marketing on December 26th. We keep it going. Our penguins look great in the snow and we’re that little spark of joy in this cold world. In a way, we’re extending Christmas, right? But guess what? We can extend ‘Owning Winter’ to ‘Owning Valentine’s Day’. February 14th can be a second Christmas for us because we’re all about couples, relationships and love. And unlike some Valentine’s promotions, this approach doesn’t end on February 15th… It doesn’t expire. It’s not seasonal. So we’re de-risking that Valentine’s proposition.

A good example… We launched our Valentine’s Day plushie via a pop-up shop in the Lower East Side. I’ve never seen a queue like it! It looked like something Supreme could pull off. It validated that Valentine’s Day is the second Christmas for us.

We’re here at New York Toy Fair chatting on the schleich stand, and here are the new Pudgy Penguins schliech figures! How did this partnership come about?
I’m so proud of this. I’ve been in the toy business now for over two decades and I spent a lot of that time at Diverse Marketing and my mentor is Greg Hardin. Greg got a chance to represent schleich back when they launched at Walmart. I got a chance to go to Nuremberg, to the schleich global party, where I started to understand their commitment to manufacturing excellence. My appreciation for schleich is deep – they are a machine.

David Albert – President for North America at Schleich – reached out and wanted to explore this opportunity to combine institution with a disruptor. That juxtaposition is so captivating – and at the end of the day, we’re penguins… Who can make better animals than schleich? Who can sell more animals globally than schleich? And we win big too – Penguins is very strong in North America and Asia, but in Europe, we have a little bit of catching up to do. With schleich being our global partner, that timeline gets pushed forward and we’re able to catch up with distribution that would have taken us years to achieve on our own.

What does this initial range span?
In our world there’s 8,888 penguins – but to build affinity and consumer demand for that many characters out of the gate is pretty tough. So we hyper-focused our strategy on our Mickey and Minnie – Pax Pengu and Polly. The schleich series will focus on those two characters and when you buy both of them, they hug. They pose together. Pudgy Penguin fans buy Pudgy Penguins for each other and they’ll buy both. We have eight different Pudgy Penguins here and much more coming.

Last question! I can tell you’re a huge fan of this brand. How important is it to be a fan of the brands you work on? Does it make a difference to the work?
Since I left Diverse, I worked on Mind the Gap and sold that to Spin Master – and I was a huge fan. I loved hosting Mind the Gap games. I then worked on Gel Blaster and I loved demoing it. I loved it as a consumer product and I loved it as location-based entertainment concept. With Pudgy, I share these cartoons with my better half, I consume it, and it makes me smile every single day. You have to be a fan to be good at this – so yes, collect it, share it, tell everyone how great it is, be a fan!

Steve, always a pleasure. Thanks again.

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