“This was the missing piece…”: Rubber Road’s Jack Fox on TUBBZ’s move into blind collectibles with Mystery Eggs

This month has seen the arrival of your new TUBBZ Mystery Eggs. For anyone new to the range, how would you pitch them?
What came first, the TUBBZ ducks or the TUBBZ eggs? Three years ago the TUBBZ range was limited to just our larger collector ducks. Now we have Mini’s, boxed, Plush, XL and now we are going back to the start of the duck evolution chain to see these cute little duckies hatching out of an egg.

Each wave will be dedicated to a leading franchise from the world of pop culture. The blind sector is absolutely the natural habitat for these Mystery Eggs, a new form factor for the popular TUBBZ collectibles with the added excitement of blind characters and rare characters to chase down.

Offering exceptional value for money, the characters are all different and highly detailed so you are guaranteed to crack open something really fun and really special… You may even find an ultra rare to boot.

They look terrific. What prompted the move into blind box collectables?
We felt this was the missing piece of the TUBBZ collection. The Blind sector is huge and not going anywhere – we absolutely recognised this was a logical step for TUBBZ. We took our time – three years of research and development – to ensure we came up with a concept true to the TUBBZ brand that could shine in this category.

We were sold on having a rarity scheme to add more excitement to the unboxing and collecting experience making Mystery Eggs the ultimate ‘egg hunt’. The Golden Gru, Silver Bob and Silver Stuart are the rare characters to hunt down.

This means we have a fully segmented TUBBZ range – with clearly defined product categories for different types of retailers and different types of customers – without cannibalising sales or disrupting the market. Whether you are a hardcore collector, or an impulse purchaser and chasing the rares with our blind offering, there is now something for everyone with TUBBZ!

You mention the line kicks off with a Minions collaboration. What made this a perfect brand to launch with?
Our first foray into Blinds needed to be with a strong, global brand with mass appeal among the younger audience. Universal is one of our biggest partners, we already have the Minions license, and we wanted to kick this off with one of the most successful franchises of all time… Mission accomplished!

Plus, with the new Minions & Monsters movie hitting cinemas earlier this month, we are also relevant and can tap into all the hype surrounding this movie. This has created extra in-store opportunities being merchandised within Minions fixtures in place to support the movie, as well as collectibles/blinds spaces.

What has been really interesting is that even before the movie has launched, our sales on Mystery have blown away all expectations, which also shows the strength of our brand and our organic sales. As we’ve seen with conventional TUBBZ, they sell all year round.

Each character in the line is unique, so talk me through the design process here. What was important to get right about a blind box execution of TUBBZ?
As a father who watches his kids spend all their pocket money on blinds of such poor quality at a high price point – with just very simple changes such as colours differentiating each character – it’s painful to watch the disappointment and presents a poor experience for consumers…

So, to stand out in this sector, we wanted our collection to offer collectible figures that are all different – not just different colours of the same character but unique designs and rare characters to chase down. Compromise on design detail was non-negotiable. Detailed design is key to the success of the TUBBZ brand, capturing character traits such as hair, expressions, clothing and accessories – and this level of detail had to remain. This is what has resonated with fans, they love all the detail.

Minions Mystery Eggs has nailed it. Look at Evil Minion with its purple hair – it’s not a rare, but no one is going to be disappointed when they crack this one open. It looks amazing.

Absolutely. Now, looking ahead, what do you feel will make a brand right for the Mystery Eggs treatment?
We are fortunate to work with many of the biggest licenses in global entertainment, Minions being the most successful animated movie franchise of all time. In a nutshell, the license has to have a huge global fan base and a number of iconic characters that lend themselves to the premium design associated with TUBBZ.

Next, we are turning ourselves to gaming… We have a legendary gaming collection coming up later this year, followed by a horror/Halloween line. Next year you will see multiple major movie tie-ins again. It has definitely challenged the design team to make the characters work as eggs, but they have done a phenomenal job as they always do.

TUBBZ now spans Minis, boxed, Plush, XL and Blinds… Are there still formats out there you’d like to expand the brand into?
There are indeed! We have another completely new category coming later this year which we are confident is going to sky rocket our sales again and have already had major retail buy-in.

We are absolutely committed to growing this brand and to do that a continuing evolution of the ducks and innovation is key. We need to keep things fresh and exciting to appeal to our core TUBBZ fans and recruit new ones. The hatching of Mystery Eggs this summer has already proven to be a winner and we already have new licenses on board, with two more coming up this year and plenty more for 2027.

However, we aren’t stopping there… We have something very different for TUBBZ coming up for Q4 – unmistakably TUBBZ but a charming new form factor. We can’t wait to see these out and about, they’re not designed to sit on shelves!

Nicely teased Jack! Congrats again on Mystery Eggs. Let’s chat again later in the year about those upcoming reveals!

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